I spent Monday at the social security office changing my name.
It felt disorienting to undergo such a monumental life change with a printed out number B13 in my hand, waiting under fluorescent lights while the guy next to me was alternately muttering and laughing to himself.
(Side note: the reason that brings most people to the social security office? By and large not happy. So much desperation and arguing and powerlessness. Sigh.)
It was such an enormous threshold, and yet it was as if I were getting nothing more important than new license plates. What a contrast to the candlelit hall where we made our vows, surrounded by friends and family, in what was such a deeply deliberate moment.
But then, the incongruity started to feel precious to me.
Mainly because I’m all about contradiction. Nothing feels more poetic or beautifully raw to me than the tension between opposites.
But also because it was all so thoroughly appropriate to my mixed feelings. (Oh! And it was super-rainy out! Further enhancing the fantasy that I live in a moody art film of my own creation.)
When I originally told people I was getting married, if they asked whether I was changing my name I’d go off into this meandering response like “yes but I’m so sad I am because on some level it means losing my old identity and I have been this person my whole life…(and continue for several tedious minutes)”
To the point where I’m sure plenty of people I talked to thought “well jeez why change it then?”
(I had plenty of good reasons that I had already explored. I do very much want to have the same name as my husband.)
So by the time the wedding happened, I had already spent a lot of time with that grief. Rolling it around, this way and that. Getting to know it.
I had accepted it.
I can feel sad about changing my name without it meaning I shouldn’t do it.
I can grieve my single life (where I could sleep with my dog and eat beans and rice for every meal) without it meaning OMG I shouldn’t get married.
I can have times where I intensely want this space to be invisible without it meaning OMG I should stop blogging.
Yes, this means I’m sometimes kind of a schizophrenic conversationalist.
But you know what? It totally works for me.
Is there something in your life that you have mixed feelings about?
What would it be like if you invited them in, and got to know them a little bit? All of them?
(There might be more room within you than you know.)
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Twitter: copylicious
January 6, 2010 at 7:04 pm
B13! You know, as a fellow schizophrenic conversationalist, I have a feeling we have more in common with those people at the social security office than we think. Love this post. I love the reminder that feeling ambivalence about something, and allowing ourselves to feel ambivalence about something, doesn’t necessarily mean we shouldn’t do the thing. Sometimes it’s the things we feel ambivalent about that are exactly what we really desire. And we just needed to tap into that. In fact sometimes if I DON’T feel ambivalent about something I start to feel suspicious.
Twitter: AmberStrocel
January 6, 2010 at 8:57 pm
I had very conflicted feelings about changing my name, too. In fact I tried to only do it halfway, and use one name professionally and another personally. It was so confusing I eventually did change it completely, and willingly so, but with regret.
I find parenting to be very much about mixed feelings. I love my kids dearly, but they are really little balls of conflict and confusion in their own way. I wouldn’t trade them for the world, but I would also love to have that freedom again, when I could choose what time I went to bed and got up all by myself. Oh, the bliss of it!
Amber´s last blog ..Another Year of Knitting
Twitter: pearlmattenson
January 7, 2010 at 5:37 am
meandering response like “yes but I’m so sad I am because on some level it means losing my old identity and I have been this person my whole life…(and continue for several tedious minutes)”
This was totally me. I did change my name and then like Amber I kept using my maiden name professionally for a long time. Talk about ambivalence. It seems that it took me almost a decade for my practice to catch up wtih my intention. I am at peace with it all now.
I am actually beginning to think that almost every intention I have carries its own private naysayer. So that if I choose to listen and look, I am always living with the ambivalences. And the key is to keep moving forward, creating space for it as you say and love my crazy self anyway!
Pearl Mattenson´s last blog ..1.7.10
Twitter: rrreba
January 7, 2010 at 7:27 am
Hullo Eileen!
Yes yes yes to the general theme of honouring-the-feelings-without-it-meaning-the-doing. Or ‘thinking in extremes’, as I boringly used to call it before I spilt my tube of glitter all over everything.
There’s been a whole long period of my life where the doing in reaction to the feeling was prolific. Like, ohmygod I’mfeelingtotallyoverwhelmedrightnow, so I absolutely have to quit my job. Right now. Or end my relationship, or move house, or get rid of all my clothes. Always accompanied by a feeling of total panic and desperation.
And now I’m noticing this direct correlation between the amount of time I spend listening to and caring for myself, and my capacity to feel the emotions without needing to go straight to the doing. Which leaves so much space, and choice, and presence that I’m almost puzzled. In a wait-a-minute, isn’t-this-the-part-where-I-freak-out? way.
Thank you for sharing this, which touches on my own experience so beautifully.
