Stories

What's in a Name?

I took the name Odysea shortly after I came out at age 34, because it was a time of profound change for me. Naming myself felt like an act of r/evolution.

Choosing A name: In some places in the world, people name themselves as part of a coming of age ritual. For me, choosing to become a lesbian, a womon-loving-womon, a womon-identified-womon, was about choosing to move into a new life. Naming myself, declaring that I was no longer the same person I had been, was a way of affirming that change. It was also a way for me to take a stance in rejecting the patrilineal tradition of naming only in relation to the father's lineage. Taking my mother's maiden name would have only continued her father's lineage. Having no last name removes me from that system. It isn't about rejecting my family, as some may think. It is more, for me, about being my own person. About not being who someone else thinks I am or "should" be. It is about defining myself.

Choosing THE name: Deciding on which name to take was fun. I tried on a number of them (and am grateful to family and friends who not only tolerated my process, but encouraged it) before I settled on "odyssey: a long journey with many changes of fortune." I wanted and needed to be reminded that everything changes. No matter how deep the rut may seem, it is illusory. No matter how good or bad anything feels, it will change. After choosing the name, I then began to try on different spellings. I settled on "odysea" because it includes the image of the ever-changing sea.

Into Insanity and Back Again

The week before I wrote this piece, I read a novel that had an abduction as a main piece of the story line. Within a few days of finishing the book, I began to have flashbacks about my own abduction. My mind spiraled and I felt crazy. One whole day I spent in bed, sleeping, hiding, crying. I nosedived into death wishes. I talked with friends, took extra st. johnswort, and rescue remedy. Then I spent most of one day writing the following:

Two months after leaving nursing school, at age 21, I was psychiatrically hospitalized for twelve weeks. The diagnosis: Adolescent Adjustment Disorder. I had decided to move in with a man, and my parents decided that I was crazy. They even convinced me.

Within six months of my discharge, I was kidnapped by a man I had been dating who pulled me out of a car with a knife at my throat and passed me around for his friends to use for three days and three nights.

I didn't report this incident to the police, because I believed that I was at fault and had somehow caused these men to act as they had. I was still seeing a psychiatrist at the time, and during my next appointment, two days after my escape from my captors, I told him what had happened. He listened quietly during the telling, and when I was finished he said: "Your time is up for this week. I would like you to think about why you let this happen to you and we will talk about it again next week". I never brought it up with him again and told no one else what had happened for 15 years.

Although I continued to date men for the next 13 years, I also began to learn about feminism. I read about 6000 years of oppression. I learned that nine million womyn were burned as witches. I learned that the origin of the word, "witch" is "wicca: wise womon".

I saw the ways I had been taught to dislike womyn and realized that I disassociated myself from other womyn: I had often been told by men that I was "not like other womyn". Now I began to see how I had bought into the misogyny of the world and how I had turned it inward to the point that I did not like myself, either.

It became clear to me that my focus had been pleasing men. I dressed for them, believed that their view of the world was the correct view, valued only their perspective on 'reality', whatever reality that might encompass. At some point, I decided to give womyn equal time in my life and, not one to do things halfway, decided to be a lesbian.

I attended a number of womyn's cultural festivals, where I began to hear about the issues of violence against womyn. When I heard about the first "Take Back The Night" march and rally, I decided that I wanted to bring that awareness and information to my community, which at the time was St. Louis, Missouri. It was during the organizing of that event that I finally began to understand and name what had happened to me all those years before.

I have included this story to give some idea of why the issue of sanity is an important one to me. I have found myself in 'insane' situations many times in my life. Having a safe haven is essential to my wellbeing.

After writing and posting this story, I felt very vulnerable. I wasn't at all sure I wanted to leave it here on my webpage. And I began to get feedback about it from various friends. One friend felt protective of me. Several gave me praise for my courage to put myself out there in this way. With another friend I had insightful discussions about the victim mentality.

I began to be able to watch my process, to step back a bit and look at how I was being. For many days, I was immersed in my past and what had been done to me. I wasn't sure I could resurface into feeling sane.

I've been listening to tapes of Pema Chodron's workshop on compassion, and at some point on one of them she spoke of an experience of being in a very painful place in her life and of feeling hopeless and helpless. It was as though she was standing beside me describing the place I was in. Then she spoke of saying to herself, "who cares?" And she sort of laughed. And her audience laughed with her. And I laughed, too. The spell was broken. I was whole again. Those words brought me back to the present.