Another Silent Revolution

“Why did you change your name? Do you have a legitimate reason, or are you doing it just to be different?”

I guess I was sort of caught off guard by this question. It offended me. Of course I did it to be different, but not just to be different. But I didn't know what to say, so I just said, “that's how I think of myself.” To which he responded, “why?” and I didn't answer because I didn't know.

I didn't change my name a lot. Just one letter. The first vowel. When I introduce myself, most people don't even notice, and sometimes I have to repeat myself a few times before they realize it's different. But I think it's just like a nickname. Just a more permanent one. I've had a lot of self-inflicted nicknames over the years, but this one has stuck with me for most of my adult life, and I have a plastic card that says it's my real name now. But why?

At first I guess I thought it was because I didn't want to be the same as everyone else. This is a legitimate reason. There are healthy ways to be like everyone else and there are healthy ways to be different from everyone else. Having a new name is not an unhealthy way to be different from everyone else.

According to my brother, most people name their babies something different because they don't want to attach the association of a negative experience to their child. That's why there are so few girls named Hillary these days. Not that that was ever a really common name, but still. I can't say I ever had a lot of very negative connotation with my former name. I knew lots of people who had the same name as me, and 9/10 were pretty cool. But I didn't ever really like having the same name as something else. I'm different from other people; shouldn't I be called something different too?

So that's got me thinking. There are a lot of things about me that are different. I do my hair differently than most people. I have a few interesting exhibitions of body art. I have some unique jewelry. I don't always prescribe to conventional beauty procedures. I wear clothing that has been described as “the sort of thing only you wear.” Why do I do this? Am I that desperate to be different? Am I doing it just to get attention? Am I trying to make a statement, to get people to notice me and think, “oh, she's weird.”

No.

I am trying to make a statement, but it's not that I'm different. I am different, but that's mostly just a side effect of my choice to do what I enjoy. I wear my hair the way I do because I enjoy it. The fact that it's different from most people's is irrelevant. I wear strange clothes because I think they're beautiful. And if a few heads turn as I walk down the sidewalk, I don't really care. I am who I am and I love what I love, and I refuse to apologize for it.

There have been a lot of movements that have had power. Mobs and protests, petitions, viral videos, speeches and expositions. That's not what I'm about. I don't want to make a statement of revolution or rebellion; my statement is that this is normal. My goal is to normalize uniqueness. I want children to be able to wear clothes that aren't exactly like what everyone else is wearing without being ashamed. I want looking like yourself to be normal instead of having to dress to fit a mold. I want women to feel free to go unshaven without feeling like monsters. I want humanness to be normal. Because there's nothing wrong with being comfortable as yourself. Unless you're evil, which I guess we all are at least a little bit. The power of normalization is greater than most people seem to realize. Bikinis are a great example of this.

To those of you who balk at the idea of calling someone a different name than the one their parents gave them at birth or who consider it strange that someone would want to be called by a different pronoun than the one you're used to, I give you the right to feel how you want, but realize that you'll never be my friend. Names change all the time. Women change their last name when they get married. People assume nicknames in various circumstances. Celebrities trademark specific pseudonyms. Sure, it's comfortable to have something reliable like gender to be able to fall back on, but regardless of your stance on transgenderism, if your goal is to stay comfortable, you may miss out on many thrilling friendships.

I changed my name for a different reason than to be different or to normalize name changes. I can have a classic name or a unique nickname. Either is fine under the standard of normalcy. It's normal to have the name your parents gave you and it's normal to go by a nickname. But I want to be who I am. I want to have a unique name so that I am just myself, not just another girl with the same name as your cousin. Because we can't always help comparing those we meet to someone with the same name. I want to be unprecedented, and I want to be my own category. I think everyone is their own category, really. Sure we all have things in common, but none of us are really the same.

So, to be precise, I didn't change my name just to be different. I already am different. I wanted my name to reflect that.

Life on Hiatus

I don't know if it's possible to define what it means to really live. At least, not in the sense that colloquial Americanism puts it. Obviously we have medical definitions of what it means to be alive versus otherwise, though even that is somewhat contentious since with modern medicine, we can revive people even after they have been declared legally dead. Additionally, if the presence of a heartbeat and breathing along with brain waves are the hallmarks of being alive, what are we to make of that ever-present issue of when life begins in the womb? Yet if we cannot even decide on a medical definition of being alive, how are we to define that feeling of freedom and purpose that each of us seek in our most whimsical tempers?

