CW: Gender dysphoria.
Finally deciding to legally change my name has been a much more complicated thing to process than I expected. It felt like the culmination of a journey (and in some ways it certainly is) but I think it has just been one step along a larger one as well. Nothing is as straightforward as I hoped.
For the past year I've called myself nonbinary with no pronoun preference. I was sure it was what I wanted. But slowly blossoming into being Aria in more places has brought to the fore something I'd pushed aside. Nonbinary has never been the destination I wanted. Claiming it as my own was a defense mechanism to not face the reality of what I actually wanted and will never have – Aria the she/her. Aria who passes. Aria who rocks a cute dress.
Owning this name has forced me to face her there in my heart, hiding beneath the extremely masc body I will never shed. Now that her name is everywhere she's the one looking out of my eyes into the mirror, seeing a reflection that will never truly feel like her own. I thought of changing my name in Slack at work and how I would just have my own picture next to Aria – it wouldn't be like Discord where I can pick the cute anime girl to represent who I feel like. It was a profoundly sad realization – that these other spaces will never see me how I wish they did.
And, to be honest, I think there is value in people visibly wearing feminine pronouns while not adhering to the patriarchal idea of what femininity has to mean. But I'm not sure I'm brave enough to be that person. I don't know if I'm ready to ask my coworkers and family and everyone I ever meet to face the part of them that screams "he" when they look at me and reverse course. I don't know if I'm ready to live in that dissonance between what I want and what I am any more than Aria already makes me.
Additionally, I have to mourn the loss of Aria the sanctuary – the sacred persona who only existed in my places of joy and fulfillment. For as much as being Aria everywhere makes me feel whole, it does erode some of the magic. Aria is no longer just a person who exists in the context of my friends and relaxation – she's paying taxes and going to work and dealing with the troubles and mundanity of life.
None of this has made me any less sure this is the right move (a relief as someone always worried I'm doing things out of ADHD compulsions and hyper focus) but it has made it more bittersweet than I expected.
Now I go back to waiting to see how my parents react to the letter telling them about it. It should either have arrived last night or be arrived today. I can feel my heart clench every time I think about them reading it.
Waking up to hardly recognizing my own face
Just a stranger in the mirror, thinking
"Oh what a shame, didn't think she'd look this way"
Don't look no different to how I looked yesterday.