A New Name

Printer-friendly version

Author: 

Audience Rating: 

Contests: 

Publication: 

Genre: 

Character Age: 

TG Themes: 

Other Keywords: 

Permission: 


A New Name...
by Andrea Lena DiMaggio



...The battle that was never waged for the sake of the war that still goes on...



New Jersey...Circa 1960

“Vito…leave her alone. Stop picking on her.” Mommy snapped at Daddy. Joann was already in tears over some unknown slight against my father. Vic was probably at Dean’s hanging out. And Jimmy was off playing in the bedroom. I sat there speechless watching the same old scene unfold. The music was already in a minor key, and the instruments had changed from horns to strings and an oboe; heralding a horror fest of usual proportion.

“Ah…come on…I wasn’t sayin’ anything. She just has to stop (fill in the offense) in (school, home, everywhere else).”

“I didn’t…” Joann hardly got past the first two words before my father would push away from the table angrily. My mother speculated years later that my father had grown to hate Joann because the older she got, the more she resembled his mother, who had abused him as a child.

“Vito…stop!” My mother shouted. She pulled Joann close to her and Joann cowered almost beneath her arms. My father picked up a steak knife and stepped towards them. I stepped between them and shook. Joann must have been eleven, which made me nine. We had a protocol of sorts, which all of us followed for the most part. Vic had grown to be almost uncaring, but not unfeeling. He kept to himself and hung with his friends, being sixteen and fairly independent, and feeling powerless to influence for the good at home. He joined the Air Force right out of High School.

Jimmy, a smart kid already at five, usually stayed away from the fray. He learned early on that crying only provokes more beating, so he didn’t cry…ever. He still doesn’t cry to this day.

Joann and I were the iconoclasts; we raised our little fists daily at the tyranny that Daddy had imposed, but since we were the most vocal, our punishment was the harshest. Joann wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of crying most of the time, reserving those painful expressions for the severest of beatings. I, on the other hand, would burst into tears at the sight of him putting his hand to his belt, which evoked a phrase all too often heard by us and maybe by some of you,

“You want to cry? I’ll give you something to cry about,” as if the first seventy-five beatings weren’t enough to provide him with sufficient reason to hit us hard enough to raise welts.

Joann was a survivor; she lasted nearly fifty-five years on sheer will power mixed with the overwhelming grace of God. Rape, molestation, beatings, humiliation; you name it; she beat it. And there I stood, trying to protect her and my mother.

* * * * *

Standing up for what’s fair and right and just and good about my gender identity…

“Helloooooooooooo?”

“Helloooooooooooo?”

“Echo…echo…”

“Echo…echo…”

Oh...yeah...that's right...it never happened.


Sparta, New Jersey, 2011

“Tell me, Drea…what would have happened to you if you told your Dad? I can’t imagine. You know what it was like back then? I’m about the same age as you.” She glanced down at herself quickly before continuing.

“My family was….we were pretty much okay…fairly well adjusted as kids, you know? And even I wonder how my mother would act or talk if I had come to them when I was fifteen and said, ‘Mom, I think I’m really a girl,’ you know.” She leaned closer in sympathy and sighed.

“Did you really have a choice back then? This was what…after all the other stuff? This came after the sexual abuse, right?” She shook her head; even with a brief description of what had been inflicted upon me and my sister, with very little of the ‘narrative’ omitted, she found it so painful for me. It was good to have an ally, even if she was there at the end of the battle, you know.

“So you feel guilty for neglecting Andrea…that’s right? Andrea?” We had only talked briefly about the name.

“Yes,” I tried not to cry. The past was always hanging around within striking distance, so to speak, and it was hovering just next to me on the couch.

“I’m named after him….my uncle. I hate my name. I always have and I never knew why until…”

“Until you started having memories?”

“Yes.” I bit my lip.

“No…feel the emotion…don’t feel bad about feeling…welcome…?” Her voice trailed off in question.

“Sadness,” I said, demonstrating as well as speaking the word.

“Feel the sadness…Welcome it. Put it in a place of safety and look at it, okay? What is it trying to say to you? What word comes to mind?”

