Hadley...

It is the name I would pick if I were inclined to change my name.  Not that I don’t like Erin, it is a good name and I think I have done it justice.  However, this other person that I seem to want to be is this woman Hadley...she has an accent.  She gives no fucks.  And at the very same time, she is capable of such depth and intimacy.  She loves with her whole being, unapologetically, while never, ever losing who she is in the loving process.

I will also own that I have long loved the name because she was Hemingway’s first wife and the love of his life.  Oh, to be the subject of novels and prose!  So romantic.  I mean, and it is kind of fitting for my own love life...a deep and abiding love that is toxic and betrayed...this tracks.  I am a sucker for a lovelorn and lost love story.  I am a pretty upbeat person, but I destroy myself on tragic loves gone awry, repeatedly.

So if I could select another name, it would be this.  Hadley.  It means field of heather.  Which doesn’t really apply to me at all.  Not even a little, but nevertheless, I love the name.

And perhaps more importantly, I love the alter ego I have assigned her.  This brilliant, ex-patriot beauty captivating and owning the heart of a brilliantly flawed men.  Fuck, if I haven’t been there before...except they were no Hemingway.

I know I can change my name.  I know I could become this alter ego if I so chose.  And once upon a time, I would have jumped at the chance to become any one other than me.  But I have done a lot of fucking work in the intervening years.  And today, Hadley personage aside, I am pretty content being me.  I can feel my evolution on a soul level, daily.  I am pretty sure the hard charging, drinking and loving Hadley would have a hard time with the trajectory of my life.  And I with hers.  My old life looked a lot like hers maybe, and it almost killed me.

I guess it is a good day when you can have the ideal of some other person you might be and can come into a place where you are not interested in that anymore.  No more shapeshifting into non-existence.  A ghost in your own life.  It is nice to have finally arrived at a place where all the divergent and differential parts of me can find solace, comfort and a home within the skin I am in.  I do not need to be Hadley to have the experience of being ballsy and full of moxie.  I can just be me, channelling my inner Hadley.  It has taken me a long time to settle into who I truly am and what I want and how I can show up and how I fail to.  And it has been worth all the pain and anguish and hardship.  I really have found that hardship is the pathway to peace.

And I have also learned a name doesn’t make a person.  I would be no better or worse if I had a different name.  I would just be called something else.  And after a life time of trying to make peace with myself, it feels like a not so subtle violence to me, to try to become anything I am not.  And I am not, Hadley.

It is a moment of amazing growth when you realize you are ok as you are, living the life you have, the skin you are in, the name you are called, and the place you live.  All is acceptable and good and right.  And none of it needs to be altered or changed, but nevertheless it shall be. Because all things come to pass, and love stories with famous writers are never what they are cracked up to be.  I tend to think of how much love was shared, and fail to acknowledge how much love was wasted on the shores of addiction and suffering.  I get that, I really do.

Today, I am grateful to be me.  Name and all.  And I would not choose a different path, or life, or name or anything else.  I am very content, loving and living this life that is all mine.

Again, still.