you sweet respectable you

Navigating an unconventional, nontraditional identity is a challenge of curiosity - both for the individual and for the society and social network around them. The individual must be vigilant, adapting to optimal opportunities for visibility and discovery, while maintaining their dignity and not becoming, themselves, a curiosity. In turn, their friends and neighbors, colleagues and coworkers, must extend curiosity and a willingness to, if not learn, at least acknowledge the change being set before them.

I don't like my given first name. That is to say, I don't feel that it truly suits me. There is a novelty to the concept of my alternated pronouns being applied, even if only in theory, to my traditionally gendered name, and I do believe a conscious effort to integrate the two ideas would produce an effect worth appreciating, but I do not consider my legal name to signify anything especially raw and genuine about me.

My given middle name, however, is perfect. A single syllable, perfectly divided between masculine strength and feminine flower as I move through my support-staff day, despite the flower itself being a quintessential symbol of romance, sex, passion. Rose? He's dependable and consistent, a pair of short legs walking quickly in jeans and a sweater-shirt combo below a beaming face.

I won't reveal my first name. It adorns my identifying documents, credit card receipts, all manner of mail, and most of all my interactions with those who knew me at an age when I hadn't yet championed this change for myself. What a simple puzzle, entering into a new place of employment and realizing what the district username conventions would mean for me as related back to unnamed figures of my past. Suddenly, I was Rose. No questions asked. I'd reveal my legal name only to those who shared it, as a point of connection.

But then, someone who bridged my moonlights with my workplace, by way of a liberal serendipity, had it mentioned - my preference. Then she told someone else, and I received a surprising salutation. Now, my middle name is in my email address. The logical leaps are already there. Some have caught on without me even having to ask.

But what about when I do have to ask? What about someone I love dearly, who rarely even calls my given name in favor of either a nickname or a "hey you"; a nod to the backseat or a descriptor of the "little first violin" ... what about explaining it to them?

What do I say? How could I expect anyone to expend the mental energy towards comprehending "I like this name, but only officially; I don't want to be my mentor's shadow; I think of myself as someone else"?

Most importantly, who cares?

The elision through the existence of my trans woman partner would be a boon, if it actually helped. But these are old people. They don't know anything. I'm sure it's not my place to educate them about my name, if they're not willing. It's my identity, not theirs, ours. Let alone my pronouns, those slashed symbols that live in that email signature, harmless but surely there.

If I speak, it's I who'll be labeled confused, not they. So then, I'll be the harmless symbol, uncommitted to myself. I'll hide, to keep some comfort, and simmer in sadness all the while.