After a few moments, I lifted my head off the back of the couch and began to weep.

“Regret…and guilt.” She shook her head in disbelief, not over the verity of the moment, but the depth of the pain.

“She….” I stumbled over the pronoun even as my heart was feeling like it bore a huge weight. I sobbed.

“She…she never got to live because….I was too afraid…I never….”

“And if you had? After all that, what would your father have done?”

“He would….”

I put my head back, searching for the right word to condemn my inaction on behalf of my guilt. I couldn’t…It was excruciating to learn that I had no choice. Shame over the neglect of my best friend after my sister and my wife….my self. Andrea… neglected for decades over the guilt of being unable to stand up to my father and stand up to my fucking uncle.

“Do you think? Would it be possible? Perhaps changing your name…maybe not legally, and of course not necessarily changing it to Andrea…at least not openly for now…” She emphasized the words ‘for now.’

“Andrew…” She put her head down; as empathetic as any counselor I have ever had, she shook her head and raised it. (If it were ethical and therapeutic, I do believe she would have cried along with me.)

“It must feel so painful…that your own name is a reminder of what you went through? What he did to you?”

“I feel so dirty when I think of my own name.” I tried so hard not to sob, but it was no use and I broke down once again, but quickly regained some focus and control.

“Maybe telling people about your new name might help you gain some strength? Regain some of the control you lost?” I shrugged my shoulders as if it were necessary right then and there to decide. She tilted her head.

“No….just a thought…something to think about. How are you right now?”

“I feel relieved…”

“Like a weight has been lifted?”

“Yes.” I was almost apologetic, like somehow it was wrong to be unburdened.

“I’m glad we’re working together. It’s a privilege for me to be able to help you. Will you be okay? Do you need time to contain?”

“No…I’m okay.”

I wasn’t lying, but it probably wasn’t exactly true, either. And she knew that anyway. And we both knew that while I wasn’t quite okay right then and there… I would be…

up
84 users have voted.
If you liked this post, you can leave a comment and/or a kudos! Click the "Thumbs Up!" button above to leave a Kudos

Comments

im so sorry hon

I ache for you, so much. I cannot give you any comfort except to remind you I love you, sister. Hugs and hugs and hugs.

"Let me succeed. If I cannot succeed let me be brave in the attempt." Pledge of the Special Olympics.

dorothycolleen

DogSig.png

Not sure what to think...

I'm not sure what to think about this effort... It sounds too real. I see that autobiographical flag up there. That makes it sound worse. :-(

Hopefully things are getting better for you.

Anne

"Drea! Go get help!" "WOOF!"

laika's picture

Wow. Exactly. You couldn't do much beyond what you did.
And all these years later feeling like you don't deserve to be free of the pain of what happened.
For abuse survivors shame often skulks around like a U-Boat beneath the waves, staying hidden, not letting us see
how it operates, popping up just long enough to scope out our most vulnerable point and send a torpedo its way.

So then this counsellor is like a trained spotter. "There! here it comes, launch depth charges of truth and healing-"

Uh, better abandon that simile before it gets silly, but this sounds like a productive session.
You don't have to be that name, that's not you. And she sounds like a real miracle worker.
Although then you'd have to change your name to Helen...

I think this would work as a story even for someone who wasn't hearing this stuff
from you elsewhere, a close up look at the process of recovery, the nuts + bolts of it.
~~warmest hugs, Veronica

.
The closest approximation to what it's like in my brain:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u08E7c-FRbU&t=4s

Thank you 'Drea,

ALISON

'for sharing yourself with us. It is so hard to relive the horrors of the past and even harder to unburden yourself to another
and then go in to print.It only confirms what we already knew,that Andrea is one very strong and very brave woman, who
deserves our love and affection.You already know that you have mine!

ALISON

Head Line...from somewhere out in Ya Ya land...

The really weird part is that in each case it's different yet always the same. The guilt, the pain, the shame, AND the self neglect. I have been most priviledged to watch your real transition, (the one that occurs inside) over the past couple of years. I couldn't be prouder to know you than if it was me. But the manner in which you choose to state this change exceeds even what I have come to expect from a 'Drea' writing. Love you to pieces!!!

