The People Behind My Eyes

What do you call yourself? Does your name fit who you are? Does it give you comfort when you hear it or does it bring back ugly memories? When you hear your name do you immediately answer or do you flinch? Do you flash back to the past then jump back to the present pretending that you never skipped a beat? I flashed back then pretended everything was okay. I flashed back every single time someone called me by my birth name. And every single time someone called me by that name it felt like they literally punched me in the face.

I was reading a journal by a woman that calls herself Cat. Cat recently wrote about why she goes by a different name than the one she was given at birth. It reminded me that long ago I said I’d write an entry about my legal name change. I never got around to it but I suppose I will now.

In the Bible people changed their name when major life events took place. A name had to do with who the person was at the moment. It had to do with what accomplishments they had or a prominent characteristic. People didn’t come by a name simply because it sounded nice. Names had meaning and when life changed for the good or the bad their personal name often reflected it. Names like Apple (a movie star named her child Apple) or Moon Zappa, Gunner and the like are pretty odd names but they seemed to be chosen for a reason. Perhaps it was to make the tabloids, I don’t know, but it seems even the most strange names are carefully chosen. We don’t pick our kids names out of a hat. We put a lot of thought into a first and middle name. We even assign certain characteristics to certain names. When you think of the name Katherine what comes to mind? When you think of the name Josh, or Candice, June or Mathew don’t different images come to mind? What about the name Robin, Andre, Damien, Candy, Willy, Bob? Try these two Clair and Kimmy. What did you see when I wrote those names? We assign characteristics with certain names and even if they are not accurate we still have those thoughts in the back of our head. Our experiences and personal relationships tell us “what kind of person” each of these names represents. Hopefully life experience tells us that we need to give individuals a chance to show us who they really are.

Who am I, really? My mind goes blank when I ponder that question. My hands left the keyboard, my head tilted down and my mind saw nothing but black because who I am is a hard thing to think about. I connect who I am with what I’ve been through. What I went through was nothing short of hell.

There are 6 generations of abuse in my family. I am generation number five. It seems the generations have struggled with the realization that their mother didn’t love them. With this unacceptable fact they named their children after their mother in hopes of winning her love. It never worked. What ended up happening was all the anger they felt towards their mother was placed on the child that bore the names of these violent abusers. So even though we were not the same person, we were still treated as if we’d hurt them the way their mother did.

My grandmother, who I was named after, was a violent, lying, cheating selfish little bitch but she is my mother’s mother and my mother needed her mother’s approval and love. Naming me after her didn’t get it. What it got was all those characteristics thrown on me whether they applied or not. So when I heard the name I was given I also heard the disappointment in her tone, I heard the pain in her voice from what she couldn’t get from her mother. I was the target of anger that had nothing at all to do with me simply because I bore the name of her mother. My mother knows how this feels because she was named after her own grandmother for the same reason.

Names mean something. They show who the parents are inside. They show the desires, inner secrets and dreams of our parents. If that dream is good and based on healthy things then so be it but when it’s based on nightmarish events then what is that child to do to break free of it?

Would you ever name your child after your abuser? No, because every time you called him/her that name you’d think of the abuser. So why would an abused child not think of the abuse and his/her abuser when they hear the name given to them by the abuser? We do, we think of these things. And often these images come back with a force that about knocks us over. There came a point when I realized that if I didn’t change my name I’d keep getting knocked over. I’d never be able to hear a word of what healthy people were saying because I couldn’t get past them using my birth name. I had to change my name or stay where I was at in my recovery.

Who Am I? Legal Name Change: Part One of Three -Wednesday, May 31, 2006-9:36 PM

Legal Name Change Part 1 of 3 Who Am I?
Legal Name Change Part 2 of 3 What Will I Be Called?
Legal Name Change Part 3 of 3 Karma

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