There’s no denying that the last few months I have been exceptionally quiet and for the most part heads down. There’s a reason for that, and I want to take time to explain what I am going through. This year has been extremely stressful for me and my mental health has really taken a huge dive. I am going to try to get through all this as much as I feel comfortable. What I won’t share is how my time at Blizzard is going. Is working at Blizzard perfect? No. Is it still one the best jobs I ever had? Definitely yes but just living has been tough and I will get into what that means in a bit.
First, I want to talk about how scared I am right now. I always knew that coming out transgender would very likely make my life a LOT harder, and sure enough there have been hurdles to overcome. However, the transgender community was used as the ultimate scapegoat for an extremist political agenda, and they won. Now American transgender individuals like myself are in imminent danger.
Looking back to how we got here…
It feels even worse knowing my birth family doesn’t support me and shunned me away for being Trans. While, I mentioned in my previous blog that they straight up rejected me when I legally completed my name and gender change, they did it with spite, clinging to their religion as an excuse. It is no secret that I am now estranged from them, and I will have to live with that, but I won’t deny I feel the pain from it.
Ranging from the stalled federal trials and the controversial Supreme Court ruling regarding presidential immunity to the iconic moment of Trump standing up after grazing a bullet to his ear. I knew we were watching something terrible coming. To make things worse, Trump made a speech announcing his agenda to effectively end all gender-affirming treatment as a “Day One” policy. There is also the Project 2025 agenda, which makes the threat to mark the LGBTQ+ community as sexual predators and even potentially treat it as a capital offense.
Even before the results of the election, dealing with this ominous threat has been a major factor in the amount of stress I have endured. This is all on top of being a community manager, which is not exactly the easiest position in the world in terms of maintaining good mental health. Understand that in our field, we take the brunt of toxicity, threats, and insults that players direct at our game developers. It wears at us and breaks us… heck I have been pushed beyond my limit in the past. We work tirelessly to communicate honestly and transparently to players, because our development team really does care about bringing a good game for everyone to play. This is not me being critical on Overwatch or Blizzard’s fanbase, but just identifying the hardships of my role and it’s the same with nearly every game with a following. Players are passionate about the games they play, and we want that, and for the most part it’s worth taking on this burden.
It’s a combination of dealing with my long-term future, my career, and just trying to survive in the expensive region of Southern California that caused me to reach a breaking point in my health over these last few months. I have been in urgent care after an incident triggered by my stress. I have been trying to earn extra money by doing ridesharing but I ended up having to find a new place to live due to my old lease getting terminated before I wanted. There was a night where I was sexually assaulted while driving as I desperately scrapped up money for my new place. There was even a moment, after blowing a tire and getting stranded in the desert, I even considered suicide because I got so overwhelmed.
It has taken a lot of work to pull through these challenges. For the moment I have a comfortable place to live, stable revenue, and have received a lot of mental health treatment over these last few weeks. However, let’s get back to the problem at hand. I simply cannot contend with the idea of living in a country where my life is in danger from the bigotry and hatred that has now been elected to our federal offices. My life is in danger now, and I need your help.
Fleeing the country…
Now after this election, I feel an urgent need to get out of the country. I am now working toward emigrating out of the U.S. in order to preserve my identity, my medication, and my transition. Am I being naïve or impulsive? I don’t think so. I already have spent countless nights studying immigration laws for Canada, learning French to boost my eligibility score, and just trying to figure out what obligations I would need to take care of. Through the last two months, I have successfully got all of my legal documentation up to date. Name change is completed, driver’s license, bank account, passport, birth certificate, everything except for getting my name changed on car title (because my auto loan lender sucks). Needless to say, this was expensive to push through quickly, and I think I spent over $3000 to get done so far. Granted the idea of relocating to another country is not exactly easy and that is a huge, complicated process.
Now I have to get my immigration application moving and hope I can raise my eligibility score high enough to be considered for permanent residency. There are a lot of things I have to do, but ultimately, it is going to be insanely expensive. So basically, I am setting a rough goal of a minimum $5000. This includes the costs of applying for a language aptitude test, education evaluations, and I would likely need to cover the cost of moving across the continent.
How you can help if you want…
I am starting a ko-fi, to provide a single place where anyone can contribute to this goal. You will also be able to see my progress as I will likely be fulfilling this goal on my own throughout the weeks ahead. I also am seeking any help with anyone who can either provide me a place where I can call home in Canada and any leads or references to finding me work in Canada. I am looking at the moment to locate to Toronto as a best guess. So please consider pitching to my Ko-Fi if you can afford it or refer anyone you know to my resume or my LinkedIn.
Hopefully one day, the United States will one day be back on track where trans folks like myself can live openly and peacefully, but until then I will do whatever it takes to survive. Thank you to all of my friends and chosen family who support me, and thank you for reading.
Kaedi Alexandra Peacecraft