Another entry in Drea's File!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Brat

P.S. Happy B-Day Gram...only one of us can get on-line till Monday or Tuesday. The net thing broke and you know you're in trouble when the guy says, in a thick brogue whilst scratching his chin; "Well...you see..."

well, fact is...

kristina l s's picture

... here, you are Drea, simple innit. Okay there's another reality where circumstance and life sit on another name but hey from what you've said recently a pinch of Drea can be shared there too. Pretty sure we all have guilts, the ol' whatifs that belt us about now and then. The trick is to try and acknowledge when it's stuff you can't control. Easier said of course but outside therapy they are best left to late night bitch and whine sessions with a friend and few drinks before you sigh and stumble off to bed and let it lie for now. Of course posting a 'story' here can have the same effect minus the headache. Take care.

Kristina

Since the time I was very little until I changed my name legally

I was always called Susan, Susie, or Sue by my closest friends. But when I was thinking of changing my name I was looking for a name that meant something of what I was going through. I looked through the baby name book several times at girls names and their meanings. Then I cam across the name Barbara.

Barbara is from the root word barbarian which means foreigner or traveler and that is what I am. While I am not foreign traveling in an emotional and mental feminine world, I am traveling in a foreign physical world. I changedmy name legally in a court of law dressed as Barbara in 1980.

I have never been ashamed of who I am, nor did I ever hide it from anyone. It caused me a lot of harm for a few years, but I came throug stronger and more determined.

When people ask me if I have ever been known by another name, I ask them nicely not to force me to mention it because it is so filthy and lower than the ground we walk on. When they press the matter, I just say I don't swear and I don't cuss. I have been trying to get my birth name expunged permanently, but I keep running in to a problem with the state of my birth. All of my official identification, including my passport is in my legal name of Barbara Lynn and I am also designated female. Why the states have to be so diffcultwith birth certificates is beyond my comprehension. But it is time we got our legislators to establish legislation that once a person's name is changed, the birth certificate must be changed accordingly. And if the name is a female name, the sex designation must also be changed. The only way we are going to get this legislation is if we all got together and demanded we be treated as the women (for M2F) and men (For F2M) that we are. NOW IS THE TIME TO ACT! NOW!!!!

"With confidence and forbearance, we will have the strength to move forward."

Love & hugs,
Barbara

"If I have to be this girl in me, Then I have the right to be."

"With confidence and forbearance, we will have the strength to move forward."

Love & hugs,
Barbara

"If I have to be this girl in me, Then I have the right to be."

A New Name

Andea, how I wish that I could help you by taking away your pain.

    Stanman
May Your Light Forever Shine
    Stanman
May Your Light Forever Shine

What a shame...

What a shame there isn't some magical big fat sponge to suck up all the pain and maybe explode scattering that pain into another universe where body-suited people could absorb it and become the makings of a good story.

Triona

“You want to cry? I’ll give you something to cry about,”

This piece has left me shaken. I have been sitting here reliving some of my own pain. You would think that at some point (I'm now 65) it would stop messing with my life, but it never goes completely away. By the age of five I had been determined not to cry. I would not give my mother the satisfaction. It only made the beating last longer and became more painful. I learned to turn off the pain, at least until out of sight. I wish we both could go back and change the past but all we can do is learn to make peace with it, let the pain out and go forward as best we can. Bless you for your ability to share the hard stuff. Thanks.

So Powerful! OMG! The first 2 times I read this...

Ole Ulfson's picture

I couldn't bring myself to comment. But Third time's the charm. I just felt your pain so deeply that all I could do was cry like the little girl I turned away from in my youth but whose ghost (how could someone who was never allowed to live be a ghost?) still lives with me and cries out at times like this. So painful to read and so necessary to hear. Our circumstances are so different and so alike.

All I can do is cry for you and love you, both the brave little girl you were and then and the wonderful woman you've become.

Ole

We are each exactly as God made us. God does not make mistakes!

Gender rights are the new civil rights!