The Names We Discard
It’s the name you used for thirty-some years. It’s not evil.
– My wife
We were packing up boxes, finally clearing out our old house so we could sell it. A good few of the boxes were full of stuff from my childhood, things that my Mom gave me when I had could store them and get them out of the cramped apartment we lived in. They all had my deadname on them.
I was visibly upset by those boxes, and had just commented about the bittersweetness of these items (and others, like pictures of me from Back When), when my wife fired off the quote above and I had to take a minute to get myself together.
My wife isn’t trans; her first experience with trans people in real life was when I transitioned; and she didn’t say it maliciously. Just thoughtlesly, as if I had been acting silly. I had to figure out why her offhanded remark hurt so damn much.
The name I discarded when I finally decided to embrace the real me was indeed part of my life for 37 years. It was my email domain, it was (is) on my Bachelor of Science degree, On trophies. On boxes of childhood treasures in my Mom’s neat handwriting. I don’t hate it, and I don’t hate who that person was.
But seeing it makes me uncomfortable.
It reminds me of the decades I outright suppressed and ignored my feelings.
The young child afraid to be too girly, so folks wouldn’t make fun of them.
The adolescent that knew that if they could wave a wand and, Sailor Moon-style, magically transform into a girl, that they’d do it. Y’know, just to try it out.
The 20-something that would occasionally get pretty drunk and refer to themselves as a girl, but even then would look around to make sure nobody heard.
The 30-something that was getting drunk far too often, at times daily, and ordering cheap women’s clothes from Amazon and hiding them from their wife and kids.
My deadname reminds me that, despite my driver’s license and credit cards all having Jessica Phoenix Canady printed on them, there are still people I love (or loved) who will absolutely use t to refer to me. Sometimes to my face. Sometimes after I just corrected them, hoping in vain that they “just forgot.”
It also reminds me of how I figured out why I never looked right in mirrors or pictures, and that I finally do.
Of the card my eldest son made me that says he’ll always love me no matter what my gender is.
How my youngest son calls me “Dad” in public and doesn’t understand or care why some folks give us weird looks sometimes.
That my wife still loves me, despite everything.
None of this even scratches the surface! The name kind of stores all my feelings about my transness encoded in it, and seeing it unexpectedly can drop them all back onto me at once.
Hearing or seeing my deadname is going to be a weird, bittersweet, somewhat painful thing for a while. Eventually, I hope, it’s only used by the folks I’ll never speak to again because they can’t put it down.
But it’s damn heavy, and I’m glad I don’t always have to carry it anymore.