The first video game I remember actually playing is Pokémon FireRed. I did not play it particularly well. I mostly restarted and played through the first hour or so of the game over and over. The furthest I ever got was Cinnabar Island, about 60% of the game.
The thing that excited me then was the forming of a character. In old Pokémon, this meant very little. Boy or girl, your name and one of three starter pokemon. This is what drove my frequent starts; I still like making characters.
When I was a child, I went by a nickname. Friends, teachers, doctors and strangers all knew me by a name other than what I was given. A nickname that, sometimes, though I thought myself a boy, often led me to be treated as a little girl.
I wore this with pride. For reasons I would not be able to name until age 14 and not come to terms with until 21, I enjoyed this misconception that strangers sometimes had. I had a well-known girl name, an extrapolation from that nickname.
Your name is one of the first things people notice. It is the second thing you put out into the world that people will judge you by. It is the third thing you have, and it’s not something you could choose yourself. Not to begin with, at least.
I had my name legally changed about a month ago, after four months of back-and-forth with the Minnesota courts. It struck me, then, as strange just how much our names are woven into the law.
You don’t think about just how “everywhere” your name is until you try to change it. If you go digging in your pocket right now, you can probably find five or six things with your own name on them. Bank cards, driver’s licenses, insurance, passport cards, work, university and voter IDs.
The trial itself was mostly about proving that I was actually the person who had filed for the change and about checking that everything was spelled correctly; a not-insignificant mistake that needs to be avoided.
The trial was also about relitigating my identity. My two witnesses did have to testify that I wasn’t committing fraud, but they also had to testify that they thought I “should” be allowed to get a name change — to have that single line on my legal documents updated.
More aptly, to be allowed to use a name I already identify with, that people already know me by. It was about proving my right to choose how I put myself into the world.
It called to mind things I don’t have the right to change. Preschool name tags. First-grade journals. Second-grade art projects, still on kitchen cabinets. Third-grade mementos, on the fridge and in my closet. Yearbooks from about half the years since.
Birthday, bat mitzvah and graduation cards. Cards from a play I was in and notes I received for no reason at all.
Those things are all important to me. Some of them out of love, some out of hate. Now that I have a name that feels like mine, though, they feel incongruous. It’s like a dead relative’s mail that still gets forwarded to you.
Of course, every transgender person has been told it’s like they killed someone, and it’s always a guilt trip. For me, though, that person does not exist anymore.
I can’t go back and relive any of it as who I am now, and it would be meaningless (at best) to correct my name in every one of those places. With everything that’s changed in my life, those memories have to stand on their own.
But I digress.
Zien can be reached at [email protected].
