Hey buds! whatsup? It’s been a long time since I posted, so I thought I’d update and keep everyone abreast of my situation.
Ah exam season, every students favourite no? O’ course not, we hate it, all of us hate it, every sodding minute of it. But, if it opens the door to the rest of our lives as the tutors tell me, it’s got to be worth it in the end. Now the actual testing is done, it’s time to wait for my results. Regardless of the horror that is college, that isn’t really what I want to talk about. No, what I really want to mention is the fact that I came out to my mother! 😀 True, it was a total accident, and a very funny story to boot. Basically, I had a loverly little infection and needed a new bottle of TCP, so we had to stop in at the nearest open pharmacy (on sunday afternoon of all times) which happened to be in ASDA. I went in just jeans, t-shirt and my faveourite assassins creed hoodie, nothing overtly feminine nor masculine, and the guy behind the counter called over the assisstant. Unheard by my mum, he turned to the assisstant and said, “This young man and his mother are looking for the bigger bottle, could you just show her where in the aisles it is?” which caused my sore face to spread into a massive grin. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I was still smirking in the car on the way home and I turned to mum and joked that ‘Lol the guy thought I was a boy, that’s just funny *awkward giggle*‘ at which she turned to me, total stone face and said “do you think you should have been?” And that, with all my panicked sputtering about how unprepared to answer that question I was, is how I came out officially to my mother. 
Right now, I’m so grateful that I have such a close, positive relationship with my her and, even though she’s still getting used to it weeks later, I think she is beginning to adjust to the idea that her precious daughter is going to be her son some day. I’m glad it was such an ‘easy’ coming out, there was no shouting, no real upset, just a lot of big feelings flying around my really small car, and I’m painfully aware that not everyone’s revelations are taken so easily. I’m still concerned about how the rest of my family may react in the future, but I really have no major fears as I’ll have the one that really matters on my side already.
I do plan to ‘come out’ to the rest of my family very soon, and since the college term is over I will live in my new trans-male role as much as possible. I’ve already been out in town several times and I’m working up to getting things like haircuts and jobs in my preferred role. Still very nervous about everything like that but hey, gotta get used to it. So have a wee light at t’end of my sodden, miserable exam fueled tunnel, hurrah! I’ll have the whole of my year out before university to live as male as well as beginning some kind of transition, in the medical/professional sense. Because it takes a long time to even get going, through the NHS, I’m visiting the doctor very soon also. Wish me luck, ’cause I’m nervous as hell. Still, if I can just get through that first announcment, I can usually talk openly after that. Mercifully, I’ll be able to provide much more factual information after that, and much less of my constant prattling.
Recently, I’ve taken to thinking more and more about what my name will be once I officially beging life as a transman. Something I read on an FTM tumblr blog just sparked my brain off. I went with Zak originally because it is a masculinised version of my current name, and it’s what I was going to be called before I was born a girl instead. Now it’s just a simple solution to my jumble of names I’d written down from books, websites and characters in fiction, but couldn’t for the life of me work out how to narrow down. I ended up with over 100 really interesting choices; some I liked for who or what they represented to me already, some for their uniqueness (is that even a word?), and others just because they sounded ok with my surname. Then came the choice of middle names, bringing in over 100 more options, some repetitions and some totally new. I’ve so far lightly settled on Jareth, because I have a lot of great memories attached to our dear Goblin king (and those damn sexy tights on Bowie!) and because of the age of the film Labyrinth, there is actually a realistic possibility of having been given that name at birth for those who don’t need to know that it wasn’t. So now, I’m trying to really blend a name for my age group with something I’ll not mind saying over and over again, that’s not too embarassing for someone else to yell down a street or something, and something not too different so my younger relatives can translate everything they know about me onto my new self. For me, that’s the main problem. Yes, I know, it’s my name and I can bloody well be called what I like, but with kids (and often grown-ups), a lot of their perception of you is attached to who they know you as. So to my relatives I’m still going to be Zoe, even when I look, sound and feel like Zak. At this point, I think have chosen, but won’t make any firm decisions and shall hesitantly leave it as Zak.
So, see y’all again soon
Zak x
Zak Elkins 