Identity - Personal Essay

The following work was originally published in the 2018 anthology North Carolina's Emerging Writers: An Anthology of Nonfiction from Z Publishing.

Identity

By Lydia Plantamura

In grade school, teachers can’t get my name right. They forget my name but remember the L. They guess common names like Lindsey and Lauren. Sometimes they read my name too quickly and say Lynda. I hate the name Lynda. I am not Lynda.

When I was seven, I hated my name. I wanted a normal name like Ashley or Brittany. It didn’t help having a foreign last name that rolled on for ten letters. Why did I have to be so different?

A few days before I started middle school, my mother told me, if I wanted to, I could start going by my middle name. I liked my middle name: Elise. I liked how the letters descend and the way it ended in a whisper. But I forgot when people called me by it. It felt strange. It felt like pretending. It felt like lying. It didn’t feel like me.

Sometimes I wondered about the kind of a person Elise would be. Would she be more popular? More athletic? More studious? Maybe Elise was nothing like me. Maybe she never got in trouble. Maybe she was better. Elise seems like a goody-two-shoes. I am not Elise.

In my seventh grade class, there were two boys named Michael Johnson. Both of them went by Mike. The teacher and classmates used middle names to specify which Mike. One was Calvin, and I can’t remember what the middle name was, but he’s the one I kissed on the bus—or was it the other Mike?

While filling out college applications, my mom tells me a story. When I was born, a neighbor called to congratulate my parents. She asked what they named me. My mother told her: Lydia Elise Plantamura. “That sounds like a writer,” she said.

My professor gives us an assignment. He wants us to google our names.

“Write about what you find,” he says.

I think I know what I will find: Myself.

But I am wrong. There is one other woman on Facebook with my name: Lydia Plantamura. She is in her 60s and lives in New York. Her profile picture is of a smiling lady with a baby in her arms. I wonder about the other Lydia—Is she a mother? A wife? A teacher?—Her middle initial is O. Not E.

I search for Elise Plantamura and find myself.

Get a copy of the publication here: North Carolina's Emerging Writers: An Anthology of Nonfiction