10 Years Without a Name

The first time my name was taken from me, I was eight years old. It was second grade, and my peers were perfecting the stage of cognitive development to make comparisons and contrasts, yet could not overcome the difficulty in telling me apart from my twin.

“Pair up with one of the twins.” the teacher would say, when someone needed a partner and my sister and I were still waiting to be picked.

“Hey twin.” A classmate would say, to get my attention. I tried to assert myself, ask why they couldn’t call me by my real name. They defended their actions — they couldn’t tell us apart. Three years into grade school, at third grade now, and they could not decipher us? I was a twin….not a classmate. I was not a peer. Not one of them. Not human. Some other thing. Not Natalie, not me. I was not known for me. I did not have defining characteristics to be enjoyed by others in friendship. I was just a unit.

“The twins.”

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The second time my name was taken, was at home.

“Come here dipsit!” my father would yell at me, trying to get my attention to clean something or watch him teach me a process.

“Whatever, dork.” He’d reply to most of my pleas for kindness.

“Quit pissing around, idiot.” - was a common phrase I heard when I was bored at home, with parents who didn’t put my sisters and I in some sort of sport or program so we wouldn’t be “pissing” around.

Living under that roof was as humiliating as walking through the hallways, mute and shy to everyone chattering to each other in their free time around me. “Twin” soon became replaced with the characteristics they did see in me, such as “midget”, in celebration of my short stature. I did not stray from the limits assigned to me.

My classmates needed a female to be at the bottom rung. They needed me.

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The third time I had my name taken from me, was the last time. I was eighteen, and I was leaving my parent’s home for college. Whatever pet name that slipped out that day has been long forgotten by now.

I would come around in the summers, but it was different this time. The distance helped lessen any tension and blame I placed on them for my lack of cultivated talent or connections I could bring to campus, and shifted the paradigm in that I was more of a guest in their home. I was no longer physically reprimanded for a mistake I made — mistakes that are better learned from with discussion and explanation than the way that they were handled. I was not sure if I was respected, but I was no longer treated like an animal. I was human. I wanted to learn all I could about the world; about others. I wanted to learn a skill - to dance, to write, to volunteer, to succeed.

I was Natalie.