One of the fun parts about being trans is now there’s this name that the government and most strangers recognize me as that I and my close friends don’t, but every time I think about the fact that I have a deadname now, I keep getting struck by this strange feeling that my deadname never felt like mine, even through years of me actively using it as my name. I remember trying to change it was I was about 17 but I never did because I only tried to think of masc names. For as long as I can remember, I could never look at my deadname and feel like it was mine. I didn’t like it and it felt strange to even associate that name with me; I only ever did because the only alternative I could think of was just not having a name, which would have been a massive inconvenience. I never even really thought it was a bad name, I just hated it for me
Did anyone else ever feel like this or am I just crazy?
It’s complicated.
Yes, it did, but also no, because he was a character I played. He was an amalgamation of trying to do it “right”, and there’s nothing else I would call that time but by that name. It was me.
But in coming out, I’ve realized that feeling. Of having lived my entire life on a stage, never getting to go behind the curtain and take the costume off, until now. How much I repressed interests, made myself love people I never really did(including myself), until I really got to know myself.
Now, it feels weird to call the pre-out days by my real name, but also like nails on a chalkboard to talk about myself by my deadname. It was mine, up until the point that I got to wake up.