In a new video posted to her YouTube channel titled “I’m Taking A Break! Here’s Why“, legendary drag queen Trixie Mattel is updating fans on the reasoning behind her three month hiatus.
Trixie discusses struggling to maintain a work-life balance and the toll it has taken on her mental and physical health.
“All my wildest dreams came true when I was in my mid-20s, doing Drag Race, traveling the world and making music and all that. It was the paychecks I always wanted, doing my dream job, and I just, over time, squeezed out my real life so fiercely, where all I was doing, was this,” she explained.
“You know when straight guys are all muscular at the top and have twig little legs at the gym? That was my work-life balance. It was all work and money-making and creative stuff, and then my social life, family life, personal life… twigs. Frail twigs. And the bigger the work things got, the smaller my real life things got.”
“It is not so fierce to work yourself to death. It is not so fierce to work yourself into an autoimmune disorder,” Trixie said. “It is not so fierce to like… do so much drag as Trixie, that at a certain point, I literally started to feel like a Trixie impersonator.
“And then to be so lucky to do what I do, and not be appreciating it, it’s horrible. To disrespect the art form that I love so much, that I actually get to a place where I struggle to enjoy it?”
Trixie also opened up to fans about her ongoing health issues like arthritis and being diagnosed temporomandibular joint disorder, a condition that affects the movement of the jaw.
“I never dreamed of any of this. When all this started happening, that day off seemed so, ‘Sleep when you’re dead.’ But after ten years [of that], you start to get sick and feel horrible. The Trixie industry that I’ve created, as is, is not sustainable.
“Things happened this year… that just beat it out of me. It really put me in my place as a person, and taught me new lows of the human experience. And then suddenly things like getting in drag… Being a hard worker is fierce. Being a hard worker at the expense of your real life and health, is not fierce.
While the drag mogul is taking some time, she says “very famous, very iconic, very celebrated drag artists, makeup artists, performers” would be taking over her successful YouTube channel – and thanked them for their support.
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