Arizona

Trigger warning: self harm.

I tend to make impulsive decisions when I'm extra depressed, as I have been over the past week. I cried two days in a row, and that never happens.

I am trans. I recently switched from using two names, my birth name and a chosen name, to using only my birth name. Here are some thoughts.

I feel an overwhelming amount of guilt about using a name that my parents didn't give me. I have a tendency to overexplain everything I say, but this I refuse to.

I feel guilty asking people to remember that I use two names. I feel guilty asking people to know when to use which name. I don't know if this is rational, but fuck rational. I don't want to feel guilty anymore.

So I'm putting my parents' feelings above my own, because my feelings are that I either don't want a name or I want a lot of names, and neither of those options are practical in a world where my name is my brand and my network is my currency -- but only if they know who I am. I'm putting my career over myself, because I'm already terrified that I won't make enough money to survive, and changing my professional name would increase that likelihood. I'm putting external things that I care about before things that confuse and hurt me, because isn't that what I'm doing already by living when every day is colder and grayer than the last and the urge to cut myself after 10 months clean is becoming a need?

My professor asks us if we carry business cards. Five minutes later, I introduce myself with a name that's different from the one on my business card. This is not focus. This is not survival. I have too many business cards to throw them away and start again (although I may need to when I create a website). I have too many concert programs and resumes with the name Aurora, too many people who know me as that "girl named after the Sleeping Beauty," no matter how many times I tell them I'm not a girl. And in that regard, a different name doesn't help. I'm not misgendered any less.

"Keep blogging as long as you enjoy it," someone told me yesterday. I don't enjoy anything right now; that's how depressed I am. I write because it goes deeper than enjoyment. I still can't afford therapy. This blog is, in a way, my therapist, one with no physical presence besides the clicking of my laptop keyboard or the way my thumbs ache slightly after I type 600 words on my phone. (Before I started blogging, I spent some time Googling and discovered that, according to several "expert bloggers," no blog post should be longer than 600 words, because readers have short attention spans.) This blog is my therapist, one with no words of advice or questions about my past, just a blank white page which I mark and unmark with black shapes that mean things. This blog is my therapist, because I don't have to feel guilty about burdening it with my pain, because it doesn't feel anything -- it's a corner of a huge website.

I'm graduating in June. There are some difficult things that I'll be facing between now and then, including a decision which will shape the next several years of my life. Why make my existence more complicated than it needs to be?

Besides, the name my parents gave me says a lot about where I came from, and where I came from is a lot of who I am today, whether I embrace it or reject it. My name literally tells you where I'm from; my first two initials are A Z, and I was born and grew up in Arizona. That's a part of my identity that I never want to forget.

Hi. My name is Aurora. I'm a shell, but that doesn't really matter. I'd be a shell any other way.