Positively Scarred

I’ve really kept my identity secret on this blog. Mainly because I didn’t want anyone to find it by Googling my name or anything. The other reason for my anonymity was because I wanted people to associate my life and struggles and stories and wit with any Jane/John Doe. I’m now comfortable in my blogging suit to tell you the story of how I got my name.

The year was 1987 and my parents, both in the military, were young. My dad was barely 21 and my mother was 22. They found out there was a bun in the oven and my mom gave my dad a choice: he didn’t have to stick around. She told me once that she believed if he had left for home on leave, he wouldn’t come back. My dad, being the responsible and caring man he is, reenlisted and stayed with my mom. This was, after all, his kid. And for reasons unknown to my mom then, he felt it was his duty to be in my life and not abandon either of us.

When the talk of names came, a million suggestions presented themselves. If I was a boy, I would have had my dad’s name. When they found out I was a girl, they picked out a name but that was later taken off the table as a suggestion because my cousin had been born five months before me and my uncle named her what would have been my name.

Back to the drawing board. There’s a movie called River’s Edge which stars a young Keanu Reeves. It’s about a group of high school friends; one of the guys murders his girlfriend and the rest of the group’s reaction is almost ambiguous as the crime itself. One of the female characters was named Clarissa (played by Ione Skye). They really liked that name. So it stuck. But my dad, wanting to be unique and different, changed the spelling. He replaced the C with a K and took out the S’s and replaced those with a Z. What he didn’t know then is I would live a lifetime of teachers, peers, doctors, etc mispronouncing my unique and beautiful name. For my middle name he just took out an L and called it good.

So thus I became to be Klariza Michele. It was easy for my very Mexican, Spanish speaking only grandmother to pronounce. The Z gave it that Spanish language flair and it suited me.

Then I got older… I disliked my name, it had too many syllables, teachers always got it wrong, I hated the way it was spelled… So when I was in middle school my mom and I (parents divorced when I was 6) had a roommate. This roommate was one of my mom’s good friend’s who just needed a boost up on to her own two feet. I loved her and love her still to this day. She called me Lissa. (Like Melissa without the Me.) I loved it. My dad, for years called me Liss. There was no rhyme or reason for why he did, but it stuck. So our roommate dubbed me Lissa and that, too, stuck through 8th grade and into freshman year. Freshman year, I swapped out the I for a Y and that, too, stuck. It’s still a name that most people know me by. Some people don’t even know that Lyssa isn’t my real name.

But now I’m at a point where I like my name. It’s unique and fitting to me again. I’ve never met another Klariza, spelled exactly like that.

A couple years ago I did some research and found a bunch of Klariza’s in the Philippines. Intrigued as to why all these Filipino-Spanish looking girls/women had my name, I Googled some information and found that Spain had invaded the Philippines back in the day and left behind traces of language, traditions, and culture. I was fascinated. All of a sudden I wanted to learn Tagalog. I researched the language. The fact that I was no longer a special snowflake did not even phase me, because out of all the millions of snowflakes in the world, they can’t possibly be ALL different, right?

I fell in love with my name for probably the first time in my life. That was roughly two years ago. People still know me by Lyssa, because that’s often how I introduce myself. But when I hear my real name, I’m elated and excited because of both the history behind it and because of the women who share my name. Although I may never meet any of them, I feel like we’re part of a secret society. And if I do ever meet another? I will hug her and we will develop a secret handshake and communicate in a way only we will understand.

Or at least I hope that’s what will happen. But realistically, they will probably be weirded out by my excited fan-girl-flail reaction.

The other thing about my name is other people’s ability to interpret it how they want. I have a dear friend, Mazzy, who spells my name Klaryzza. I think that makes it even more unique. Even though she can clearly see on Facebook that it’s not spelled that way, she says, “Fuck YOUR spelling, this is how *I* see it!” And that’s one of the many reasons why I love her.

I’ve come to have many names in my lifetime, and I own all of them. But my true name will always be most loved. It doesn’t matter what you call me, I will respond, and if you dare to ask me in person how I got my name you will get the same story as I just told you.

I may never find my birth name on any key chain, coffee mug, or any other souvenir, or ever find it in a Baby Name Dictionary, and I’m quite content with that. I like to think that my name means something more than what can be summed up in a definition. I’m many different things, and my definition changes often. I’d like to think that I’m living up to the definition of my name in whatever situation or whatever phase of life I’m currently in; so right now my name would mean something along the lines of “strong, independent women who drinks too much coffee, survivor and conqueror.” But you know, that may change tomorrow…

Hi, my name is Klariza. It’s nice to meet you.