Choice

My name is Melissa, but it wasn’t always. The name my parents gave me—the person they expected me to become—didn’t fit me, so I chose a new one. I don’t accept the idea that where I’ve come from, my background, is the same as who I am. We all choose who we are every day. The family I was born to and the way I was raised were an important jumping-off point for the person I have decided to become, but that background only informs my identity; it doesn’t define me.

I was born in Kirkland, Washington and raised here with my older sister by our mom. My dad got very sick and eventually passed away when I was fairly young. After we got a Playstation for Christmas, my sister and I bonded over a shared love for video games. I was also a voracious reader as a child. I always had six books checked out from the school library, which was the maximum number allowed. Upon discovering that the public library’s limit was 25 books, I bit off more than I could chew and ended up with $75 in late fees when I couldn’t finish them all in time. I have always enjoyed learning new things but never fit well into public school’s tightly controlled schedule. The more open environment of the science camps I attended each summer suited me much better. One of my favorite activities there was dissecting owl pellets to find the bones of their prey. From a young age, I was fascinated by stories featuring digital life-forms and simulated intelligence. This interest has stayed with me into adulthood and helped inspire me to delve into computer science as a career. I hope to someday be able to program my own video games.

When I was born, my family was comfortably middle class. The booming tech industry of the 90s meant that my father’s salary as a programmer could support our family and a mortgage. As a white, nuclear family of natural-born citizens and native English speakers living in the suburbs, it would seem we were set up for great success in American society. Alas, the good times would not last. When my dad was laid off and then became too sick to work, money was suddenly much more of an issue. My mother began working again but layoffs eventually came for her as well. She was able to keep the roof over our heads somehow, but sacrifices did have to be made. At times, our running water would be shut off. For several years, we had neither cable nor internet at home, which was particularly socially isolating as I often couldn’t relate to the shared culture my peers were experiencing. Thankfully, internet access was not yet the absolute necessity it has become today. Things did somewhat stabilize for us eventually, but poverty is a thick tar and escape can feel impossible, especially when the entire family is suffering from crippling depression, ADHD, and chronic illness. Chronic health issues, both mental and physical, serve as a multiplying effect for the amount of effort required to accomplish anything. Support systems that do exist for those affected often fail to accommodate for the reality of that increased difficulty. On top of that, the health insurance industry in America is a predatory and parasitic machine that exists solely to set up toll booths between people in need and the assistance that might help them.

It is tempting to try and draw a direct throughline from my upbringing to my current identity. However, I am not simply a byproduct of my environment. For example, my father was a programmer and I am pursuing the same career, but I never knew anything about his work before he died. Growing up in poverty certainly contributed to my views on the failings of America’s economic systems, but my political leanings have been shaped by a multitude of influences across every period of my life and continue to evolve to this day. My past is static—I didn’t choose it and I can’t change it—and it undeniably has ongoing ramifications in my life. White privilege and chronic illness are not things I can simply choose to discard, to name a few. I work to overcome these things, but I do not define myself by them. It should be acknowledged that some people do tie their identity closely to their background. That, too, is a choice (and a valid one), but my identity has always been something fluid and intentional. I have taken my experiences and influences and consciously reshaped myself many times over the course of my life. As a transgender woman, I have altered a characteristic of myself that many would consider immutable in their own lives and radically redefined my place in the world. Being transgender is something I only recently determined and is an incredibly important part of my identity today. It has brought me both great joy and difficult new challenges, but this major aspect of my identity is not represented at all in my background.

To reduce my identity down to my origin alone is to see me only on the surface level. A background is a description of past events, set in stone. An identity is a statement from within, reconfigured and recontextualized with every new experience. Ignoring the personal choices in our identities means overlooking what makes each of us unique. My name isn’t Melissa because that’s who I have always been, my name is Melissa because that’s who I choose to be.