I don't often share my literary work on my blog, but thought I would offer a sneak peak at my short essay:
A Name by any Other Rose
...I'm sure that normal name keeping civilians believe that changing one's identity is some kind of easy process or simple task. It most certainly is not. It takes a lot of money, mounds of paper work, months of waiting, and a lot of anxiety. I say I changed my name like it was some easy feat, when the amount of forms alone could drown you in a sea of tree slivers.
One has to have copious amounts of dedication to the cause that is you. Some of the things required of any new name seeker are four copies of your birth certificate, an ad placed in the paper declaring your intention to change your name (that you pay for), piles of affidavits and documents that often have to be hand written and even more often notarized, stir in hundreds and hundreds of dollars later—and you have got yourself a new nombre.
I guess it's good that our country makes it's citizens go through leaps and bounds to make sure every Tom, Dick, and Sally who get wild hairs up their arses don't go running to the courts every five seconds in search of a new "them" like Snoop Dawg.
Your day in court is really only the beginning: imagine having to contact every single business, every single person you've met, and every single organization you've ever been involved with informing them that you have just legally changed your name. The list can be up in the hundreds if not larger. Years after our court date and us name changers are STILL filing and officially changing our names with entities long ago forgotten from our previous lives. On top of all of that, just sitting in that court room on our day of judgement was stressful, embarrassing, long, and tediously boring. I was grateful for the trans women because they made the very uneventful day colorful for a few minutes. But I was even more grateful for their bravery and their relentless fight to own who they really are.
I couldn't even conceive what it meant to be Charlotte: what she had experienced nor the struggle that she must've gone through. But I knew this woman was strong. I always thought being gay was hard enough, yet I can't imagine what it would have been like to be born into a different sex than what I really truly was meant to be. Being gay versus being trans, I'd always considered myself “lucky” to not be "confused" with who I really am nor a disassociation with the body I was biologically born into. I'm sure making the decision to come out and begin the process to claim one's own gender identity is an uphill battle on all fronts. Friends and family that knew you previously as one gender would now be made aware of the fact that you were taking ownership of a new gender. And a truer you.
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(thanks for reading! Look for the release of my book Dancing in my Underwear to be released later this year!)
