Everything about my life in my twenties so far has been about self-discovery. The endless nights I’ve had questioning myself over and over (“Who am I? Do I like who I am? Who do I want to be?”) have inevitably resulted in an obsessive analysis of my name. Do you do that too? Have you ever spent an absurd amount of time just wondering about it? I mean―your name has just been given to you, chosen by someone else, and usually it’s not because of the newborn you were at the time, but what your name givers had hoped you’d grow up to be. Given that it was just assigned to you, do you feel like your name fits you now that you’re older and an actual person of your own? Some names have histories and meanings―do they ring true for you? And some have namesakes and legacies―do you feel like you’ve lived up to them? When someone calls it out, can the deepest, darkest recesses of your heart honestly answer that that’s you?
I know that it’s just a name. Like all labels, it doesn’t define you. But, it’s your name: You wear it. You bear it. As Rick Riordan ominously wrote in his first Percy Jackson book, “Names have power.”
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