My name is the female version of my birth name. I did not pick it however, I was going with Mikaela which is similar/same. BUT no one in my family could say it. No not that, hmmm...
Okay, it kinda happened like this. From a very early age I was different, apparently I didn't know that I was different but everyone else did. I have no memory of a time when my family didn't call me Michelle or Sissy. After the age of 8 or 9 it was not all of the time because I had learned to be what people expected of me. Before that time it was so bad that people that I just met sometimes assumed that my name was Michelle and my nick name was Sissy. I remember meeting my grandpa's family for the first time, I became instant friends with his cousin's granddaughter. We were playing and she kept calling me Sissy, I asked her not to I don't like that. She said I am sorry Michelle, why do your grandpa and uncle call you that then? Michelle never bothered me a bit so I didn't correct her. Anyway, Sissy faded, had to really I had been beat on so much I became the mongrel they couldn't kill that would never say uncle, Michelle never did though. Even when I finally got to know my younger brother more in my late teens he called me Michelle. My uncles, brothers, cousins all called me Michelle. My one uncle always sung that stupid "Michelle My Bell" song every time he saw me. To be honest I often wondered if my older brother forgot that I had another name. When I told everyone about me and said that I want to be called Mikaela from now on they said okay and kept calling me Michelle. Even the women now, so I asked my one aunt and she said, I am sorry, it's just the way I think of you. I gave up at that point. I didn't pick my name, I picked Mikaela almost in defiance of that name. I knew then that my name had always been Michelle, there could be no other.
I think it's funny when people say that I chose to transition, that being transsexual was a choice. From the beginning almost every choice I made was in the opposite direction. I chose to try to be normal, the memory of that stupid hospital always haunted me. After that I always chose against anything like transition, until the end when the only two options were death or transition. In the end I never had a choice, not even in my name.
