My Last Name

I never was okay with giving up my last name. That sounds resentful and I'm not. Not towards C or his family anyway - perhaps a little bit towards societal norms. I even like the sound and history behind his name better. By being married, I have the word BASH in my name and I think that's cool. Upon entering the social security office four months after we were married, I wasn't happy, but I had a plan. I was going to be Anne [middle name] + [current last name] + [C's last name]. There weren't blanks for that and I didn't ask or fight I just filled in Anne [middle name] [C's last name] and I lost my own last name. I've decided that I want it back. Not in a my-family-totally-rocks-more-than-your-family way, but because it is MY name.

I have made small stands since. Despite getting married a semester before I graduated from college, I insisted that my maiden name be on my diploma. Because {gosh darn it} I worked for three and a half years for this degree as a [insert maiden name] and I'll be damned if I'll graduate a [insert C's last name]. Any books I eventually write will be under my maiden name, or an alias if I'm not super proud of them. But I think that I need to reclaim my last name. One of these days I'll head back to the social security office and become Anne [maiden name] + [C's last name]. No hyphen, no mess. The children will not have hyphenated names either, they will be little bashes. I'm still considering using my maiden name as their middle names though; that is what C's mom did with her three boys. However, her maiden name was already a common boy's name and mine is not, so that is something to consider.

Sister B and I are/were the last ones with said name. Dad's father (Grandpa) had a daughter and a son and his son married my mom and had two girls. See the problem there? This is the discussion that I almost alienated my classmate over. He was arguing for the tradition that a woman in this society usually takes her husband's name. I don't necessarily disagree with that, as I myself did that very thing. I argue that his lineage potentially ending and him feeling he needs to keep it alive by passing his name to children is any more significant than my lineage ending and the same thing happening. I also argue the stereotypes that go along with a married woman who does not take her husband's name and the societal feeling in general that she just should. Why should my last name mean any less to me than a man's does to him? And why can't the majority of men understand that it has nothing to do with penis envy and everything to do with family and history, which we have just as much of as they do?

The rest of the world is just getting to me right now. I don't want to do this paper/presentation tonight for class because I've taken on a little more than I can handle. Work's been stressful and unrewarding. The results make me want to ask the sky what else can I do? I don't know where I'm at in the scheme of things and nothing is providing enough of a distraction. Living side by side with this thing is getting harder, but putting it before me is what I had been doing that created so much stress, and putting it behind me is akin to giving up.