It’s no secret that I’ve had issues with identity, especially in the blogging frontier. My resolve when naming this blog was to finally accept myself as I am. I’m a Lauren, a Lauren Michelle. The former is just a variation of the name Laurel, which is actually the name of a bush. The latter is derived from Full House. To be completely honest, I don’t like the name Michelle, if not solely because everyone knows the name as the character shared by Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen from babyhood to childhood. I’m not even sure how I feel about the name Lauren. It doesn’t hold any meaning to me. They were just two random names my parents picked out, stuck them together after a minor scuffle over ordering, then smacked them on a birth certificate.
Sometimes I think about changing my name. How would people react if I just up and decided to change my name to Alice, one day? I like Alice. Alice holds meaning for me. I actually used to hate the name, because of Alice the housekeeper in The Brady Bunch. She was old, squat, and had really bad hair. At least that’s what I thought of her as a child. In truth, I really like her character. But it wasn’t until I read Ann Brashare’s The Last Summer (of You and Me) that the name planted any meaning inside me. I could empathize with Alice. Our thought processes were similar. The name began to form new meaning in my mind.
Alice meant struggling against childhood with people who’d only ever known her as a child. Alice meant knowing what she wanted, but afraid to do what’s necessary to get there. Alice meant sacrifice and grief and loss. While I’d never experienced loss in the same intensity as Alice had, I could imagine what that would be like. It was a terrifying thought.
I still haven’t entirely ruled out the whole changing-my-name idea. People in the Bible did it all the time. Not to mention one person could have 500 different names. You know, I’d once started a blog on WordPress called Alice in Waiting? It’s funny, when I wrote as Alice I felt more honest, more myself. Even when I try to conglomerate the variations of my birth name none of them feel right. Elle, Ren, Laurel, Eleym Beigh, which is just my initials spelled out phonetically. Still, after all that, Alice was what seemed to fit, what still seems to fit.
I’m going to ask you a question, and some of you are going to say yes and some of you are going to say no. But, is this completely weird? I mean, am I having insane thoughts? Maybe some of you feel at home inside the house of the name your family gave you. My discontent with mine could be a further rebellion against the opinions of my parents as I struggle against their expectations to become my own person. My name is a rope that connects me to my parents, but I burn at the chance to cut it, step out from the lasso, and remove myself of it. It’s not that I want to strip myself of my parentage. I love my parents. Our relationship is strained, but I love them.
This empathy and relation I feel to the name Alice is something that’s never left me, even as I made this blog and tried to sink my teeth into Lauren. Ever after. Always. Till the end. But it’s an uncertain taste, like popping a jelly bean into your mouth that tastes like buttered popcorn. You like jelly beans, and you like buttered popcorn, but you’re not sure how you feel about a jelly bean that tastes like buttered popcorn.
I miss the Alice in Waiting blog. There I was marveled by sea horses and science (which I’ve never liked). For those few weeks I wrote as Alice, I wasn’t concerned with getting followers and popularity, words associated with desires of my old name. As Alice, ironically, I was concerned with being myself. It’s funny the way naming changes us. Saul, the murderer; Paul, the Christian. It’s not that I’m going to ask you to start calling me Alice, but it’s a name I’ll continue to ponder and research.