The matter is further complicated by the broadness of what causes people to feel alive. Some feel alive at the top of a mountain or in the midst of some other breathtaking swell of nature. Others feel this purpose and thrill in dark alleys in desperate situations. Still others find life and purpose in cathedrals or prayer closets, and some find that lavish spending and ownership of expensive items brings them that rush that seems bespoken of life. While there seems to be great variation in what it means to be alive, like so many other slippery definitions, it remains fairly easy to describe what it means to feel dead.

If you are reading this, I find it unlikely that you have ever been dead in the medial sense of the term, though I suppose I have met several self-proclaimed phoenixes in my lifetime thus far, so it's not impossible. But despite this lack of literal deadness, I find it unlikely that you have not experienced an emotional state that resonates with the word “dead.” Perhaps you were listless, tired, bored, stressed, unhappy, or distinctly uncomfortable. Your emotional state was similar to that of a skeleton in a pineboard box, and you felt that you couldn't get out of it for whatever reason. You found yourself with a lack of purpose and your dreams seemed impossibly far away. If you've felt that way for more than 5 days in a row, you may have clinical depression like me.

I bring this up because I have just recently found myself relieved of the shackles of a constricting job, and now that I have time to think, I realize just how dead I have been feeling for the past 3 months. You know it's bad when you are counting down the days until school starts just so you don't have to deal with summer anymore. It's frustrating, of course, because all the things I wanted to do, including writing in this blog, were just shoved aside for the sake of something that I realize I don't even know why I wanted it. No amount of paychecks are worth the many sleepless nights and anxiety medications that I went through for the sake of this job. Yet I needed a job.

Isn't this the crux of it though? My dear free-spirited friend with the camera and the unique clothing choices sends me instagram photos with captions like, “travel while you're young and don't worry about the money,” or, “You were meant for more than just paying the bills.” But most problematically, I find that while my life thus far is not life giving and full of purpose, I find my stressful workload and lack of artistic outlet preferable to that summer I spent homeless. I guess it was nice for a while to have all the time in the world to pursue whatever I wanted (as long as it was free); I painted a lot, and I spent a lot of time driving around just to look at things, but I was also pretty hungry. I appreciate people like YouTuber Homeward Bound who packs up her whole life and drives around in an SUV. It sounds amazing. But the reason most people live in houses and work 9-5 jobs is that we as humans require stability as well as freedom. But how can we keep from being dead while living in a safe place?

A wise man once said that freedom isn't safe; that we can't experience true freedom without giving up a lot of safety, stability, and comfort. But truly, we can't have a great deal of safety and comfort without abandoning a certain amount of freedom. According to the idea cliodynmics, history repeats itself on a generational basis because generation 1 becomes restless and wars and catastrophes break out, and generation 2 grows up in this unrest and insecurity and therefore takes extensive pains to avoid it in their lifetimes. Unfortunately, the grandchildren or perhaps even the children of generation 2 grow up in the relative safety and comfort of this counter-movement and become restless as their ancestors a few generations ago did, and the cycle repeats itself. That is to say, we don't realize how awful war is unless we've lived in it, yet without war to contrast against, we become bored and dream of something more exciting than a peaceful life.

There are those who say that we are currently on the cusp of World War III. This, in my opinion, while a frightening possibility, is less likely than civil war based on the many factions of social and political causes at work in the United States today. I'm no political commentator. Those who know me wouldn't hesitate to say that my political beliefs are rapidly brushed aside in favor of individualism; if you want social change, don't get involved in politics: be that change yourself. But in whatever case, there is the possibility that dramatic civil unrest will rock the country I live in at any time. Will we feel more alive then? Will we find more purpose in vendettas and tactics and affiliations than we do in economics? Could that fix the many cases of purposeless young people that fill up our corporate world? Isn't there anything else that would do this more kindly?

I can only pray that my little brother wouldn't be drafted if it came to that.

So, what is freedom worth? What would I do to rid myself of this feeling of deadness inside me that caused so much lack of blog updating in the past 3 months? Relatively speaking, this has been the worst summer of my adult life, and that compared to a stretch of ridiculous jobs and lack of jobs and uncertainty about my future. I have more than once compared my job this summer to hell. But as a certain fictional military personnel once said on M*A*S*H*, “War isn't hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse.”

I think we can all agree that the definition of really living does not include war. Meditations Minis says that we can find purpose and life in even the most mundane of activities if we take a moment to love and dream. But while I agree that we need dreams and we need to feel alive and full of purpose, there's also something to be said for finding a place to dream that isn't built on boredom, supposed victimization, or social positions.

(Why is there a picture of a colorful crochet blanket at the end of this post?

Obviously because I crochet when I'm anxious and this seemed like a pleasant photo to put up to trick strangers into reading my article that has nothing to do with crochet or hiatus. But it's pretty <3)