All In A Name

Every day I wake up, and I'm me. I tried to change that several times as a young adult, both the waking up and the being of me. Neither has ever happened successfully.

I go to work in the morning, and everyone knows "Tracy". Tracy is this person, this mask I wear. She shows up, gets the job done, and goes home. She jokes around with everyone between orders, which they seem to see as friendly. What they don't know is that she's only filling space with laughter so there is no room for real talk. If there are no questions, you can't be expected to give answers. You don't have to get to know people beyond smiling if you can keep them there.

To her family, she is several different people. She's a scapegoat quite often, a disappointment sometimes, and someone to be proud of once in a while. Around the time Christmas letters go out.

My mother originally wanted me to be named "Robyn". That idea fell short the day my father heard about it, and jokingly replied, "You name her Robyn, I'll call her ShitBird." There went that.

I would have rather been a "Theresa". I would have gone by "Teri", like my father. It's a more normal name, and a little more common. "Tracy" has a baby-book definition of "steadfast, diligent worker". I think they screwed up and meant stubborn. "Teri" would have been more like a secret heritage. Too late.

"Tracy" has been in some wild situations, and she hasn't always made the best decisions. There have been those men that she loved, but they are gone, and she doesn't plan on replacing them. The love was nice, just like it was supposed to be, but she didn't find it worth the endings. Instead, she preserves them in songlyrics and poetry, letting the flesh version slip away to a good life with someone less melancholy. They seem to appreciate it later, though not at the time she cuts them free. They don't realize she's doing a favor to them - if she never lets them make a contract with her heart, they don't have to break it later. It's the better way. They all see that eventually. They go on and get mortgages and minivans and Gap kids outfits for their beautiful children. She gets more verse to read when she's an old woman.

"Tracy" has a problem doing anything that she isn't totally in control of. She needs life figured out and rational, but rarely gets it. Her writing is more of a thesis statement on how the world should be and why it is not, rather than a musical diary. When her grand masterpiece is complete, and the answers are all figured out, it will be too late to share them with anyone she has known. This doesn't change a thing. If she can leave behind her notebooks when she goes, maybe someday, somehow, a twelve-year-old girl will stumble upon her words and the things it took her so long to figure out, and reap something from them. If one twelve-year-old is less suicidal than the twelve-year-old she was, it will have been worth a lifetime of scribbling notes to no one in particular.

She writes letters sometimes to the children she knows she will never have. She found out too late that the man she had chosen for their Daddy was only going to have hurt them. Instead, she absorbed the pain for them and ran, fast and far, to a place he could never find if he wanted to. But she took her mental children with her. She sings to them sometimes, and they sing along, only without words. With emotion. She used to feel ghosts in her room as a child, and she would talk to them, too. It's the same feeling. Ghosts are not dangerous, they are only lonely. If you are lonely too, they will tell you why. She promised to make them famous someday, to tell their stories to real live people somehow, and they drifted back into the quiet. She still feels them watching behind her sometimes, but they are only curious and they stay to themselves. Her unborn children are among them now, too, and they visit softly.

"Tracy" is what most psychologists would probably call "mal-adjusted". She doesn't care. She went to a psychologist a total of one time, in eighth grade, when her best friend had been caught with a razor blade at school. It was a good thing the girl had been caught, because she had been suicidal for a while. Her friend needed the help, more than the parents who sent her there realized. The girl asked "Tracy" to come along to a session one time, so that the doctor could meet her best friend and understand her a little better. The doctor asked "Tracy" what she thought of her friend's outlook on life, so she told her. "Tracy" casually remarked that her friend was a beautiful person inside, who was just afraid to show anyone her true feelings for fear of being turned away. She said that all her friend needed was to open her eyes to the world around her, and learn to lean on the willing shoulders of friends and family that surrounded her everyday. The doctor sat amazed, and prompted "Tracy" for more opinion. After another half hour or so, the doctor reluctantly stated that it was time for her next appointment, and that the session had run late, since the conversation was going so well. The doctor told "Tracy" that she should seriously pursue a career in psychology, and that she would enjoy having a colleague with the capacity of emotion she had seen today. "Tracy" thanked the kind doctor, disarmed her with her most charming smile, and went home to continue plotting her own suicide.

Sometimes, I am not "Tracy". There is another, bubbling under the surface. She is fifteen, and quite flighty. She has an honest laughter about her. She does not "do" responsibility.

She is "Candra".

"Candra" runs. Anywhere she goes, whether she knows her destination or the path ahead of time, she runs. Life is too short to be walked through. You have to want what you want badly enough to chase it down like a rabbit, and you have to feel that want, that hunger, while there is still time. "Candra" always operates on the feeling of borrowed time. Anyday, "Tracy" could decide she's impractical and do away with her. She runs. Always one step away from where "Tracy" last saw her, just out of reach, a little safer than she could be. If "Tracy" wants her gone, she'd have to learn to keep up with the pace before she could do anything about it.

Almost.

There is one thing that would abolish "Candra" in two heartbeats, but she has never told "Tracy" about it. And she is advising me to not admit it here, either, but she thinks you know.

"Candra" oftentimes dance-runs. Her favorite location is among the clouds, but not just any clouds. Nighttime clouds. The feathery, floating kind that drift over the moon like a visual tickle.

Her best friend is not "Tracy", but the Moon. She always capitalizes it, for he matters. He is a quiet chap, until you get to know him, and very humble. He perches above everyone while they slumber, so as not to draw too much attention, and he leaves workdays and noise to the sun. The sun, she smiles on business and life. He'd rather just listen to the wind.

One day, he heard her. "Candra" came singing to him one night, and played beneath his sprinkle-rays. He watched silently, slightly amused at the young thing trying to fly. She could not send her song to the sky; she could not reach that high off the ground, so she asked him if he would lend his voice to the air above. She invited him into her world, and gave him a safehaven to adore in. He had never been asked before.

Since that evening, "Candra" has walked a little differently. You would think that the addition of stardust would make a girl heavier, but it taught her to float. She gave the Moon something he could never have had without her, and he was equally as kind. She bathes in him every chance she gets, and she is teaching him how to sing.

Ah, these two fight for my body. Not psychologically, as I have heard can happen. Spiritually.

I find myself asking sometimes if I am the true embodiment of "Tracy", the harvester, or "Candra", who even bears her meaning well. "Of the Moon", Celtic.

They do not fight argumentively, though "Tracy" is hard on "Candra" and sets all the rules. It is more of a muffling effect, who can outdo whom, and who will be the stronger when everything is taken away. "Tracy" always puts it back together, but guess who does the decorations?

"Tracy" has the appearance of control, and her romantic counterpart knows she needs that. Unfortunately, what the counterpart doesn't realize is that "Tracy" has been around a lot longer than she has, and knows the secret to "Candra"s ruin, she only chooses not to use it - yet. She's keeping that for a day when "Candra" interferes too fully with work and car payments and query letters. She's not a nuisance yet, and "Tracy" knows she is just a child, who needs strict limits. After all, "Tracy" is the parent here, and has been with this body the longest. She knows what's best, and how life really works.

"Candra" says she's eternal.

And shut the hell up.

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