Love Reba x
Twitter: ericnormand
January 7, 2010 at 9:46 am
Wow, yes!
I totally know the feeling of grieving after a decision and everyone telling you “well if you feel like that, why are you doing it?” I still have no clue what I should tell them. Maybe just that–that I’ve made a big decision and now I’m grieving.
But, I can tell you, I’m guilty of asking people “why are you doing it” too. I might have to stop now. Thanks for making me aware of it!
Later.
Eric Normand´s last blog ..A deep thought about pushups
I changed my name but kept my own. Cheater!! In other words, I just tacked hubby’s name on the end of my own so that way I could be myself and the new me that was being born through the marriage. Also, it was blackmail.
We weren’t going to get married at all, it seemed a pointless thing. I got pregnant and seven months into that learned that the baby couldn’t have his father’s name UNLESS we were legally married. No fair and blackmail. Sooo we got married but I kept my name and tacked his on (which is really a pain in the butt to write out) and solved the problem and still somehow feel that we thumbed our noses at THE MAN/THEM. lol
I believe having both names is what eventually made me into a schizophrenic conversationalist…but not sure.
Twitter: intuitivebridge
January 7, 2010 at 2:04 pm
Yes. It’s the whole “Do we sell the house or keep the house?” “Do we buy the sailboat or not buy the sailboat?”
I want to live on a boat. But I love my house.
But I want to be on my boat. But my house is so cool.
Yes. Totally. And also about 500 other things.
Bridget´s last blog ..The Energetic Body Loves Exercise
Twitter: moonslark
January 7, 2010 at 2:04 pm
I had this about changing my name BOTH times. (thankfully its not a requirement to do a legal name change here, or it would have been EXPENSIVE)…
I had decided I didn’t want to take my husband’s name when we married… but he pulled the “if you don’t take my name you don’t love me and I won’t marry you” thing. I was 23 and I didn’t see things clearly. So I took his name even though I had ambivilance.
Then I left and I took my maiden name back. Even 3 months after doing it I feel torn in half… my kids have his name, they want BOTH names (my last name AND his) and I am not allowed to do that without his consent (which he won’t give)…
I was glad both times that I did things the way I did, but I still felt sadness and grief each time… for my single life and my idea of married life lost…
pam´s last blog ..I want to change how I spend MONEY
Twitter: evalazza
January 7, 2010 at 6:19 pm
@Kelly: OMG I totally agree–if there is no conflict it’s usually because I haven’t thoroughly explored..
@Amber: Oh wow, the two names thing would be hard (talk about schiophrenic!)… I love that you can embrace the ambivalence of having kids/loss of freedom. I am so going to use you as a model if I ever have kids
@Pearl Wow, that’s so funny that you both did that… that sounds way too confusing for a scatterbrain like myself! Also, I am so going to use the phrase “private naysayer.”
@ Reba: OMG you are so totally in my head. Or at least the journey I have been on. The need to take dramatic, immediate action balanced against the ability to gently hold all of it within you at once. You are pretty much speaking to my entire life’s work
@ Eric: exactly! So hard to give the entire backstory
@Wulfie: Hmm, I think I am a cheater too. I’m going to have three names now. I guess my former last name is now my middle name. But I’m using all three names. (btw I think we need a schizophrenic conversationalist cocktail party.)
@ Bridget: Yesss *grin*
@Pam: Argh, what a story. I’m so sorry to hear about the messiness, but glad to hear you are getting some peace. Lots of love to you ~
Twitter: FontSiteDiva
January 7, 2010 at 6:34 pm
ouy … just wanted to quote a post i read recently about the-tension-between-oppostites:
i watch myself and everyone i know wrestle with the tension between open and closed, romance and skepticism, faith and reason, confidence and doubt, tenderness and protectiveness, hope and fear, transcendence and realism, generosity and caution, friendship and business.
i don’t see any way out of it. i think this kind of tension is the truest fundamental, a fundamental that, alas, isn’t a groove you can slide and cozy your way into, but a groove that’s a rickety rope bridge we weave as we walk it.
how can it not be? ours is to enjoy life with death in full view.
[jeremy sherman, http://mindreadersdictionary.com/
Twitter: alightheart
January 8, 2010 at 12:28 am
Wow.
I hadn’t really thought that ambivalence *doesn’t* mean I shouldn’t do it.
Huh.
Though a friend of mine said (in a kind of connected topic) that when it was difficult to make a decision between two options, that meant that there was almost equal good in both, so NEITHER were the wrong (nor right) decision.
Helped me at the time.
I *LOVED* changing my name, but me and my hub chose a new one together.
Hence the great Twitter handle.
Andrew Lightheart´s last blog ..And so it begins…