I am always asked about my name. I am asked if the name has any special significance to me, if it was just a random name, but the most common query is "Why?" Why did you pick the name Thomas?
The complete and honest answer is that the name came to me at three in the morning. There was an event in my hometown for LGBT+ youth, something like a mini-pride, and this event was themed "Express Yourself." The overall theme of this pride was showing the talents of the LGBT+ youth in a corner of South Dakota. I had decided to participate in this talent show with a poem. For days I could not think of anything that sounded coherent enough to perform onstage. I managed to enrage myself, knowing perfectly well that I could not force the poem to appear on the page for me as much as I would like it to. I had almost given up on the venture, as a matter of fact.
But at three in the morning three weeks for the event, I wrote a poem. I had woken up knowing all the words, the emotions reeling in my skull, awakening certain things I had shoved aside for years to make way for academia. I can only vaguely remember scribbling the poem onto the nearest bit of paper and going back to sleep. The following morning, I had deciphered from my nearly illegible handwriting that I had written about a little girl named Ava.
Ava did not like the pink and frilly dresses her grandmother bought for her and she hated to wear them even more. Ava would have rather played with the dump trucks and dinosaurs that her brother and younger male cousins had, but she was not allowed to. She had been told that football was a sport she should give up hope of ever wanting to play again. And for all these things, one thing was said: "Ava, that's for boys."
Ava had yearned to be a boy, if that's what it took for her to do the things she loved. She wanted to wear the long pants, to destroy a dump truck in a sandbox, to score the winning touchdown, but it was more than that. Ava had yearned to be a boy because that was her original purpose. Once that was realized, Ava became Thomas and lived more authentically to himself after being accepted by his mother. Happily ever after. The end.
After reading the poem thoroughly a few times, I had realized that I had not only written about a trans man; I had written about myself. My feelings that I had hidden from others for fear of rejection were poured out in words I could not have conjured in any other circumstance.
After I had performed that poem in front of 300 people, the whole thing was off my chest. I silenced a crowded room of spectators with that poem. I received a standing ovation and for the rest of the night I was being congratulated left and right. My aunt who was in the crowd welcomed me as her nephew. My best friends hugged me and told me I was Thomas to them, no matter what.
However, there was one opinion I lacked and I had to go to the back corner of the event space to get it. My mother was there in that back corner. I had no idea what she was going to do about this child who had declared his new life in front of a vast multitude. I was her daughter for 17 years and now radical changes were going to begin for both me and her. Could it be possible that I could be like my written counterpart? Could I be like someone who was formerly known as Ava?
The answer is yes to both questions. All that mattered that night was that the lady in the corner of the room was happy with the new person who had walked on that stage. And she most certainly was.
