Random thoughts

I just got an email from Student Health about the Covid badges. It says that students can now have their preferred name, rather than their legal name, displayed on our clearance badges.

And I got to thinking, briefly because I'm in the lab.

If this acknowledgement of pronouns and names have been more prevalent (read: prevalent at all) 20-30 years ago, I would probably have changed my first name. And probably my last as well, while I was at it.

Whenever I thought about doing it, it seemed so flaky, so fastidious, and so, to be honest, self-indulgent.

And, most importantly, and perhaps the true reason I didn't: it would have felt like cheating. Getting rid of the Arab first and last names that define nothing of me, but have been a (tiny-ass-sorry-little-first-world) burden all these years would have felt good, because those names lie about my identity. But they are names that carry stigma and shedding them would have felt like... getting a free pass. My sister did, though of course, she lucked out in the name game with a first name that "passes" so when she took her husband's name, she was fine, with just one socially accepted change.

When I look back at the almost decade I spent in Tunisia, it's like a nightmare, a bad memory, with very few redeeming moments. My life shifted into focus when I moved to France. Not that that my life there was perfect, or without problems, but it felt like a life I was living, and in which I was growing. My time in Tunisia, was... I spent it trying to hold on to the bits and piece of me that kept on getting shattered by people. It's hard to explain, but when I look back, it feels like a void in personal growth. I mean, I grew up, and matured and all that, but all the growth was in response to negative experiences. I learned to hate my body, I learned to hate myself, I learned that I was not worth much of anything. So that identity as a so-called "Arab-American" is absolutely not anything I feel I have anything common with. Maybe I would have had I spent those years in the US. It's not a rejection of that identity as much as it is a sense that most of the experiences from my father's world hurt me. Not rejection as much as... you tried to squish me into dust. I did not let myself be squished. I will walk beyond you. We have nothing in common.

Another thing... My sister's first husband was Tunisian, which makes my born in Washington DC, grew up in the US for most of her life (except for a few years as a US ex-pat in Jordan) niece "3/4 Tunisian". And she identifies as both Arab-American and as a woman of color. My siblings and I just sorta look at her like... WTF, where did that come from? She isn't close to her dad (he pretty much abandoned her) so it isn't that, and one of these days I want to talk to her about where that sense of identity came from, because it certainly wasn't one she was brought up with, and it didn't appear until adulthood.

Anyhow, lots of random shit here. My first gel is running.