There’s a version of me that still lives in a MySpace login screen that doesn’t exist anymore. Pixelated. Loud. Half-armor, half-open wound. That version answered to Mitch.
Not Mitchell. Not the polished, Google-defined “who is like God?” with its cathedral echoes of strength and legacy. Just Mitch. Quick. Sharp. Easier to throw into a room before anyone had time to question it.
Back then, names weren’t just names. They were shields you spray-painted yourself.
The softball crew turned it into a joke we could all hold onto, a Dazed and Confused nod, something cinematic enough to soften the edges. But underneath that? There was static in the signal. A deeper negotiation happening in real time about identity, safety, and belonging in rooms that smiled at you and still found ways to cut you down.
The Studz Most Wanted era… yeah, that space was loud in all the wrong frequencies. What looked like a community from the outside had its own gatekeeping rituals. Jace and I felt it. That quiet, sideways transphobia from people who should’ve known better. The kind that doesn’t always shout, but lingers like a draft under the door. You don’t forget that kind of cold.
So Mitch became more than a nickname. It became a workaround. A translation. A way to exist in spaces that didn’t have language for me yet.
But here’s where it shifts.
Because somewhere between surviving those rooms and stepping into my own education, I stopped just wearing names and started studying them.
I went down the rabbit hole. Not just Google definitions, but meaning. Structure. Origin. The psychology behind identity itself.
“Mitchell” isn’t just some leftover label from a past life. It carries weight. Hebrew roots. A question embedded in its core: Who is like God? Not in an ego sense, but in reflection. Creation. Becoming. Add in the Middle English layer, and suddenly you’re looking at magnitude. Greatness. Presence. Something that stands.
The best historical version of the definition that would piss a lot of people off, but I remain a duck with it, “The Son of Michael.” For those who truly know who my best friend is, I think we all know I’ve earned that staple over the course of time along with him. 💜
And then you put that next to transgender theory.
Not the outdated, pathologized versions that tried to box people into diagnoses, but the evolving framework that recognizes identity as fluid, self-defined, and deeply human. A spectrum that breathes. A narrative you author, not one assigned at birth and stamped permanent.
That’s where the real collision happens.
Mitch wasn’t a mistake. Mitch was a bridge.
A necessary chapter between confusion and clarity. Between being named and naming myself.
And somewhere in that evolution, The Trans Theory was born.
Not just as a concept, but as a reclamation.
Because what we didn’t have back then was language that affirmed us without condition. We had to build it out of scraps. Inside jokes. Late-night conversations. Moments of “you feel that too?” whispered like secrets.
The Trans Theory flips that script.
It says identity isn’t something you prove. It’s something you practice.
It’s mentorship over mockery.
It’s education over assumption.
It’s creating a space where the next generation doesn’t have to duct-tape themselves together just to be understood.
It was a fixture to the correct path of political correctness as well with once accepting “Studz Most Wanted” and going with what you stood for and believed in, education and family.
And yeah, I can laugh now. I can say “go fuck yourself” to the noise that tried to define me before I understood myself. Not out of bitterness, but because I know exactly where I stand now.
Chronologically, it looks simple on paper:
Mitch.
Mitchell.
The Trans Theory.
But lived out? It was a labyrinth. A late-night drive with no GPS, just instinct and a stubborn refusal to disappear.
So the question isn’t whether I erase Mitch.
It’s whether I honor what Mitch built.
Because without that version of me, there is no language, no theory, no platform, no Poetic Veteran standing here ready to bring that world back—refined, educated, and rooted in something real.
And bringing it back? That’s not nostalgia.
That’s evolution.
A new era where the kids coming up don’t have to Google themselves in fragments. Where they don’t have to shrink to fit into someone else’s definition of “acceptable.”
They get mentorship.
They get community.
They get to define themselves from the start.
And this time, the name isn’t a shield.
It’s a foundation.