Creator of Worlds: On Bray Wyatt, Wrestling, Creating and Hope

So where were the spiders while the fly tried to break our bones

Those lyrics, taken from David Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust”, live forever etched now in the Twitter bio of Windham Rotunda, better known as Bray Wyatt. Though he died in August 2023, I visit his profile sometimes just to see those words. I wonder why he chose these specific words, because I know there was a reason. There was a reason behind everything he did.

It’s more than this curiosity that draws me back there, though. There’s a personal connection for me as well.

I’m not one to cry when celebrities or famous people die. I feel sad for a lot of them, but crying? That’s for people I’ve met, for people who are a part of my life, not for someone who never knew I existed and whom I’d still likely never have met had they remained earthside. David Bowie was the first time I not only cried, but deeply mourned, the passing of someone I had never met. The morning he died, when I got the news, I sat up in bed and felt that too familiar shattering feeling inside my chest, the breaking of a heart, and I began to sob. My body shook and I felt an emptiness inside that was reserved for the loss of those we love and love deeply. And somewhere in the back of my mind, part of me asked, why?

Why this reaction? Why this depth of mourning for a man I never knew? Yes, I’m a Bowie fan. A huge fan. Have been since high school. But this? Wasn’t this silly? Over the next several days, as I mourned this man as though he were family, as I sobbed again at the sound of his voice while I played my favorite songs on repeat, the reasons became more clear. They were all right there, in his art and in my response to it. Bowie reinvented himself time and again. He understood that identity is something you can create to your own liking. For a girl who struggled with a sense of identity my entire life, constantly bouncing from one version of herself to another without knowing why because a BPD diagnosis would only come a lifetime later, Bowie made me feel like there wasn’t something deeply broken in me. He made me feel like my constant need to evolve and rearrange was simply what true creatives did.

There were a hundred reasons more why Bowie was so important to me, why I mourned so deeply. But this piece, whatever it is, is about Bray Wyatt and why I sobbed and mourned and mourn to this day, a man I never met as though he were an integral part of my world.

Bray Wyatt, like Bowie, was a master of self-reinvention. And yet every iteration, no matter how different from the last, was uniquely and singularly, HIM. And he didn’t just create new versions, new characters. He crafted entire worlds and intricate stories and brought them to life for us through a medium so often viewed as “less than” other art forms by the masses. I often imagined what it was like inside his head. I would wonder if he lived different lives inside his own mind the way that I do. I think he must have. It’s part of that deep connection I felt to him, a connection I still feel. All of these different people, different characters, different lives, living within his own mind and somehow they were all him. He created harmony from discord and beauty in the darkness, like fireflies in the night.

Bray Wyatt could take any character, any story, no matter how over the top or unbelievable, and he made you believe it. And that made you believe in him. It made everything he did, no matter how outlandish, seem completely genuine.

For me, with my own head full of characters and worlds and stories and discord and darkness, he was a shining example that you could be all these versions of yourself and still be You.

And who Bray Wyatt was, at his core, was a storyteller. Someone who connected so deeply with his fans through the art of wrestling. His skills on the mic were unparalleled and the story he could tell you in the ring was every bit as important as the story he told in his promos and packages. He would have been one of the best to ever do it even if he didn’t have all those characters and worlds living in his head. But he did. He had vision. He had these ideas that many filmmakers would kill to have and acting skills that should have landed him in Hollywood. And he used these skills, these gifts, for wrestling. A medium which has always struggled to be viewed as the art form that it is. But he saw it. He loved wrestling and he worked to elevate it through his willingness to try new things and take risks, even when not everyone understood him.

That conviction, that belief in himself and his own ideas and his own ability to transform an industry through creation, was an inspiration. But it was his ability to connect and his vulnerability when being himself, I think, that took him from just a favorite of mine, to someone whose loss would reduce me to sobs.

On Smackdown on October 14, 2022, after returning at Extreme Rules, Bray cut the most sincere, earnest promo of his career. He was vulnerable, telling the audience this was just him. He shared how he’d felt lost, like nothing he had done ever mattered. Seeing this larger than life being whom I related to but also felt I could never aspire to share so openly that he too struggled with doubt and worry, made me feel less alone in the darkness. And then he seamlessly tied this most vulnerable, genuine version of himself right into his next great grand idea. He used his darkest moments to create yet again. That is the embodiment of hope. That, more than anything, is what he gave me.

And so when I heard the news that he had died, I found myself with tears streaming down my face, my shoulders shaking, the familiar pains in my chest once again, the feeling of a heart breaking. I texted friends as though I’d lost a brother. I watched back his promos just to hear the sound of his voice. I mourned. I still do. I haven’t watched the documentary yet. I haven’t been able to. But I think that’s coming soon.

I did do one thing I’d been putting off though. In 2022 I had an idea for a Bray Wyatt inspired photoshoot. I had a vision of blending some of his gimmicks into this thing that would also be very much me. I had the mask. I had a dress that felt right for the vision. I just didn’t get around to executing it because as amazing as the idea was in my head, I didn’t believe in my ability to make it happen or that anyone would care. So the idea sat there in my mind for months and months. And then he died. And I couldn’t bring myself to look at the mask and I worried it would be in poor taste or worse yet, just plain bad. Just a crappy tribute to a hero that should have stayed in my head where it belonged.

But through my own series of ups and downs and losses and changes, some newer version of myself started to emerge. One that believes in herself more. One that wants to create more.

Bray Wyatt reminded us that Yourself isn’t something you find, it’s something you create, and you can create and recreate it a thousand times and still be You. So when I walked outside the other day and saw that everything was exactly as I’d envisioned it for those photos, it just felt like the right time.

“The truth is that for the majority of my life I’ve been completely out of control and I can’t help that, man. My emotions, they don’t work like most other peoples’. I don’t have control and sometimes they can send me to a very very dark place. And other times, no matter how hard I try, I just don’t feel anything at all.” - Bray Wyatt, Smackdown October 28, 2022

My emotions don’t work like other peoples’ either. Sometimes I feel too much. Sometimes I feel nothing. Wrestling gives me an outlet to feel when I can’t and grounds me when I feel too much. It has saved my sanity at times. It has saved my life before. That’s why I love it so damn much. I think maybe Bray Wyatt would get that. And so I think he’d get why I had to put on a ridiculously oversized ball gown and a Fiend mask and prowl around the weeds in my yard while crying to his theme song all for the sake of some pictures that may well be absolute fucking cheese. Because in the end, it’s about creating something. He inspired that in me. So as much as it’s an ode to wrestling and a tribute to him, it is also both art and healing for me. And when it comes to creating, if just one other person in the world gets it even a little, then you’ve got a lantern light to guide you through the dark.