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What's in a name?

I would have preferred Sidney. Or perhaps something prettier, like a Deidre. Sometimes, I wish my mother would’ve stuck with her inclination towards Claire or Renee.

What’s in a name? When my mother named me, I could have kept my name all to myself. It was mine, after all. But what is the point of keeping something so dear to your chest when other people would end up using it more than you would anyway?

My name suits me. Or maybe I was conditioned to think that way. But to everyone but me, my name is spat out like sour candy, spelt with an “O” before the righteous “L,” used in storybooks to describe little girls that had nothing to do with me.

There’s this feeling that doesn’t quite make sense in words. When my name is called, I turn my head. I scribble my name on black lines prancing upon homework pages, daring me to write someone else’s in its place. I look at the letters “C,” “H,” “L,” “O,” “E,” and I don’t see me. I see five letters stoic on a computer screen. There’s this feeling that taunts me to change my name, move halfway across the world, and start over. Sometimes, I give in to the idea: I write college essays instead of doing my homework, I start planning for a summer five months away, and I start dreading tomorrow almost as much as I dreaded the day before it.

What’s in a name? You never see your eyes and your nose apart from merely a refraction of your image in the glass. This is what a name is like. A label stuck across your forehead, ready for produce.