Well, first of all, no, I haven’t had a formal or legal name change, and I might never will. On the other hand, I seldom use my given name anymore, other than when I’m with my family.

My birth name is Melissa. And I don’t think its an ugly name or anything, and I lived my childhood responding to that name. However, ever since I was a kid I got nicknamed, usually called Mel, and my full name was only used by family members other than my parents, or by my parents, when I was to be scolded.

For me, a lot of changes came together. I hit puberty, I finished elementary school and went into Jr High, my parents separated, my mom and I moved, and I changed schools, all within the same 12-month period. It was a low blow, and I didn’t take it too well. Things started becoming messy around that time, and it was a few months afterwards when "Misha" was born. It started as a Lion King Forum RolePlay nickname, and a character was born. But with that character, a new part of me was born as well.

Misha, as both the person and the character, began to develop. Approximately a year after Misha’s creation, when I was in 9th grade, I discovered I liked women. It was another hard blow, and a really tough time, because of many different reasons. First, I couldn’t believe I liked girls. Then, I told my mom, seeking help, and she told my father. They both thought I was crazy, and wrong, and they sent me to a psychologist. People at school found out, and I became a freak there. Little by little, on my own, since the psychologist didn’t help any, I began accepting myself for who I was, and I identified as a bisexual at that time. By accepting that I also liked girls I discovered, little by little, that I could be more comfortable with myself and who I was by wearing baggy clothes, and by wearing shorter hair. During that period, I hated being referred to as a 'lesbian'. I was not a lesbian, even nowadays I have some trouble making that label fit to myself.

By the time I found out I liked girls, I was already asking people to call me Misha rather than Melissa, and some of my friends did. When it became more noticeable was when I started my 10th grade, and there was this other Melissa in the classroom, so I used that to try and convince more people to call me Misha, in order to avoid confusion. It worked, and a lot of people started calling me Misha.

Then, sometime in 11th grade, when I was already 18, this new inquietude arose in me: I felt more masculine some days than others, and I felt I needed a male name for myself, to use whenever I wanted to pass or simply to counterpart my feminine “Misha” side. I looked and looked everywhere I could think of, I researched online, I read books, I looked at guys’ names... I liked some names, but for one reason or another, I didn’t feel like any of those could belong to me. Then, tired of looking, I decided that maybe "Lionel" would do, since it has the word lion in it, and felines are important to me. Still, somehow, it didn’t feel right, and even though I used it online for a couple of months, I was still hoping for something else.

Then, one day, it came to me. I was just messing around, looking for the meaning of Misha in one site that gave name definitions. I already knew it was short for Mikhail, the Russian for Michael, but I was having fun on the web (and here are the results). Then it dawned on me that Michael is Miguel in Spanish, and a common (middle) name to follow is "Angel". I just loved the sound of it, the androgyny of it, how angels aren’t supposed to have genders, but we depict them both as males and females at our inability to grasp asexuality. I loved how it balanced the Miguel, Michael, Mikhail, Misha... It was perfect. I could keep my feminine Misha, but whenever I needed to masculinize it, I could always explain the Michael origin, and how it went with Angel. Even in English it exists as the Italian Michelangelo, Michael Angel. To add to all of this, I believe in angels, and my guardian angel is Michael, Michael Angel. Then, Angel could be used all by itself, because it’s a common male name here in Mexico. What more could I ask from the name?

Angel it was, and so I found myself to be both Misha and Angel, Misha representing my feminine side, and Angel representing the masculine. Both, combined in one entity, like black and white are in the yin-yang, together they make up Mishangel, or MishAngel. I am MishAngel, and my name represents what I strive for, the way one thing compliments the other, how two halves form a completed figure, feminine and masculine, balance.

This is the name change I have given myself. I am no longer Melissa, perhaps I never was, though I still must respond to that name every now and then. However, I am Misha, I am Angel, I am MishAngel, MishA for short, and these are my real names, the names that really mean me.