Matthew Finds True Happiness Through Escapism: Juggling Teaching and Pro-Wrestling

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Is escaping from reality helping or harming us? In this episode of Insight, we hear from Australians trying to find identity and liberation in escapism, and ask whether this is a good thing. Watch at 8.30pm (AEST) on Tuesday 15 April on SBS or live on .

For the past four years, Matthew Stewart has worked as a mild-mannered schoolteacher. But come evening, he’s a larger-than-life pro-wrestler called ‘Big Fudge’.

Wrestling has helped Matthew access different parts of his identity.

“I would definitely say I’m a quiet person; I’m a bit introverted. But there are parts of my personality which are very loud, which are very silly, which are very colourful,” he told Insight.

“I get to walk into a world and I get to become someone else completely. And that fills me with confidence, confidence I might not have in my day-to-day life.”

A man dressed up as a pro-wrestler with pink and gold pants and a pink mask.

Matthew says he sometimes finds it hard to navigate his shift between the two very different worlds of teaching and pro-wrestling. Source: Supplied

Matthew has been obsessed with wrestling since he started watching it as a child. He says it provides a valuable sense of escapism for both the performers and the audience.

“They come there to cheer the good guys, they come there to boo the bad guys,” Matthew said. “They’re part of those moments with us. They’re part of our journey.”

He says being a pro-wrestler can be challenging physically and emotionally, but the exhilarating escape is worth it — and gives him something to look forward to.

“When I put on that mask, I can become anyone I want to be … I could not care less what people think. I’m completely in the moment. I let go. I can be as silly, as ridiculous as I want to be.

“This is the path I had to be on to be happy, and I’m truly happy right now.”

‘The confidence to find who I was’

Emma Baird grew up in Perth during the 1990s, an environment she says could be uncomfortable for different, creative people like her. She credits the goth scene for saving her life.

“I’m very pale-skinned, and I was a very weird ginger little child. I didn’t fit the bill for being a normal Western Australian person. I didn’t like the sun. I didn’t like surfing,” she told Insight.

“I never felt like I had that wonderful thing that so many people have where they can fit into a crowd immediately. So I went looking for those who were more welcoming, and I went looking for the the weird kids and I was very, very fortunate. I found my weird people.”

A woman with dyed red hair dressed in black goth clothing stands outside in front of the ruins of a church.

Emma has found solace in the goth scene. Source: Supplied

Emma started to wade into the goth subculture after a cousin gave her some music tapes, introducing her to bands such as The Cure and The Sisters of Mercy.

The community provided Emma with a sense of belonging and the permission to embrace her true self.

“It gave me the confidence to find who I was. It gave me a way of exploring the bounds of my personality that I wouldn’t otherwise have been able to do had I tried to fit in in the society that I’d been given or born into,” she said.

“It was having my goth community and having friends that understood me that gave me the strength to continue, and having opportunities to go and experience being my true self gave me true happiness.”

Living life to the full

Bridget Hallam has found her escape through motorbiking.

“My life before motorcycles was probably very similar to a lot of people. I had young children, single mum, working, very busy and really no time for escaping,” she said.

Bridget says when she met her partner, Alan, and they started riding motorbikes together, it allowed her to escape a tough time.

“Motorcycling feels really different from anything I’ve done before, because you can literally throw your leg over your bike, point the handlebars at the horizon, and go anywhere in the world.”

Bridget and Alan have been on three trips to Europe, where they have ridden their bikes for six months at a time.

When Bridget is on her motorbike, she feels like she’s escaping the routine of everyday life. Source: Supplied / VISCERAL_VISUALS

She describes it as escaping from the routine of everyday life.

“It’s very much about escaping into adventure, into experiencing things that make me feel alive,” she said.

“I don’t want to be home tending the petunias. I want to be out living life and that’s what motorcycles mean to me.

“Escapism really helps me live life to the full.”

‘Things about ourselves that we don’t really know’

Davide Orazi is an associate professor of Marketing at Monash University who studies escapism. He says it’s a way of distracting ourselves from a reality that can feel “frightening, painful or unsatisfactory”.

“What we want to get out of it is a moment of break, of respite — to restore these resources that stressors deplete,” he said.

“We are escaping from something unpleasant to something that is comforting or inspiring, or from something dull to the exciting.”

Many of us find that escape in hobbies, books or exotic travels. Others like to take on a whole new identity.

Davide has also been a Live Action Role Player (LARPer) for 21 years.

LARP is an immersive activity where players physically act out characters in a fictional setting, blending elements of theatre, storytelling and improvisation.

“It’s a tornado of emotions; it’s very visceral,” he said.

A man dressed up in old-fashioned formal wear faces another man

Davide says embodying different personas can reveal unknown aspects of our identities, helping us to learn more about ourselves. Source: Supplied

Davide says the process of embodying different personas can reveal unknown aspects of his own identity, offering a unique form of self-discovery.

“Every time you’re interpreting a different character, that exposes you to situations you have no access to in normal life.”

“There is a lot of things about ourselves that we don’t really know, and we don’t have the opportunity to know until we immerse ourselves in those contexts.”

Shifting between two worlds

Davide says that when he returns to reality from an intense LARP, he is forced to reconcile what he’s learnt about himself.

“When you go back to your day-to-day life, there is this bleed between worlds that you have to manage,” he said.

“You have to negotiate what you’ve discovered about yourself. You have to deal with all the intense emotions attached to those people and places you have met and discovered while you were engaging into the extraordinary.

“And that requires a lot of thought, a lot of resources.”

Emma says she finds it hard to readjust to normal life after a big goth event like The Whitby Goth Weekend, one of the world’s biggest goth events that takes place biannually in the UK.

“You do have this sort of comedown afterwards where you’ve been at the height of your identity … that sort of mourning for that full sense of your identity.

“That can be very difficult.”

Matthew also likes to keep his alternate identity a secret, often choosing not to tell people he’s a wrestler.

“The funny thing with judgement is, when I put on that mask, I could not care less what people think. I’m completely in the moment. I let go. I can be as silly, as ridiculous as I want to be, and I have no shame.

“[But] when I take the mask off, sometimes a bit of that shame can come crawling back to me. And I have those human moments where I am a bit shy about it.”

But on the plus side, he says wrestling has helped him understand how to perform to an audience, which has helped him in the classroom.

He believes our everyday lives are full of performances.

“A performance could simply be me meeting a stranger and shaking their hand and smiling. There are so many performative elements to every day of our lives,” he said.

“I think most people wear masks. In some sense, we are all performing for others.”

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