I used to be called Parker.

 

It was my middle name, one I used until I got tired of correcting teachers in roll call, somewhere around the time I started figuring out who I was. That decision, to answer to the name I was given at birth, was one of the first I made just for me.

 

I grew up in Louisburg, North Carolina, a small town of ~3,400 people, where tradition runs deep and dreams don’t often leave the county lines. My family loved me the best way they knew how. But love in a small town is often wrapped in conditions: don’t rock the boat, don’t stray too far, don’t ask too many questions. From an early age, though, I did all three.

 

And honestly, the signs were there. In first grade, I started a flip-flop decorating business. My best friend requested a hot pink pair, and I told her I couldn’t, not because I didn’t want to, but because I was worried the color might actually make her feet too hot. My entrepreneurial spirit was alive and well. My logistics… a little less so.

 

I found escape in music. I picked up a clarinet in sixth grade and suddenly, I had a voice that didn’t need words. Music was movement, fluidity, expression. It was mine. I auditioned, placed, and performed. In a school where few students even thought to audition, I earned All-District. Not because it was expected – but because I couldn’t help but pour my whole heart into it.

 

Then came more discoveries. About my identity. About love. About who I felt safe around. In my middle school hallway, I came out to my best friend. A few years later, I came out to my family. That was the moment everything changed – and not in the way it does in coming-of-age movies.

 

For a while, it hurt. The people I loved most didn’t understand. Some didn’t talk to me at all. I became someone different in their eyes. But even in the quiet heartbreak of that time, I knew: I was still becoming Austin. And Austin deserved to be known, not edited.

 

High school was survival and success, all in one breath. I worked two jobs, studied hard, and built friendships that saved me. My cousin Austin – yes, we share a name – became my anchor. His presence helped me see what life could be like beyond the boundaries of our town.

 

When college applications came, I shot for the moon – and landed among stars. I became a Robertson Scholar. I got into UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke University. A first-generation student, attending two of the most prestigious universities in the world. For once, my success was too big for even my hometown to ignore.

 

But even then, I was still chasing someone else’s dream. Pre-med, biology, pediatric cardiology… they sounded impressive. They also made me miserable.

 

I pivoted to dentistry. I earned my dental assisting certification and returned to work at the very pediatric dental office I had gone to as a child. It felt full-circle – comforting, familiar, even healing in a way. I loved working with the kids, seeing their tiny smiles, and offering reassurance in the same chairs where I once sat. I was good at it. But again, I felt that familiar restlessness. The voice in my head whispering, “This isn’t it.”