How did you choose your name, and what names were you thinking about using and why?
Ever since 6th grade most people have called me by my initials(J-R). Jay came up, obviously from that. I had chosen that as my name for quite a while.
Then I came out to my mom, and once she had absorbed the initial shock, I told her I wanted her to ultimately pick it or at least have a say in it, my only condition was that I wanted to keep my initials. Soon she admitted to me she liked the name Jayson and I was completely fine with that. I gave her a couple other suggestions just to make sure it was really the name she liked. Come to find out, one of those suggestions was Jayden, and immediately she loved that name better. Said she hadn’t thought about that one.
At some point I kinda argued a little, on how I thought I might like Jay better but I wasn’t sure. Her reply was simple; I could still be called Jay even though my papers said Jayden. She had a good point, so I agreed.
What made it really official was on my 18th birthday, when she handed me a birthday card and on the envelop it said Jayden. She specified it had to be with a y. Which is actually how I wanted it spelled too, so that’s awesome.
In short, my mom picked it. As my mom, it was her right to choose my name.
My dad approved by the way. I didn’t just leave him out xD
When did you realize the term transgender referred to you?
I’m not completely sure, but I was around 14 or 15 years old. I didn’t know it was even possible to completely change from one sex to the other at this point (dumb, I know.) I just wanted things to fit, I wanted to feel better with myself. I hated being associated with the term lesbian because it meant a ‘woman in a relationship with another woman’, and that I knew did not fit me, but I didn’t know how come. It just didn’t feel right. But I took the label since it was the closest I thought I could get to my true feelings, the most comfortable I could get with myself.
I was on the internet looking up ways to look more masculine. I randomly started talking to this dude, I had no idea who he was, and he told me about how he was going to start T soon. I was intrigued and asked him about it. That was when the doors flew wide open to a whole new world. After that I researched the crap out of it and soon found out about the whole trans community here on the internet. The first youtuber that really, really made me go ”Wow that is me, I’m trans.” Was Tyler aka DominoAyeJae. He’s been my favorite youtuber ever since. I saw his videos and just knew. I knew right away I was like him.
That was my answer to Day 1 :)
