Lest I forget

Yesterday I filed the paperwork for my legal name change.

It was the beginning of the final step of my transition. It was also the most nerve wracking day I’ve had since I came out to my friends the first time. Had my best friend not been there as a bedrock of calmness, I don’t think I could have done it. I know I couldn’t have because I’ve put this step off for over a year now.

I was not entirely sure why this step was so hard for me to take. Everyone had told me it’s a big step, but it just seemed procedural and not emotional at first. But I never took the steps to actually do it. I always told myself I was too busy, and that I’d have time next week to do it. Then a month would pass, and I’d rinse and repeat.

Intellectually, I had dismissed the emotionally component of such an important step. In doing so, I had amassed this epic ball of unexplored, unexpected and completely pent-up panic at the erasure of my old identity. When I walked out of the courthouse, my first thought was, “I just killed Jonathan.”

There wasn’t the joy and excitement I wanted to have. There was instead shock and maybe a little mourning. I do not regret my decision; it was absolutely the right thing to do for my own well-being. However, I was unprepared for the panic that erupted after I had carried out my decision.

It wasn’t until today, the day after, that I understood why I felt all that panic and anxiety. For a while now, I have been dismissive of Jonathan as simply a tiny fragment of myself that I was allowed to show the world. The part of my true self that could come through the facade of masculinity that I was forced to endure. I didn’t want Jonathan to be a large part of my life anymore. I wanted to only be Jana. Therefore, I began to shed the parts of me that I felt weren’t Jana-appropriate.

Each time I did that, I was feeding that ball of anxiety that I wasn’t addressing. Each time I tried to purge something from my life that I felt was disproportionately Jonathan instead of Jana, I fed that ball. I didn’t realize that Jana is still Jonathan, or rather, that Jonathan has always been a part of Jana. I can’t rid myself of the things that made Jonathan great without also taking them away from Jana.

Jonathan was not a bad part of me. The facade that Jonathan had to show the world was, but not the core person. Jana is still Jonathan, but without that horrible facade that was so painful to wear everyday. I didn’t kill Jonathan so much as simply bury that facade once and for all. In recognizing that, I can peacefully exist as Jana without feeling as if I destroyed a good and necessary part of myself. Jana is who I am, without question, but now I won’t ever forget or excise the part of me that was Jonathan.