Recently I was having a discussion about an anime series with a fellow weeb, and I was telling her about watching the series Serial Experiments Lain when I was about 16 or 17. She asked me, “was this before you became Erin?” and I found myself flummoxed by the question. (It turns out I had misunderstood exactly what she was asking, but it doesn’t matter for the purposes of this post.) There were a few ways that I thought I could interpret her question. Was this before I was myself? No. Was this before I called myself Erin? Yes. Was this before I knew I was a trans girl? Yes. Was this before the concept of Erin existed? Not exactly.
I heard the name "Erin" as one of my potential birth names maybe when I was 14, and it resonated with me immediately. As a teen I thought about what if I had been born a girl named Erin (hah), or what if Erin had been a long lost sister.
Later on right before gender questioning I had this elaborate Jungian theory that what felt like a block in my ability to make art (see Egg Art for details) was an indicator of my inability to tap into my anima, which I started occasionally thinking of as Erin. (Fun fact: I’m not the only person who I know that came up with this specific mental gymnastics routine.)
So at 16-17 I had been pulling on the thread of "who is Erin?" for a couple of years, and it wasn't until 2 years ago that I realized that I, in fact, was Erin all along. Like the classic Sesame Street picture book, I was the monster at the end of this book.