I wrote this for my facebook.
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Caroline was born December 31st, 1992 at 1:25 PM at Grant Medical Center. When she was 15, she worked at a restaurant serving only to homeless people for a week in Toronto.
At this point, you're probably wondering why I'm talking about myself in the third person. No, it's not my new "thing"; if I were seeking to be annoying, I'd like to think I'd be a little more creative and original. I am referring to myself this way because "Caroline" is not me. I am Carrie. Not Caroline.
It is three weeks into my senior year, and my Ecology teacher still hasn't quite figured this out. One of the many unfortunate things about the public school system is that one finds themselves tethered to their legal names, left to awkwardly correct 8 new teachers every year as they take attendance. Some catch on quicker than others. Obviously, my Ecology teacher is not one of them - telling him "It's Carrie" multiple times with a progressively more pronounced tone of annoyance and replying "Oh, you mean me...?" when he calls on "Caroline" to answer a question is only just now garnering success. Of course, this is the least of my complaints about my Ecology class - but that's a topic for another day, and not one for the public world of facebook.
I can't truly complain about this, though. After all, the previous school year - my first passing through the gears and spokes of the Central High machine - everyone knew me as Caroline. Teachers, for certain, and the vast majority of all of my peers. The only ones who knew to call me by my shortened name were people I had directly introduced myself to. There were pros and cons to my complacency in regards to what I was called; on the one hand, I saved myself the trouble of drawing attention to myself by requesting teachers cross out the name on their roster and replace it. On the other, it left me open to hearing my classmates' renditions of "Roses" by Outkast, regardless of their actual feelings towards me.
For the most part, I was content to use my legal name because I cared very little for my identity that first year of public schooling. I was trying to keep my expectations realistic. If I could make it through the year with good friends, without being peer pressured into something idiotic and immoral, I would be pretty content. I didn't care if people really knew who I was. It didn't really matter if they knew any name to attach to me. And I was there to secure my future, not to make friends, so that didn't matter either - such was my claim.
In light of this attitude, I sort of sleepwalked my way through Junior year. Only a few teachers knew to call me by my real name, and I had about 3 friends at school, at best; but my teachers adored me, my grades were stellar, my GPA was excellent, and I never turned in anything late. I was a model student minus any of the involvement, passion for non-curricular activities, or identity that I left behind with my true name. I showed up to help with the school magazine twice, and decided it wasn't for me; besides that, considering that I rarely found my schoolwork difficult, merely tedious, I was actually only doing the minimum of what I could.
Why does a name matter? Obviously, I'm the same person no matter what I'm called, just as a tennis shoe and a sneaker are the same item. However, what I instruct or don't instruct people to call me reflects my attitude and the value I place on who I am. Our names carry with them our life experiences; "Caroline", as described in the first paragraph, is a title for paperwork, fine print, irrelevant legalities. She is not a person with life experience. She was born, she got a state ID, she got vaccinations, she was a waitress, she enrolled in high school. She is not a person who has experienced good and bad, made decisions both wise and horrible, hurt others and been hurt, developed any interests or passions. She has not lived a life and become a personality, a set of beliefs, prejudices, and interests. I, however - Carrie - have. And although I've certainly made mistakes, I have no interest in truly reinventing myself. No one truly can, anyway, not without technology to erase memories that we've not yet invented. Our past will always impact who we are.
So now, I insist on being called by my real name, because this year, and from here on, I've resolved to be who I am. I'm not interested in continuing to live my life as a blank slate. I'm not going to go through the motions anymore; leave that to Caroline.
