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choosing our names
Sep. 14th, 2010 03:44 pmMy name is Anton.
Today finally feels right to say that aloud in this space. I went to therapy and when I came home my copy of Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation was waiting on the doorstep. It's sunny but the heat doesn't feel like its will obliterate me. I'm wearing my bracelet. For whatever reason, things are falling into place.
Additionally today, there's some discussion on LJ about the issue of names and usernames, which ones we choose to use and why they are important. It is worth nothing I am thinking about changing my journal name, because tsarina is a feminine noun. But I've been Tsarina so long, more than a decade, and I would be a liar not to say the thought of changing it aches a bit in my heart. I've used the name Tsarina more than the name on my birth certificate in some ways and it is no less really my name because of it came to be on the wired world. A person is never just one thing, and so I think they are never really just one name. We have nicknames and private names and saints names and secret names and online names and legal names and so many things.
Since I came home from Dragon*con, my mind has relentlessly circled the thought of my name and my transition. I went to therapy today and said I want to start doing something about this life of mine. I'm ready to stop waiting. This is my life and I would like to live it and be happy.
All of my life, I've been afraid of people telling me my feelings weren't real. That I was just trying to make myself more interesting, that I was making things up or that my experiences weren't genuine enough. During some important and difficult moments growing up, the adults around me told me these things and for years I've internalized those words. I couldn't really be gay, or a boy, or raped, or whatever it was. My experiences were dismissed as unreal and unimportant. To this very day, my family denies some of them even happened. But I remember, I remember all of it and I am still all the things they said weren't true.
I am really here, and my name is Anton. I would like it if you called me that. I know for the people in my life who have known me as Amanda, it may be hard to switch. That's alright. I still have moments where I stumble on it sometimes too. We'll just go on down the road together and perhaps ten years from now I'll be writing a post where it will seem strange that I was ever anything or anyone else.
Today finally feels right to say that aloud in this space. I went to therapy and when I came home my copy of Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation was waiting on the doorstep. It's sunny but the heat doesn't feel like its will obliterate me. I'm wearing my bracelet. For whatever reason, things are falling into place.
Additionally today, there's some discussion on LJ about the issue of names and usernames, which ones we choose to use and why they are important. It is worth nothing I am thinking about changing my journal name, because tsarina is a feminine noun. But I've been Tsarina so long, more than a decade, and I would be a liar not to say the thought of changing it aches a bit in my heart. I've used the name Tsarina more than the name on my birth certificate in some ways and it is no less really my name because of it came to be on the wired world. A person is never just one thing, and so I think they are never really just one name. We have nicknames and private names and saints names and secret names and online names and legal names and so many things.
Since I came home from Dragon*con, my mind has relentlessly circled the thought of my name and my transition. I went to therapy today and said I want to start doing something about this life of mine. I'm ready to stop waiting. This is my life and I would like to live it and be happy.
All of my life, I've been afraid of people telling me my feelings weren't real. That I was just trying to make myself more interesting, that I was making things up or that my experiences weren't genuine enough. During some important and difficult moments growing up, the adults around me told me these things and for years I've internalized those words. I couldn't really be gay, or a boy, or raped, or whatever it was. My experiences were dismissed as unreal and unimportant. To this very day, my family denies some of them even happened. But I remember, I remember all of it and I am still all the things they said weren't true.
I am really here, and my name is Anton. I would like it if you called me that. I know for the people in my life who have known me as Amanda, it may be hard to switch. That's alright. I still have moments where I stumble on it sometimes too. We'll just go on down the road together and perhaps ten years from now I'll be writing a post where it will seem strange that I was ever anything or anyone else.