One of the requirements of the real life test (RLT) is that I legally change my name to a more feminine one than what I've now got. I have held off a bit because I have gotten by nicely without credit cards and my finances have been very tight lately. That situation has improved a little so I am ready to pay hundreds of dollars to do what I need. Besides, I am tired of not being able to get into my safe deposit box, having my IDs showing my old male name and other hassles.
I hope to have my gender changed to female on my license at the same time. This is possible in my state even for those who have not had SRS. The process is involved isn't designed for this, but it works. All I need is for my HRT doctor to sign on the dotted line.... I see her next week, right before MoM!
I may accept a non-binding resolution at the Midwest MoM on a new middle and last name. Their could be exciting prizes as an enticement!
As a friend here has suggested, a new last name need not be one anyone else has likely used. I just say it needs to sounds nice.
A month or so ago, a young woman at work who knows I have transitioned wondered aloud why I would need to change or create a middle name. I already have one, she said! Ah, this is true but it is very masculine. Not good.
Right now, I am deciding if I need a middle name. I haven't put any real effort into thinking of one but if something nice strikes me, I may go with that.
Then there is the last name issue. Do I keep my birth surname or select a new one? I am not really in 'stealth' mode, trying to hide my male history. I may still go with a new last name, though, because I do not have any strong ties to the current one. My parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents are long gone, I am the oldest surviving grandchild, I haven't seen any cousins in decades and my immediate family of two brothers cannot deal with my being different.
I guesstimate a slight possibility that my youngest brother may someday, in the distant future, want to contact me. He has not since I announced my transgender status in mid-February, 2008. This is the brother who has said several times to me 'You raised me.'
My religiously conservative other brother is another matter. I try to look at his situation in a clear way without deluding myself with thoughts of how I would like things to be. Then I accept that he is extremely unlikely to ever change his stated opinion that what I am doing is bizarre and a choice. I seriously doubt he will ever see things differently.
It is not solely his reaction to me as a transsexual woman that I base this on but rather a lifetime of experience. Our relationship has always been strained. Okay, maybe when I was 3 and he was 1 it was not nearly as strained.
I don't know, I cannot remember. By his own words over several decades, he has found it harder to accept me as time goes by. He was beginning to thaw slightly after over 12 years of pondering my announcement that I was gay in late 1995.
I care about my family, including my religiously conservative brother, and I know somewhere in all of this they still care for me in their own ways. As I wrote in an earlier post here, I am not angry with them for not understanding. I have read all kinds of support materials for families with transitioning relatives and I know how difficult this can be. I sent my family much of that information.
In some ways, a transitioning adult can be more of an adjustment for a family than a child. With the adult, there may be decades of experiencing that person in their 'body' gender. For many relatives it can be impossible for them to 'regender' the adult transitioner, to paraphrase Lynn Conway. Should we try to reconnect, it is likely my brothers will hurt me not by intent but because they cannot see who I really am and relate to me in a very new way. They will also be hurt because I cannot even pretend to be who they remember.
With a transsexual or TG child, the parents can certainly (and understandably) have very major adjustment issues. There, though, once the child has accepted a new gender identity the family has a lifetime remaining to get to know that child as he or she really is. There is a long, although unimagined and certainly not sought, future to get to know their child in a new way.
My body and emotions, maybe even the way I think, are all changing. The more time passes before they respond to my notes the more difficult it will be for all of us to reconnect. I will be unable to be who they want and expect and they will be unable to see me for who I really am under the weight of their lifetime experience with me as someone I never really was. That other person is their reality, though, not mine.
In the end, there are many reasons I am not strongly attached to my current last name. Whether I actually choose a new one remains to be seen.
That, fortunately, is not a problem. I think I may be getting more accomplished because I just go ahead and get things done rather than get tense about being overloaded.
These feelings are so new to me, though, I am not yet good at handling them. I need my mommy to hold me and tell me I am fine just the way I am. 