The Fifth Column: My Name
Why Garrett Drew? This is perhaps the most frequently posed question by those who knew me as Mallory. I suppose this is a legitimate thing to wonder about and I am glad that the answer to this question allows me to tell a super cute story that makes people go, “awwww”.
Garrett Hoffman is blogging his transition at transformgarrett.blogspot.com. You can read the rest of his posts here.
I have had my boy name picked out since I was very young. I vividly remember sometime as a child asking my mother what she would have named me had I been born a boy. She told me, Garrett Drew. To this I replied, “Thank goodness I was a girl because Garrett is a horrible name.” Even at a young age I was lying to protect myself…to protect my hidden trans identity (for which I had absolutely no language). In my head while saying this I remember thinking, “Garrett is the most perfect name. Why couldn’t I have been him?” When I think about this very vivid memory I am very sad. I knew that I should have been a boy as early as 5 and knew that I was going to be in trouble if people were privy to these thoughts flying around in my little head.
We live in a world where the gender binary is quite rigidly enforced and being trans, especially as a child/teenager, is viewed as being freakish and weird so I kept it suppressed and hidden until my early 20s when I came bursting out of my shell. The first person I told (probably the most gender conscious person I know) asked me what my boy name was going to be. I remembered back to a day in 2nd grade when my teacher asked me to read aloud to the class. She called me Mallory and I very distinctly remember thinking in my little 8-year-old brain, “don’t worry, she actually means Garrett.” It’s funny what your mind will do to help you survive difficult life situations. Anyway, this constituted one of the biggest “AHA!” moments of my entire life. MY CHILDHOOD MAKES SO MUCH SENSE NOW! And thus, the choice of Garrett Drew was made for me. Thanks, Mom. I love it!
I now share the initials GDH with my paternal grandfather who is just tickled by this fact. He is driven by status, wealth and building a legacy which led me to (correctly) believe that this would make him feel special. He expresses this by, every time I see him, telling me he will give me all of his monogrammed towels. Ha.
Finally, it was (for some odd reason) important for me to continue to have a name with three double letters. That’s how I decided how to spell G-A-R-R-E-T-T and not G-A-R-E-T-T or G-A-R-R-E-T or G-A-R-E-T or however else you would spell it. Two R’s, two T’s, two F’s, the rest is self explanatory. And thus was born a name.
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