Author Information
AND STILL, I DON'T KNOW...WHO I AM
Folder:
LYNN I stand,
Looking over this body,
Of a broken relationship…
Trying to find out not so much as to what happened…
But who “I” am…
SHE had my last name.
I’ve listed my new phone number under another name…
Yet as a writer…I do not want to become “a name” of one of my characters,
But have changed the name of my writings over to a pen name…
Something I used to do, but chose not to do anymore.
MY NAME IS WHO I AM.
I do not want to take another name for my photo processing accounts…
Nor another for an electric bill…
Nor another for my poetry…
Nor another for my art work…
Or to have to seriously think about these changes in legal terms….
To change to one “name” other than my own....
FOR REASONS OF JUST HAVING SANITY.
I understand, in my brokenness,
That all my surfaces are rubbed raw,
Entire emotions engulfed in tears,
Swelling my soul into a black eye of sorts.
I know the swelling will go down,
That this Post Traumatic Stress Disorder will subside,
But in the mean time,
My identity is in dis-array.
I have been a Chamaray, a Saxton, a Galonte, a Lovejoy, a Giovanni, a Valverdi…
And every other character I’ve wrote about…
Inter-weaving story plots with my life experience…
Leaving more of me behind…
And I do not want to take as much of my “characters” lives in.
My Father left my family…long ago…
As his “seed”, I find it foul to honor him now.
But she, my ex, made me feel proud…as she had taken my last name, willingly.
That somehow, there was honor and pride.
Yet, I will never ask that of another soul again…a name may be a name…
And in Shakespearean terms:
“Would a rose by any other name, not smell as sweet?”
I ponder the thought.
If a name is an esteem issue…perhaps not.
A name is a root, and if it is diseased, there will be no bloom.
My name connects me to generations…
Of businessmen,
Of farmers,
Of bankers,
Of Lawyers,
Of Doctors,
Of Engineers.
My name has fought
In the Revolutionary War,
In the Civil War,
In World War I,
In World War II,
In Korea,
And in Vietnam.
My last name is traceable back
To “Yarnall”, a Knight of King Arthur.
As the Grand-daughter of a Crawford, and Kreighford.
Through my ancestors eyes,
I have been at the Boston Tea Party,
And in the underground that channeled Jews out of Germany.
But most of all,
We have risen out of the ash…
Fighting for the Germans in World War II…
One Grandfather with the Third Reich, and the other, and American soldier…
We have rose above…
The bitterness of our Civil war moments…brothers who’ve battled on both sides…
And I have risen above my father…
Who wanted a son all his life, got one, and now cannot bring himself home.
They have been
The phoenix, the dove, and the hawk.
The republican, independent and the democrat.
The heinous and the joyful.
The old and the renewed.
Yet as I stand,
Looking at all these things…
I’m still standing by the graveside of this broken
Relationship…
Where my name has yet gone to another place and returned…
Uncertain still whether or not the "root" of MY name...
IS EVEN INTACT,
Will my branch under the same old name, make a bloom?
I do know...
History cannot make the person...
Your identity is not not marked by what is...
Behind you nor ahead of you...
And still I am left in my same pondering thought...
I still don't know...who I am.
