Category: the policy

confessional

February 11th, 2023

To my partner of 14 and half years:

There is a reason it bothers me so much.
There’s a reason why I have a problem with that language/terminology.
That game.
That person.
Those people.
There’s a reason why I can’t understand why you would want to play that game, given all that you have said, believe, apparently stand for.
There’s a reason for why I personally feel attacked and vilified because of “that” , and all of those things.

I am trans.

I am a trans man.

As much as I would like to run away from that, and everyone else, I can’t.

This is not something that I have suddenly come up. This is not something that has suddenly hit me. But also this is not something that I have been consciously trying to hide from you for years, because I was not actively aware it was there for years.

I know that that all sounds very contradictory.

Looking back, I can see it. All of it. But I couldn’t before. I have hidden so much of myself from everyone, including myself, for so long. Which is massively borne out of the environment I was raised in and the people raising me.

Trying to learn who I am whilst also trying not to hurt anyone is extremely difficult. It has been extremely painful. Especially as the more I have understood myself, the harder and more painful it has to hide and pretend who I actually am, to everyone else.

I want to medically transition. But under the current NHS system that’s not easy. Privately-paid for medical transition is slightly more possible (in terms of speed) but it means that all my other day-to-day living expenses have to become very tightly managed, or at least, don’t increase from what they are currently. However at the point I completely come out, I know everything in my life will change.

And this is thing that is ultimately stopping me from saying anything.
It will fuck everything, as we know it, up. I will fuck up any plans you may have for us. I will fuck up your world view. I will fuck up our relationship. I will fuck up our lives together.

I will fuck up.
Again.
names

August 5th, 2008

That’s not my name.

Years ago, when I was altogether smaller, the school friends decided I needed a nickname, because calling me by my real name was too much effort, or something.

They played around with the letters and came up with something not very original. They weren’t the best with original nicknames anyway, as is often the way with kids.

Eventually they fell upon something which appealed to them. And that was that. I have since become that name to almost everyone. And I hate it. I hate being called by people I don’t know and new friends by it. I hate being introduced as it. The idiot that I am I used it within email addresses and usernames, as I am also crap with coming up with something original.

That fact that no one knows how to spell or pronounce my real name whenever I tell someone doesn’t really bother me, although I tell people it does. I don’t know, nor understand, why I bullshit with that. On telling someone new my real name it turns into a conversation piece and if they are old enough, ends up with them recounting the now very old and very tired half remembered fruit squash commercial jingle.

I’ve learnt to love my real name, although it’s taken a while and that has as much to do with my own self-loathing and sense of identity as anything else. It’s fairly unique and actually beautiful. It’s only three syllables long and a far more easy to roll off the tongue than the gained nickname.

Can’t change what’s gone before however, so here’s a new policy for me. No new intro’s with the nickname.

Category: the policy

confessional

names