When I was little I wanted to change my name. I wanted something no one else had. There were just a few Heathers in my school but it seemed to not really identify me. Actually as a child I wasn’t looking for an identity I was looking or less confusion with the 3 Heather’s in the school. Why do we not all have different names?
I didn’t want to be a new name really. If I think back I thought it was simple. Change your name. Just make people call you a new one. Then you are a new person. As a grown up, there is legality to it, confusion, explanations, cooperation. In the end I’m still me.
Being who I am I prevailed to no end to make this change. I added just a letter to it. I added a P. To the beginning. Except it was silent. I was questioned by my teacher with her circling in red my name spelled wrong. “This isn’t your name. Please spell it write.”What I heard was you aren’t who you want to be. Who you say you are.
I continued to do it. It annoyed me she was grading who I was. Who I wanted to be. Who is she to decide how my name is spelled or if I even have one at all. Maybe I will have no name?
Today if you don’t put a last name on some forms they are not taken. The asrick and the whole line blink red, not complete. Please fill in or you aren’t a real person, just a half. Maybe not even half. You can rarely ask anyone this question when filling out forms. I wonder about people who don’t have a last name. How do they fill out their taxes? Do they have an accountant who knows the way around this? What if they don’t? Do they just put their first name twice? Do they make one up? Why should they have to. Do they just not fill these forms out? Maybe they just identify as no last name but really everyone does. Except Moses? How would Moses register for school?
Once I was called out about it by the teacher in front of everyone. I turned beet red. I do not like to be talked to in front of others. She told me to please correct my name. It did not start with a silent P. Then I was teased and called feather. Making me feel light and useless. I imagined I was one. And a light breeze came through and blew me away. Lifted me silently over the top and out the door.
In the end I gave up. I was angry and frustrated that my teacher was unimaginative. She was actually an imagination crusher. I would have decided on my own to own my name. I don’t have a great story of how it was picked. My dad just picked it and that’s what it was. He didn’t have a special feeling that’s what it should be. It didn’t come from a family member or famous person. For all he knew it was one hé over heard from a soap opera. But I was supposed to be a Nathan David. If I had been a boy. My poor dad, has no boys, just girls.
Today I wouldn’t change my name. I don’t like it or not like it. The process is too difficult. In my mind I will always be an Aspen. With all silent letters. No one knows. But me. That I’m an Aspen. My roots are spread all over as if I’m one big colony. I don’t feel as small as I once did. I feel like I’ve died off here and there and sprouted new growth. I feel bigger in a smaller world instead of too small in a big world. Just normal sized. I shrank the world by paying closer attention to just mine. Focusing on just my roots in life. Once, a massive storm came through. Wiped me completely out. But never uprooted me. That’s how aspen grow. Like a mat of roots. Their life is deep and below in a grid like pattern. It can’t be destroyed. It will always make new life. That’s me. You can’t destroy me. I can’t even destroy myself. I’ve tried.
It takes a long time to believe you have value. People can say it, it’s easy to say, easy to hear not easy to believe. It has to be felt. Value is a feeling. Or it’s a cluster of feelings. Like love+validated+strong=value. It’s a math problem.
You get these additions of feelings from others. The world is just made up of math no matter where I go. Something always adds up or is taken away. Divided or made into more by multiplying.
Do they make all natural shampoos just for people who believe they want it? For those who don’t want to use harsh chemicals to wash there hair and body. Is a sulphate harsh? What about parabans? There are hundreds of them with it in it. So it can’t be harmful. Is it what makes the suds. Is that pretend clean? I’ve tried both. No chemicals felt like my hair was being cleaned with mayo. Which is apparently good. But it’s food. My hair felt greasy and heavy. From my life or from the paraban and sulphate free soap.
I’m a dirty girl. I work in dirt, literally. I am likely just a harsh chemicals kind of person. I’ve gone days without washing on backpack trips and when you are done you wash twice. Once to clean and once to clean again. Did they find that these chemicals are bad on pipes? Eating away our storm sewers and drains from all the dirty people. Is there just an abundance of natural products needing used. Are we running out of parabans and sulphates? How will I get clean hair?
What makes people decide to switch? Is it the packaging? They always catch you with packaging. Pantene has looked the same since it was made. But the new ones show fruits and beautiful scenes and hope of a wonderful life and feeling of cleanliness in the form of joy from a bottle. With the added bonus of not destroying our sewer systems? Or saving the whales? That’s how I buy my tuna. With the understanding no dolphins or whales or other Sea creatures were trapped in the netting. Just the poor tuna fish.
I’ve been ruminating. That’s the word the therapist uses. I like to use rock tumbling. Two words with a shiny outcome. Plus, it takes weeks. Ruminating is what cows do. It makes me think of pasture grass all chewed up and hacked up then swallowed again, I’m not even sure if that’s what they do, maybe they throw it up and eat it again? Or maybe it’s just churned in their tummy forever, I don’t know. Ruminate that.
I hadn’t looked at an insurance policy until just about a month ago. Like my cars. I just get what they say and half listen to the words of deductibles and premiums because it’s boring. I’ve been likely paying for way too much coverage for way too long. My car is worth my deductible for one. My car if stolen by a Tornado or a tree falls on it can be replaced at its value. Not even enough to buy a car. I’m not convinced I need this comprehensive coverage and can’t ask the person who’s job it is to sell it and so much more to me. Insurance agents are probably more packed full of fear than me!! Always preparing for what may never happen. I could see him now. Your car could not only get stolen but then the guy who stole it could hit a deer then park under a tree that falls on it, then a tornado will sweep it away and launch it through a hail ridden wind straight into the River where it will flood. Or even weirder crash onto a boat. What does that fall under? Wouldn’t that be covered multiple times? It is all the scenarios for comprehensive coverage. What do they do if I’m in a regular accident of my fault but then I’m waiting for the officers and someone steals it? Which coverage is this? What if I crash into a car but catapult into the River and the car floods? Which one then? Maybe I should sell insurance.
If i came with a warning label what would it say?
Would there even be enough room?
Would it be photos of what not to do? Or how to do it right? Like Warning I always eventually do the right thing. That’s not a warning. My warning label could be little fragments of what I’ve learned the hard way. Isn’t that what they come from? People testing boundaries, people going over the line, under or around or through. Too much or not enough. Don’t hold down, don’t step here or push that. So many rules you almost can’t breath.
Mine would really be simple?
Warning I need space because I’m full of warning labels?
I like to think about once my grandma telling me worrying is like rocking in a chair. It gets you no where fast. It’s likely not just my grandmas wisdom I’ve seen it in many places. Like in a dish towel once even. Calming sayings on our linens. Although her rocking chair nearly catapulted me and my first born right off her porch once. I had fallen asleep and woke to a feeling I was too asleep, waking to the very edge of the porch, my feet dangling over the edge. The thing with her rocking chair is that I wasn’t rocking I was resting. Not letting worry consume me is what I have to do. That chair moved forward because I stopped worrying and let it move me. I was resting.
Aspenleaf 