Even before I started using my wheelchair full-time in Second Life, there were moments that stuck with me. One in particular still sits with me. I was in the premium sandbox, just minding my own business and doing my building work, when a man walks straight up to me and says, “You need an update because you look like a man.”
And I just stared at him. I didn’t even give him a chance to explain himself. I said, “Excuse me? I look the way I want to look, and so do you. And maybe if you take a look at yourself, it’s actually you who needs an update.”
And strangely enough, when I was still walking in Second Life, I could shake comments off like nobody’s business. They slid right off me. But now that I use my wheelchair full-time, the comments hit differently. They cut deeper. It makes me feel even more that the way I choose to move through Second Life is not socially accepted by other people. And that’s what I can’t wrap my head around.
Because I know the real-life world outside of Second Life. I’m used to the stares, I’m used to the comments, I’m used to the laughter behind my back. I’m used to that world. But I’m not used to that world bleeding into Second Life, where everything is supposed to be freeing — not a place where you get silently bullied because your way of moving isn’t socially accepted. It feels like the two worlds have merged into one, and people can’t look past it, even in a place that’s supposed to be limitless.
Even though people aren’t saying it to my face, the pressure is still there. It sits in the silence, in the way people avoid me, in the way conversations dry up. And sometimes it makes me feel this immense, uncomfortable pressure to stop using my wheelchair in Second Life — just so people will talk to me again. Just so I can feel desired again. Wanted again.
But here’s the truth: I’m strong enough not to bend to that pressure. I’m not going to erase a part of myself just to make other people more comfortable.
In fact, I already bent to that pressure once. I stopped using my wheelchair because I wanted to fit in, because I wanted people to talk to me, because I didn’t want to feel like the odd one out. But I’m not doing that again. This is my truth, and I’m not living for everyone else — I’m living for me and for the people who actually matter.
But that doesn’t take away from the reality of it. The silent pressure is real. It feels like being inside a pressure cooker, and every comment, every silence, every avoidance just turns the dial a little higher… more and more and more… until you expect the lid to blow off.
But I’m not going to let it pop. I refuse to let it. I’m choosing myself this time.
I started seeing the signs early — signs that I was about to be alone in a way I had never experienced before. It took only five hours after choosing to be in my wheelchair full-time. I have a long-time partner, kind of off and on, someone I have a connection with every now and then. Let’s call him the redhead.
When I showed him my wheelchair and explained why I decided to be in it, he said, “Oh, so that’s the experiment? To see if people will talk to you or not.”
And I told him, “No. This isn’t an experiment. This is how I want to be in Second Life.”
And after that, he didn’t talk to me again.
I approached him once because I had run out of lindens, and he was kind enough to lend me some — which I paid back later. Even then, he didn’t speak to me normally afterward. When he gave me the money, I joked, “How about I pay you back like we used to, if you still want me like that?” And he said, “Of course I want you like that still. You’re nice to me.”
But that was it. That was the last normal moment. Since the day I got into my wheelchair full-time, he has not spoken to me like before.
I knew this choice might come with challenges, but this… this is a whole different level of hard.
So why do people feel so entitled to say something in Second Life about how you live your life? About how you look? About how you move? Why do they think they have the right to comment at all?
And why do so many people place you in this silent pressure cooker — where they don’t say anything directly, but their silence, their distance, their sudden change in behavior pushes and pushes and pushes until you feel like you’re the one who’s going to break?
Why does a place that is supposed to be freeing turn into a mirror of the same judgments we fight in real life?
