What's in a Name?

When I was a kid, I had two nearly all-consuming phobias. One was of the dark. I couldn't STAND that dark. It freaked me the hell out. I remember once, when I was very young (four or five years old?) we were visiting my grandfather's house. I'm from NYC, where it's NEVER all that dark, but he lived outside of a small town in New Hampshire - VERY dark. I was sleeping in the basement with my brother and my mom in nearby beds, and I was absolutely petrified with fear, but I was afraid to tell anyone. I was convinced that in the inky darkness, through which I couldn't see, there was a panther that had opened up the storm doors nearby and was stalking me. Only by telling myself that the panther couldn't see me unless I opened my eyes did I force myself to lie down, close my eyes, and try to sleep. But sleep was a long time coming. Nightlights became mandatory, or at home, the hall light had to be on (outside the room I shared with my mom). My second phobia was both scarier and worse, and it started at about the same time - though it persisted even as I started getting over the darkness phobia. I was afraid of death. I used to have nightmares in which the skeletons of my parents would dance around me and there was nothing I could do. As I got older, the dreams got more common, and I started to be afraid to go to sleep, and over time it developed in to fairly bad insomnia. It came and went, of course, but when it was bad it was REALLY bad. My mother used to let me stay up late and stuff me full of Sleepy Time tea to calm me down, and that often helped, but when I'd spend summers at my grandfather it was more problematic. Finally, when I was 10 or so (it was either the summer after 5th, 6th or 7th grade...I think 6th...) it started to get unmanageable. I was so afraid to go asleep that I would just sit on the bed in the dark (with a nightlight, and no longer in the basement!) and rock back and forth and cry. Poppop was, of course, worried about me. One night I woke up in the middle of the night after a nightmare, and had a full-blown panic attack. Poppop came in, and calmed me down, and promised me that the next day, we would go in to town and we would find me a guardian.

We ended up at a mall with quirky local shops. We didn't have much luck at first, but finally, tucked away on the second floor in a place that I remember mostly having furniture, we suddenly found it: a wolf, about two feet tall, his mouth open to howl. I knew he was the one, but he was $65 and I felt REALLY guilty asking for him. But Poppop didn't even hesitate, and the wolf went home with us. When we got back to his place, he went digging out the bookshelves and pulled out a book for me: bible names and their meanings. "Why don't you find a good name for your wolf?" Poppop suggested to me. So I diligently sat down on his bed with the book and paged through. I ended up with three or four names, but I only remember the one I ended up picking: Hezekiah. The book said it meant "fortress." That was what I needed, I thought: something that would protect me, and give me strength, and keep the bad things out while I was sleeping inside. It was decided, and he was promptly nicknamed Hez. Yet I was nervous: would this work? I wasn't a little kid any more - I knew that there was no Santa Claus, and I knew all my swear words and what they meant, and I knew that dolls were just dolls, they didn't DO anything. As night came, I got more and more scared. It wasn't going to work! It was just a doll! All the things that scared me would still be waiting when I closed my eyes.

I got in to bed, and Poppop put Hez in my arms, and turned off the light. The scary things started immediately, but I closed my eyes, and held Hez close, and thought, "Hez will protect me." I thought it over and over again, concentrated on that thought...and everything else fell away. The only thing in there was, "Hez will protect me." And that night, I slept.

I slept with my fortress every night until my senior year of high school. At that point, I decided that college kids don't sleep with dolls, so I weaned myself into sleeping with a pillow instead - but Hez was never far. I brought him to school with me, and in my junior year of college when things started getting rough with my boyfriend in ways that I didn't really understand, I started sleeping with Hez again, and continued until I was in graduate school and I'd broken up with said boyfriend. The only reason I stopped was that when my dog was a puppy I used to close her in my room. Puppy on the floor, Hez on the bed. I got home from work to find that Jonie had ripped Hez' sad, worn leather nose to shreds - her first act of destruction after she started teething. I was VERY upset but there was nothing to be done, and I carefully put Hez in a place she couldn't reach him and went back to sleeping with a pillow. I STILL sleep with a pillow. And I still need to fix Hez' nose.


Not the best pic, but the only one I have - Hez is up in the upper left hand corner.

So, why talk about all this now?

I need a new name. There is this person in my head - I know it's me, yet at the same time, it's NOT me - a voice who produces so many mean things that I sometimes can hardly even face my own criticism. When I describe this to other people, such as in posts in this blog, I keep saying things like, "my brain then said..." or "my inner demon." But none of that feels right. My therapist calls this voice "the brother in my head," after the unavoidable conclusion that the voice reflects an internalization of the things that my brother used to say to me when we were kids. He was very verbally abusive, and used to call me stupid and pathetic. But I can't call it my brother - for better or for worse, he and I are adults now and we actually do have a relationship, and not a bad one all things considered, and it gets better every year and I want to continue that. Heck, I'm staying at his house starting tomorrow night, and when I touched base with him by text earlier, he mentioned potentially going out and visiting William T. Sherman's house with me - he knows that Sherman is my personal hero - which is to say, he does care about me, and cares about what I'm interested in only because I'm interested in it, and I care about him, and it's not been easy but we've REALLY worked at it, and so I don't want to make that voice be him if it means villainizing him after all we've tried to overcome.

What I realized a few days ago was...that voice needs a name!

I don't have my grandfather any longer - he died last August - and I don't have a book of bible names, but I do have the internet. So I've wondered over to unusual biblical names. Hmm...Abishag, it means "father of error" or "blundering" - that seems appropriately derogatory for an internal monologue that's always putting me down. Achaia, Achaicus, Achan, Achor, Jachan, all mean "trouble" or something similar. This one I like a lot: Achzib, which means "deceit." Akkub - insidious. Amasa, Massa - burden. Buzi - contempt. Chozeba - falsehood. Chushanrishathaim - twice-wicked Cushan (which means "darkness"). Eshek - oppressor. Hagab - locust. Hareph - reproachful. Ikkesh - twisted. Ishbosheth - man of shame. Kelaiah - insignificant. Maachah - oppression. Maalehacrabbim - hill of scorpions. Mahli, Mahlon - sick. Merari - sad or bitter. Phaseah - lame. Shephuphan, Shupham, Shuppim - serpent. Ulam - solitary.

Hmm...well, I think I need to sleep on this, but from the moment I read it, I've been leaning heavily towards Chushanrishathaim. I could call it Cushan for short. Darkness seems very appropriate for me, given my childhood phobias (which still, on rare occasions, give me trouble). Chushanrishathaim.

On a much lighter note, I also found Zemaraim. It means "double fleece of wool." I loled.