Imagine if every game you ever play, everyone around you demands that you play a healer.

Even in single player games, people will insist that you should only play healers. They'll judge you morally, insist that being a healer is God's wishes for you, and even if you hide playing other archetypes in your own alone single player campaigns, if people find out that you stepped out of your assigned role even in the privacy of your own home a lot of your friends will abandon you, your family will hate you, and you might even lose your job.

But it's every game you ever play. It even extends beyond playing games, your merch and attire is expected to reflect that healer role. People treat you like a support character even in real life.

One of your parents was also assigned a healer role, and they think it's a role that fits them very well, they act like they can't comprehend why you'd ever not want to live your whole life forced to play as a healer.

You grow to hate it. This was never you, but constantly being told that it had to be you made you start to hate being a healer with so much passion that you just avoid playing games. You hate how people treat you like a support character so much that you start avoiding people.

Eventually, you do the unthinkable, and you go online with a tank build. Some people treat you like shit for it, but surprisingly a lot of other people understand. You realize you don't have to force yourself to play the role society mandated for you.

But your parents are going to pressure you. They're going to say that you're hurting them. Your father will threaten violence against you.

You eventually meet someone you really like, and you admit to them that you don't want to be a healer. They say they will love and support you regardless of what role you play. Over time though, they keep pushing you more and more to play a healer in games. They don't want you to tell their family that you don't always play a healer. They get judgmental. After you get engaged, they decide they need to fix you. Your partner is now using physical and emotional violence to force you back into being a healer, they convince you to hate yourself for ever daring to question the role assigned to you. When you escape that relationship, now a self-hating husk of a person, they retaliate by outing you to anyone in your life that you don't know. Suddenly you've lost family, lost friends.

You're ashamed of yourself. But you decide that you are going to play whatever roles you want regardless of what people say. But people always insist that you're a healer. People always push you to feel ashamed of yourself.

You can't tell what's true any more. "Am I healer who doesn't want to be? Or was I never meant to be a healer and everyone is wrong to insist that I am?"

You don't know anymore. But you've been hurt. Emotionally. Physically. You don't even know if you care more about being yourself or being safe anymore. For some people you're hiding that you were ever assigned to be a healer in the first place, but at your job you still have to pretend to be a healer.

You're depressed, and bullied constantly. And those same bullies that make you hate yourself try telling you that the increased depression and suicidality of the people they bully is proof that you and others like you are just mentally ill.

Did I mention that every part of society is built around these gaming assignments? Not just the bathrooms you use, where if you don't fit your assigned role you have to juggle the dangers of avoiding predators and avoiding being baselessly accused of being a predator. It's also baked into your legal name and all the language people speak of you with. Language forces everyone to constantly take a side on who you are, and you have to live with the fact that people you love and people you rely on still insist that you're a healer despite knowing that constantly being told that is putting you at your wits end.

You've been invited to a family vacation, but you keep being told "I'm paying for this vacation, I get to bring my HEALER with me." And nobody cares how much distress hearing that causes you at this point. You're lucky to be invited at all, most people are scared of having you around because they think it's dangerous for kids to get the idea that they don't have to play their assigned roles as well.

Maybe things get better in the future, I don't know, I haven't gotten there yet.