Dear Behaviour... (David King)

This post might be quite lengthy, but I’ll try to keep it as short and to the point as I can.

I’ve been playing DBD since 2017 and David King was always a character that jumped out to me. I’m from Manchester (England) and I found it so cool that David was also from here as I’ve never seen that before in a video game, as normally when a character is British they’re from London. Seeing how much detail the developers put into his perk names / quotes was amazing, as I never imagined seeing things like “Dead Hard’ and ‘No Mither’ being used as they’re just such niche expressions used in my home town.

I’ve grown up around sports and they were always something I excelled at during my time in school. Rugby was always my thing and then I got into kickboxing during my college years and now I’m a full-time Personal Trainer, which is just a dream job.

Since about the age of 7 I’ve known I was ‘different’ - I had girlfriends as that was what my family expected from me. Being anything other than heterosexual wasn’t ever discussed in my family. Men got with women and women got with men. That’s what I was brought up knowing to be true. I felt hollow for the longest time as I was living a life that I didn’t feel in control of. I was in auto-pilot for a long time, just doing what was expected from me and not doing what I actually wanted to do.

I went on a journey of self-discovery at the age of 25 when I realised that not allowing myself to be authentic was slowly killing me and it couldn’t go on much longer. I came to the conclusion that I was not a heterosexual male, but I was in fact a homosexual male. Being so heavily involved in sports for all my life just felt like I was locked in a cage. It’s no secret that that world can be deep rooted in homophobia and hearing some of the comments fellow teammates would make, just didn’t leave me feeling safe enough to be my true self. I loved sports and didn’t want to give that up and I felt like if they knew the real me, I’d be disowned. These feelings also lead back to my family. My mum was always talking about grandkids and how she couldn’t wait for me and my then-girlfriend to have them. I just had such an immense pressure on my shoulders to stay in the closet, but it eventually reached a boiling point.

When I did eventually ‘come out’ I got my fair share of bigoted comments from people I once classed as friends and family. Some didn’t understand how I could possibly be gay, because I wasn’t effeminate and had girlfriends. Which really boiled my blood. I didn’t realise somebody’s sexuality was a personality trait? Why couldn’t I be into ‘masculine’ things and still be gay? It never made sense to me.

Now this brings me back to David. Him being gay just resonates with me so damn much. We almost feel like the same person now. Some people don’t understand why representation is important, but this is why. If I had a character like David King whilst I was growing up, it would have made it a lot easier for me to accept who I was and realise there was never anything wrong with me.

I truly appreciate what Behaviour has done and I hope that the increase in representation we’re seeing throughout the media will make it easier for the youth of today, as my childhood / teen years truly felt like hell.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you in the fog.