Names are important. I know this because everything has one. At least one. Most things have more than one. Some things have many. The more names something has, the more complex it is. My name is Francine. Most everyone calls me Franky. When I was little and my mom was mad at me, she called me Francine Joanne. I earned the name Sparky among some of my friends by electrocuting myself when we were tinkering with a computer we were building. My brother calls me sis, but not as often as he calls me doofus. It has really become a term of endearment. I call him doofus sometimes too. Naming is an important way of communicating. You see, everyone can have a different name for the same thing. And what you call something can say a lot about both you and the thing you are referring to. Names don’t necessarily have to identify the thing they refer to. Names can describe. Beautiful, grotesque, intense, mild. All of these and more can be names. Anything can be a name, so long as it can be said. Names are not bound by part of speech or correct grammar. Names are fluid. They can change. They can change from positive to negative, from specific to vague, from apt to undeserved. There was a boy I dated in high school. He called me beautiful. I called him sweet. The words came out like birdsong and honey. They had the warmth of a single beam of sunlight coming through a crack in the clouds of a chilly, over-cast, early spring day. Easy to say. Easy to hear. We looked at each other with those dewy eyes that young couples always have. Then, three months later when I broke up with him, he called me whore. He called me other names too. A lot of them contained those infamous four-letter-words, but that was the only one that stuck. The only one that hurt. I called him pitiful. I called him vindictive. I called him sad. I called him a lot of names. All of them were choked out through tears. All of them spat with venom only possessed by the most dangerous of snakes. They landed with the thud of a well-placed boxing glove. Their only purpose: to inflict damage. I don’t call him anything anymore. I haven’t called him anything for a very long time. When I think of him, all I feel is the dull ache of something that no longer is and a longing for what should have been. If I had to now, I’d like to think I’d call that version of him immature. I’d probably still call it vindictive and sad. I hope he has become a better person. I hope he can call me by my real name. I hope I can call him by his.
Names are powerful. For years, I thought that name he had given me was part of who I was. It followed me around like an iron ball chained to my ankle. As the weight of it became more and more familiar, it occasionally scraped the ground and made a grating noise as I walked to remind me of its presence. At the time, I didn’t realize I had any power over what I was called. I thought names could only be given by other people. My parents gave me the name Francine Joanne. My brother gave me the name doofus. My friends gave me the name Sparky. I didn’t know I could give a name to myself. I didn’t know I could not accept the names that others gave me. My parents taught me that it was rude to refuse a gift. Up until that one name that was given to me by that one boy in high school, every name I had been given was indeed a gift. So, I treated them as such. I accepted them graciously and I treasured them. Except for that one name. I accepted it begrudgingly and every step I took thudded under its weight. Names can be heavy. Especially if you think you deserve them. That name robbed me of the emotional rollercoaster of dating until I was far away from the high school parking lot where it was foisted upon me. I still dated, but there weren’t any highs. It was more of a rainy train ride through a valley. I couldn’t feel the wind rushing triumphantly past my sunburnt cheeks. I couldn’t see the tracks drop off as the car crested that first hill. I only felt the oppressive humidity as the train barreled through the thick fog that limited my view to the drab upholstery of the train car. I sabotaged relationship after relationship because I thought I wasn’t good enough. I thought that I was damaged goods. It happened like clockwork for a while. Boy meets girl. Boy asks girl out. They go on a few dates. Girl overanalyzes the punctuation in a text message. She calls him shady. He calls her neurotic. Relationship ends. Rinse. Repeat. They never lasted more than six weeks. I’ll admit, it took me quite a while to notice a pattern. It took me even longer to realize the cause. I needed a little help. I was at a table outside of the library at my college and a girl I had never seen before walked up to me. She was very small. She was skinny and couldn’t have been any taller than 5’2.” Her backpack was wider than she was. She had bright red hair down to her waist. Her makeup flawlessly framed her bright green eyes. They glittered like emeralds that had been thrown into the air on a relentlessly sunny day. She motioned for me to take my headphones off and told me I had a sticker from one of her favorite bands on my laptop. We talked for a bit. The conversation was awkward and choppy at first, but as it went on, our words began to flow with the ease of electrons through a copper wire. She called me cool. I called her interesting. When she got up to leave, she told me to call her Jaqueline. We’ve been friends ever since. She was around for the last three or four relationships I ruined. After the end of the third one she was there for, she told me she noticed a pattern. She told me she was worried as I cried on her shoulder for the third month in a row. I dismissed it at first, but by the end of the next relationship, I began to see her point. And now we’re here. I know where my self-esteem issues come from and I have a friend that is willing to help me work through them. That iron ball is still chained to my ankle, but each time it scrapes the ground, some iron filings chip off and it gets a little lighter. The fog outside the train car is starting to clear. I can see the outermost branches of giant pine trees on the walls of the valley. I can hear the clanking of gears as the roller coaster is pulled up the first hill. My new friend taught me to turn my pale blue eyes from shallow ponds to vast, open skies with the right makeup palette, which made me way happier than I thought it would. I’ve come a long way and I’ve got a long way to go. Now, I call myself recovering, but still damaged. I call myself in control. I call myself realistic. I call myself Francine. I call myself loved. I still call myself Sparky and Doofus sometimes. Other people still call me those names too. Best case scenario, I’d say. Comments are closed.
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Editorial Staff
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