tuesday morning D&M

I'm in a self-analysing mood at the moment and lacking a digital camera, scanner or any other gizmo to make my post more entertaining than it currently is we're left with only my words to provide diversion. About this I am very, truly sorry. Today's post is one of big questions and fairly intense introspection. Again, I'm sorry.

I'm in one of my "happiness in blue" moods at the moment so forgive the semi-morose tone of my post. My very mild synesthaesia means that I associate colours with almost everything, days, numbers, pieces of music (although that's more of a dynamic thing) and also emotions. Those who know me well instinctively understand my happiness scale based on what colour I'm feeling - happiness in pink is the scary one, it's brightly chipper and usually steeped heavily in denial, happiness in green is my favourite because it feels something like closing your eyes and tilting your face towards the sun. Happiness in red is distracted and shivery, it comes from an evening surrounded by friends or catching a boy looking, it leads to humming and glazed over eyes. And then there's happiness in blue - it's a late Sunday night with a bottle of wine kind of happiness - it's reluctant, introspective and a little wistful because you know the feeling won't last, it's a quiet contentment that comes from understanding that while the rest of the world is out of control and careering off the rails that now, in this moment, you're doing OK and everything is quiet. My voice goes down a couple of notes when I'm happy in blue, the speed of my speech, usually lightning paced, slows down to be understandable, I feel happy to drift.

As some of you may know my life at the moment is a seemingly endless quest for some kind of purpose. My problem has always been that I'm an "all rounder" presented with far too many options. I know it seems wrong to complain about this, being faced with too many choices is always better than being faced with no choice at all, but I spend most of my life worrying that I picked the wrong course, chose the wrong path and that it's too late to turn back and run in the opposite direction. The first divergence and the one that my mother cites as being the one that I'm most unsure about was the day that I abandoned words. As a child I was in love with words, I still am, but back then they were the things that defined me. When it came down to making a choice between science and language I picked the former reasoning that although I loved both it was science that required the formal training, the further education. There's no real point in sharing this, you understand, except to provide some kind of background to my current confusion. I love science, I find it fascinating but I've been coming to realise more and more that it isn't the research that I find interesting. It's not the results and the charts that stir me - it's our interpretation of them, our reaction to the discoveries that others make.

I may have found a way to marry the two halves of me, or more precisely: those around me may have found it. Content as I am to drift at the moment and unsure as I am about what course I should be taking I decided to let three of the people who know me best, and love me most, give me their points of view and for once I actually listened. From the basic idea, through to the practicalities and finally the overcoming of obstacles it's quite shocking how three people outside my self can so quickly solve all the problems that I've spent the last five years at least constructing.

Why can't I do that?

It's a question of perspective I guess.

Aside from the question of "what am I going to be" the other one I'm facing is "who am I going to be". Oddly, this one is remarkably simpler to answer.

The basics of this is that this winter I will legally be changing my name. I'll still be Alex, I love my first name and despite its history it's too much a part of my identity to change it but I have no such attachments to my middle and surnames. My middle names are easy: I have two and I would only like to keep one of them. As it stands my three names are as such (and considering I have two of the world's most common middle names - in combination anyway - I have no qualms about revealing them to the internet in general, or rather the six people that actually read this blog and the one person who stumbled here via a search engine):

Alexandra Elizabeth Anne

I hate this for several reasons. Most mundanely, it doesn't fit on forms. More personally I dislike the reason I was given all three of my names, officially I was named after "the three princesses of England" which as a sentiment actually makes me want to vomit, my mother had nothing to do with this decision as she was told that she would be having a girl and her name would be as my father decided. Unofficially: I also share my name with one of my father's "ex" girlfriends. Cynical you may say but he chose a rather un-orthodox nickname for me, one I hated as a child and took me eighteen years to finally shake from all but a couple of family members and one or two childhood friends, and it just happens to be the name that she was known by. Still, Elizabeth is a family name - it belongs in part to my mother and my grandmother so I'm happy with it but I figure as long as I have the choice I'd rather drop the Anne - I never use it anyway.

My surname is the main point of this name changing exercise. I have been estranged from my father - by choice (mine, not his) - for over seven years now. My paternal grandmother remarried when I was an infant so she doesn't share my name and, aside from one uncle and his wife, the only family members who do are my father, his father (comments regarding apples and the distance they fall are valid here incidentally) and my two younger brothers - both of whom I've never met, nor care to. It's a name that I feel no connection to. Up until a couple of years ago this was tolerable - my mother had kept her married name when they divorced in 1990 and so sharing my name with her was something I'd grown up with. Then she remarried. I had always planned on taking my husband's surname when I married - purely selfish reasoning on my part, I've wanted to jettison this name for as long as I can remember. But now more and more I'm beginning to feel itchy at the prospect, I'd like to keep my own name and my own identity when, if, I eventually marry but I'm not happy with the identity I have.

And so I have decided to change my name, not just to something random but to my step-father's surname. People have either declared this "sweet" or "weird" and the comments have come in equal measure. There are many reasons behind my choice: to share a name with my mother again, because although he would like to I am too old for my step-father to formally adopt me, because it sounds far, far nicer than my name now.

There, those are the two questions I am facing at the moment. I almost think I have them answered.