Violet or Red

You were born on National Maple Syrup Day. Your mother names you Alcyone (pronounced AL-SEE-OWN-EE) because Alcyone means calm. It’s a cruel, unfitting choice given your family’s history of anxiety. You wish your name were something simple and easy-to-say, like Hannah.

By the time you turn nineteen, you've grown tired of constantly having to correct people. It’s Al-see-own-ee, you tell them on the days you have more confidence than usual, but they don’t hear you, and if they do hear you, they forget. As far as they’re concerned, you are Alison. Sometimes Alimony. As time goes on, you accept your fate as this Alison-slash-Alimony person and reason to yourself that your anxiety makes it difficult to correct people anyway. Plus, correcting others is rude, as your mother always told you, even though she had no issue correcting you herself—your wilted-flower posture, your questionable taste in clothing. 

It's not until your philosophy professor mispronounces your name on your twentieth birthday in front of 235 other students that you think about what this all means. Perhaps you are not important enough—not worthy of someone taking the time out of their day to string four little syllables together. Instead, they butcher your birth-given vowels like rotten cuts of meat, and you sit there, nodding along as if this is who you are.  

If you decide to start going by Hannah, go to A

If you decide to keep going by Alcyone, go to B

________________________

A

It takes some time to get used to the name Hannah. Like a new, stiff shoe, you work hard to break in the vowels—strange and foreign to your ears and tongue—until your new name becomes second nature. Now when people call you Hannah, you turn around. The name flows easily from their tongue, and it’s as easy for them as saying the word apple or tomorrow.

You tell yourself it was for the best—changing your name and all. Your name was too sacred for you to let other people butcher. Every time they twisted it, choking on the vowels like hard pieces of candy, it sounded like worms and toads coming from their mouths. You were only trying to save them.

Besides, while you may be anxious, you’re also practical. No matter how hard you tried to get people to say Alcyone, you’d never succeed. This way, everyone is happy, and no one can change your name ever again. You chose to be Hannah. You’ve always wanted to be Hannah, and now you are. This is completely your own doing. 

The next time you’re in philosophy, you’re learning about Kierkegaard’s Either/Or. Your professor takes an entire semester to explain it, even though it can be distilled to a few simple facts in a matter of seconds. 

1.     No matter what you choose, you will regret it. 

2.     We’re trapped in a bind of what Kierkegaard calls double regret.

That same year, you meet Sam, and you soon become Sam and Hannah. He says he’s always loved the name Hannah, and you wonder what would’ve happened had you still gone by Alcyone. Something about being Hannah makes you more confident and alluring. It’s like wearing a stranger’s skin—a stranger who happens to be more beautiful, more vocal than Alcyone ever could be.

Six months in, you decide it’s time to tell him the truth. That your name is Alcyone. You reveal the secret name to him slowly and carefully like a big, ugly scar or an incurable STI. 

To your disgust, he laughs and says he understands why you changed your name. He understands, a word that normally brings you comfort. He likes Hannah way more, he adds. 

If you’re being honest with yourself, you’re not completely crazy about him. You never were. In those moments of doubt you convince yourself that feelings grow—like plants—and that eventually you will feel something. There is something there, after all. It’s not like there is absolutely nothing. But still, by the time he proposes to you in the middle of a busy food court four years later, that stale, dry feeling is still there. 

You look at him, kneeling in front of a Hot Dog on a Stick, and think. Everyone is watching you. That anxiety, that doubt creeps back up on you, wrenching your stomach like a dirty wet mop.

If you decide to say yes, go to C.

If you to say no, go to D. 

________________________

B

You’ve resigned to going by whatever people wish to call you. Alison. Alimony. It makes the few people who actually do take the time to correctly call you Alcyone even more special to you. It weeds out the phonetically careless and narrows it down to the small circle of people who take the time to call you what you are, even when you insist it is not worth their effort. 

The next time you’re in philosophy, you’re learning about Kierkegaard’s Either/Or. Your professor takes an entire semester to explain it, even though it can be distilled to a few simple facts in a matter of seconds. 

1.     No matter what you choose, you will regret it. 

2.     We’re trapped in a bind of what Kierkegaard calls double regret.

One day that year, you meet Cody. He is part of your study group and asks you if your name is really Alimony. You say no and teach him your name. It normally takes about a semester to teach people how to say it, but for him, it takes seconds. In class and everywhere else, he is louder than you and talks more. When people say your name wrong, he tells them, self-assured, “It’s Al-see-own-ee.” 

Two years later, he proposes to you when you're alone, sitting on your couch, because he knows you hate it when too many people look at you at once, but more than anything, he knows your name is Al-see-own-ee.

If you decide to say yes, go to G. 

If you decide to say no, go to D. 

________________________

C

As the years go by, you wonder if this was the right decision. You tell yourself it that it was, yet you feel nothing for this person. In those moments you try to remind yourself of Kierkegaard. Had you married him, you’d regret it. Had you not married him, you’d regret it. You reason you made the right decision by marrying because now you are not alone and you will have babies and everyone, especially you, as you keep telling yourself, will be happy. 

But not even marriage is permanent, and as you hear him from across your home, making loud, vile bathroom noises with every orifice in his body, you question if he is worth it.

If you decide to divorce him, go to D.

If you decide to stay with him, go to H.

________________________

D

For whatever unknown reason, you miss him—even ten, twenty years later. The more time that goes by, the easier it is to forget why you left. 

You had your reasons at the time, but you've forgotten them. Now you are alone, but at least there are now fewer people in your life to call you the wrong name. You've always done well alone, anyway, but as the years go by, it becomes more difficult.

If you decide to meet new people, go to E.

If you decide to focus on yourself, go to F.

________________________

E

When you meet Ben, you're surprised how well he takes the news that your name is not actually Hannah. He thinks it's "cool" and only calls you it when he has something important to say.

"Alcyone," he says to you one day. "I can't be with you anymore."

Go to F.

________________________

F

In your newfound free time, you spend most of your days shopping. Eventually, you shop your life away, but this is what makes you happy--sorting through racks mindlessly, careful not to make the hangers screech.

Once you turn eighty-two, your body isn't what it used to be, but that questionable taste in clothing your mother always criticized you for is still alive and well.

One evening you find a dress, a form-fitting V-neck that compensates for its upper-half sluttiness by covering ninety percent of your legs. The dress comes in both violet and red.

If you choose the violet dress, go to I.

If you choose the red dress, to go J.

_______________________

G

Something isn't right. There are unusual charges on your joint credit card, and Cody has, for the first time in the thirty-six years you've been together, invested in new clothes and a nose hair trimmer.

You know what is happening and are grateful you named the daughter you had together Rose--because sometimes, when you have a difficult name and not a simple one, you're too easily impressed when someone does as little as saying it right.

You decide to leave him. You'd rather be called the wrong name a million times over.

Go to D.

_______________________

H

One day the bathroom noises stop. You wonder if you're a bad person for feeling grateful he has passed before you.

Go to F.

_______________________

I

You pass away on Christopher Columbus Day. You'd confided in the nurse at your bedside your regrets and had told her you have many. You have an open casket service, and your family has dressed your corpse in your favorite violet dress.

_______________________

J

You pass away on Christopher Columbus Day. You'd confided in the nurse at your bedside your regrets and had told her you have many. You have an open casket service, and your family has dressed your corpse in your favorite red dress.