Thank you for reading therapy made me worse. Nothing warms my heart more than sharing my work with all of you. If you connect with anything I write, please tell others about our little corner of the internet.
Perhaps it did all start with Eminem in 1999. I was 6 years old and I really needed everyone to know my name.
Every Sunday after church for like one summer, there was a show, the opening lyrics went something like “one day you’re gonna see my name in lights / Tiannnnna/ Tyinnnna”. (I refuse to look up the actual show because what if it was just a fever dream or the lyrics are completely different than the ones that have guided my life for the past 20 odd years.) Except in my head, I would replace her name with Christinnnna. Having people know who I am was always something I knew would happen. Something I strove for. To be important doesn’t sound quite right but to have influence. One of my favorite questions to ask people is, if you were to have anything named after you, what would it be? My answer has always been library. It seems inconsequential, no one really thinks about the person their library is named after but the influence required to have a library named after you. Hero or billionaire…the only two options and that is fucking influential.
I’m not quite sure when but at some point in my life, it became clear to me that I would hyphenate my last name when I got married. I could never lose my last name. So what if I had brothers? So what if the last name wouldn’t die off? It was my father’s name and that made it just as much mine. And in very recent years, it’s became much clearer to me that I will always have this name. No hyphenation. No maiden name to middle name and husband last name as new last name or any other kind of jenga. This is my name.
I’ve begun using my full name lately in most of my dealings (less ominous than it sounds). Even at work, my full government, is somehow attached to everything and people think my first and middle name is actually just my first name. While somewhat bizarre to pick up the phone and have people ask for me like they’re the IRS and I haven’t been paying my taxes, it’s now become a comfort. My name was given to me by those who love and I love most.
Despite the love for my name, in moments of heartbreak, I say out loud the variations of my name I’d grown so used to being called by the men I loved and that loved me back. How can I never again hear Tina? Christi? Chrissy? in their voice. My heart breaks into a million pieces for the love behind those nicknames. The safeness I felt when said even when said in moments of frustration.
It’s a dichotomy I’ve been struggling with though. How can I love those nicknames that tear apart my full name while being so strong willed about the world knowing my real name? The name you gave me. In some moments, it’s darling. Other names, daughter. But at it’s most beautiful, Christina. I have a hapless note scrawled with my name written on it tucked into my mirror…in your handwriting. I can mourn the loss of those nicknames and the people who came with them because there is no one else that can span continents, electronic communication, or a note on a piece of paper and emit the love you, my dad, does when he says Christina.
A side story…
As a child, when my father would arrive home from work, I would run as fast as I could, socks sliding across hardwood to hug (crash into) him. Day after day, he would say “oooh oooh, be careful, you don’t want to hurt the family jewels.” I would laugh because I knew this had something to do male genitalia but was still too young to quite understand but old enough to understand it was a funny adult joke (plus my older brothers understood the joke and I was never going to let them think I didn’t understand something they did).
At my sweet sixteen, my dad told the above story (with much more flourish than my short paragraph provided) and then proceeded to explain that I am the family jewel.
I found the below scribbled note (a habit we both share) left behind after a visit to my home. It hangs on the inside of my front door as the reminder, Christina Nicole Lewis, precious priceless family jewel.
Tell me, tell me….
What is one part of your sense of self that you can’t imagine changing?
What’s one part of your sense of self that you would change?
Childhood memory - whatever it is, I am seated and ready to read