I used to be a Drag Queen. I was a visible, loved member of our local community. People wanted to be around me; I was the life of the party, the one making everyone laugh. But my life changed when chronic illness took hold. Now, I am a disabled, bisexual man living with chronic pain and a level of fatigue that most people cannot imagine.
My disability is “ambulatory,” which means my needs change every single day. Some days I can walk with a crutch. Other days, I cannot stand at all and must use my wheelchair. Because I still have that “performer’s heart,” I often hide my suffering behind a mask of jokes and laughter. When people see me out, they see the smile—they don’t see the painkillers keeping me upright, or the fact that I will have to crash for days afterward just to recover from one hour of “being seen.”
The hardest part isn’t just the pain; it’s the shift in how people treat me. When I was on stage, I had so many friends. Since becoming disabled, that circle has shrunk. People stop reaching out. When I message them, I get generic replies or silence. There is a darkness and a loneliness in that—a feeling that people only wanted the “performer” and don’t know what to do with the “patient.”
My “24 hours in a day” are not the same as yours. My time is consumed by non-restorative sleep, medical appointments, and the constant calculation of how much energy I have left to give. It has taken a lot of therapy to accept this new version of myself and to stop comparing the person I was to the person I am now.
I cherish my husband, my family, and the few friends who stayed. They are the ones kind enough to see past the crutch or the chair. They see the person inside, not the illness.
I am sharing this because the current political rhetoric around disability is so damaging. When politicians talk about “sick notes” or “invisible” illnesses as if they aren’t real, they are talking about people like me. They don’t see the struggle behind the mask. They don’t see the courage it takes just to show up.
Pride is my reminder that I still belong.
It is a protest against a world that forgets about you when you can no longer “perform” for it. I stand in solidarity with my trans siblings and everyone else being told their reality isn’t valid. We are all human, we are all hurting, and we all deserve to be seen—mask or no mask.