CREATIVE NON-FICTION

Moving 1,719 Miles as a Transgender Married Couple is Overwhelming

It all started with a call from my wife that broke my heart

Moving 1,719 miles would be a challenge for nearly anyone. As two transgender people making this move together, we face some additional challenges.

For one thing, we’re making this move primarily because we’re trans, though we made this decision before I knew I was a trans man. A few years ago, my wife went to this place in the western United States for work and fell in love with this city for a simple reason that breaks my heart. They walked into a store and people ignored them. This was such a revelation for my wife that they immediately called to tell me all about it.

“Logan, I don’t want to come home. I just walked through a store and everyone ignored me. No murder glares. No laughter. Nothing. It was great! Can we just move here?”

How do you say “no” to something like that? My wife should be able to go into a store without being afraid.

My wife should be able to go into a store without being afraid.

This began an incredibly slow process of moving. Those who have kept up with us have been expecting this to happen for years now. It’s gotten to the point that it’s a little hard to reach out to a lot of old friends. There are always awkward questions to answer, even if they know my real name.

“How’s work going?”

I quit the job that some of them may know about to move across the country. Then, I got another job in this faraway city that I was fired from after a relatively short time. I’m not getting another job until after we’ve moved and I’ve changed my name legally, so I don’t have to deal with my deadname ever being outed to all of my coworkers again. Retirement funds from my first job made this possible.

“When are you moving?”

There was always a reason for the delay, especially after the Pandemic started. I think we kept hoping for a day to come when it would feel safe to fly in a plane again. With 4 family members dead and a handful of friends still recovering from COVID-19 in a world that seems to be pretending that the last two years never happened, our anxiety won’t allow this.

So we’re driving, just as soon as we sell our home. We’ve gone over the logistics of a drive that comes with its own fears. No matter which route we take, it will involve going through many more places where our presence might not be appreciated, if the news we see online is any indication. This drive will take us 3 days, with stops in the 2 cities that feel the most welcoming, given our research.

Thankfully, we have friends who are helping to calm our fears from both sides of this move. One friend is minimizing the number of times we need to deal with our deadnames while selling our home, but it’s still going to be a lot. Our legal names are still the wrong ones and there is a mountain of paperwork to be signed. Wherever we move, we’ll have to do that paperwork all over again, since it will be about 3 months before we can change our names legally to begin the long process of making all of our papers match who we are.

Thankfully, we have friends who are helping to calm our fears from both sides of this move.

Just the act of packing has been a painful reminder of this. We’ve gone through endless papers with our deadnames on them, putting them in the appropriate boxes or throwing them out. This often leaves us in a fog of difficult memories. I know that not all trans people like this word for their legal birth name, but deadname feels like an accurate word for the invented identity I’m leaving behind. It feels like a ghost haunting this place, sometimes appearing in mirrors and often appearing in old letters.

• We have old diplomas that will need to be replaced. Those have our deadnames, of course.
• Old tax records need to be stored away somewhere. I can’t blot out our first names on those, in case we get audited someday.
• Medical and health insurance records belong someplace special, so we can let doctors know what we need, when we have the energy for that. All of those papers have our deadnames listed everywhere.
• We’ve found pictures that are irreplaceable, but make us both cringe because they are from the before times. I’m also simultaneously sad about how few of these I have due to strained contact with family, so I want to hold on to whatever evidence I have that we existed before and had these relationships and experiences.
• We’re going through old papers covered in our deadnames from when we were each in school and working in previous jobs. I’ve been looking through those and throwing them out a little at a time over several months, perhaps even years.
• There are treasures to uncover and memories to confront: old birthday cards, graduation cards, love letters, well wishes, and gifts from the living and the dead, from family, friends, and loved ones who still speak to us or don’t. Each of these have our old phantom names.

Yesterday, inside a beautiful feminine purse a student made for me once, I found a gift from a cherished former coworker who passed away many years ago. She grew up in Egypt and spent every Summer there, so she brought me back a lovely hip scarf covered in coins that each had a symbol of the evil eye for protection. She knew how much I loved to dance. I’d be terrified to wear it now, both out of fear of damaging something so precious and out of fear of a feminine side of myself that I’m not quite ready to confront again. As a man, how much of my femininity can I still have access to and have people understand who I am?

As a man, how much of my femininity can I still have access to and have people understand who I am?

She was aware of every major secret that I knew about myself at the time, including some that I found deeply shameful and vulnerable to share. Her unconditional acceptance meant everything to me. What would she think of the secrets I didn’t have words for, while she was alive? What would she think, if she knew I wasn’t really a woman? With such a kind soul, it’s hard to imagine that she would be anything other than supportive of me. I hope she wouldn’t be sorry we were friends. This was just another part of my feminine history that I had packed away in boxes full of secrets that I need to keep.

Meanwhile, I’m embracing some new stereotypically masculine roles in this process.

• Thanks to Testosterone, I’m the designated person to lift all of the heavy boxes, rearranging and hiding them away.
• I made a failed attempt at painting the ceiling. We’re going to get a professional to fix that.
• I successfully replaced the toilet seats to make them look nice and new. This required me to figure out how to use a wrench. Though I’m not exactly a handyman, I’m very proud of myself for accomplishing this little thing!

This is a long process that feels like a reckoning with both our pasts and our futures, but we’re taking it one step at a time. I’m curious and eager to see what our lives will be like in this new faraway place. All that I know is that everything will be unrecognizably different for us again soon.

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