My Poor Name, by Nicky
I have a complicated relationship with my elder younger brother. Truly, it’s only to be expected of the two middle children. Even so, it’s possible it’s more complicated than either of us know. I suspect both of us are keeping secret truths from each other in an effort to protect the other and avoid rocking our unstable boat. I could be wrong—it could be just me—but I don’t think so.
One truth I have not kept from him is I’m non-binary. And a truth he has not kept from me is he doesn’t believe being trans is real or, if it is real, right. Complicated, no? And that is only the main complication of the last dozen years. You don’t survive being raised with a wildly different personality without a fair number of complex feelings and situations. But these conflicting truths are the main source of the damage to our relationship. At least, they are from my perspective.
It’s helpful to know that we were raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints or, as I know it, the Mormon or LDS Church.[1] One of our parents is a convert (and has the fire only a convert can have), but we were raised from birth. It’s entirely understandable that my brother would have problems coming to terms with having a trans sibling. He isn’t the only one. Mine was an achingly slow progression of mostly quiet self-discovery, and I’m sure it caught my family off guard when I Very Publicly came out.
There’s a lot of pain centered around this point and not just on my side. Of course it hurts that my brother won’t use my public pronouns, much less my personal ones. Of course it hurts that he said he was going to teach his children “what’s right,” heavily implying I was what was wrong. Of course it hurts that my beloved niblings[2] have never been given the chance to know me as I am, rather than a fiction their father has invented[3]. There is a great cost to each of these hurts. But I’m not alone in being in pain. I know it pains him that I have, in his view, strayed from the principals we were taught. I know it pains him that I won’t be with my family for all eternity thanks to my decision to honor my identity more than I honor the Mormon Church’s teachings[4]. I suspect it pains him that I have “fallen” for the lies of the devil and bought into ungodly gender ideologies. Just because I disagree with the premises that underpin these pains doesn’t make his pain less real.
I am being deliberately kind. It would be very easy to descend into name calling and blaming and vitriol. I’ve gone that route before, and I probably will again when new, fresh hurts occur. But today I’m being intentionally soft in my assessment of our relationship, in part because this is a very public window into my side of it and in part because I do love my brother despite our history of hurts. I don’t want that to ever be in doubt.
As you might have guessed, this is not the first time we’ve been at loggerheads. One of the earliest signs of my non-binary journey was a deep discomfort with my given name. I spent years trying to find a nickname based off my dead name that I could be at peace with. I never did manage it, so I started going by Nicky when I went to college. It was an immediate and intense relief to have a name that split the difference between masculinity and femininity. My brother was … resistant. He said, “That’s just not the person I know.” Out of respect for my feelings, he didn’t use my given name. Out of respect for his sensibilities, he didn’t use my new name.
It was nearly a year before I heard my name pass his lips.
I don’t think I can describe the damage that did. Or the joy when I finally did hear him use my new name[5]. In the Mormon Church, we sing a hymn called A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief. In its last verse, there is a scene in which Christ comes to the narrator. The narrator says, “He spake, and my poor name He named.”[6] It’s a moment of intense joy for the narrator, being recognized and acknowledged by his Savior. My brother is by no means a savior, but he is much beloved, and hearing my name pass his lips was an intense moment of recognition and acknowledgement.
Whenever I remember that year of being unnamed and the joy I felt when I was named, I think of this line. The two are inextricably bound up in my head. They’ve been a lot on my mind lately. As my niblings grow older and the time when I can have a relationship independent of their parents draws nearer, the decisions I will have to make about my relationship with my brother are also almost upon me. Will I finally speak my secret truths? Will I choose to go no contact? Will I continue to play along with his fiction? I genuinely don’t know. Going no contact is appealing. In some ways, it feels inevitable. The cost would be high to gain the privilege of not being misgendered relentlessly. But the cost is similarly high for my other options. I “just” have to decide which cost I am willing to pay. It’s a quagmire of a problem, and it’s easy to get bogged down trying to solve it.
And then I remember the year of no name. He did eventually bend. It took time and patience, but he did find his way to calling me by the name I chose. So, perhaps there’s hope. Twelve years is a long time to wait, especially without any sign of bending, and I have to choose whether hope is worth investing in. Keeping a tender thing like hope alive takes diligent, constant care and no small amount of stubborn endurance. It can be exhausting[7]. In these ways, there is a cost to hope as well.
On days like today, when I look at my relationship with my brother from a distance and with a soft lens, hope feels accessible, even vital. On days when he’s present, it’s much easier to imagine going no contact as my ears ring with the wrong pronouns. The past seems to indicate hope while the present predicts endless misgendering for the future. These contradictions just add to the complications this relationship bears. Our refusal to talk about any of this has become a load-bearing silence.
But in the silence there is grace. It gives me—us—time to make decisions and count costs. It gives space for affection to be maintained and even increased. It gives energy a chance to be restored. And when I am in this state—replete with time and space and energy—the improbable feels possible.
So, I choose to hope. Because one day—long ago—he spake, and my poor name he named.
[1] Say what you will about the legalistic intricacies of recently stated nomenclature preferences, it’s still most widely known as the Mormon Church, and that’s how I’ll be referring to it.
[2] A term he would strenuously object to but that I nevertheless use to protect them.
[3] Admittedly, I have gone along with this fiction to maintain a semblance of a relationship with my niblings. There are no easy choices in this circumstance.
[4] Or so he believes.
[5] A poisoned joy in its needlessness but a joy nonetheless.
[7] Then again, being non-binary in a binary world is an exercise in stubborn endurance. In some ways, I’ve trained my whole life for this.
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