This blog is mostly religious. I can't help it. My "official" religion was a defining aspect of my life, up until I left it, and has been at the root of much of my life trauma since then.
Trauma. That's a strong word.
Well, wrestling with damnation, for a once believer, IS traumatic. Unlearning a lifetime's worth of biases and bigotry is also rather difficult. (Yes, that's very nice if Mormonism never made you a bigot, but it absolutely made me one.) It's been traumatic to wrestle with what was once a well-defined afterlife, and having to form my own beliefs about it. Trust me, the day I realized I didn't believe I would be "twinkled" at a Second Coming was a tearful dance with the reality of my own eventual death - the kind of harsh awakening that most 8-year-olds go through, but which I never did, well into my thirties.
I don't experience "trauma" much anymore. I'm grateful for that. Things have settled down into a happy place of having my own answers - my own beliefs, values, and relationship with whatever power, or "God," exists outside of myself. I am at peace.
It's been quite the road, though.
It's been a journey of 1,000 "coming out"s - of speaking the truths of who I am and what I feel and believe. I've been grateful to have a supportive, loving husband along for the journey, with me, who has done his own deconstruction as well. I hear solitary deconstruction is a real bugger. Dodged that one.
I finished painting the first coat on all of the downstairs hallway walls, this afternoon, and found myself washing out my brushes in hot water at the sink, the sound of the baby monitor humming quietly away next to me. Olive sat in the windowsill in front of me, watching.
"What a good cat." I thought to myself, as all cat owners do. I wondered at her quiet strength, her hunting skills, her panicked, desperate cuddles for love, each morning, her introverted nature, and the way she loves my baby. "She'd make a great little Familiar."
I'll draw a card on that one, later. She's still a baby.
Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn't have named her Hazel, or Hecate. Baba Yaga was in the running too. So sometimes I DO accidentally slip up and call her the wrong name. Her sister has always been Alice. But my little Olive sometimes shows the lonely wisdom of a Hazel. (See - Watership Down.)
I've never been opposed to name changing, though for the cat's sake, we'll save "Hazel" for the moments I feel it suits her best. Or just whenever I screw up.
Because it happens. People screw up on my name all the time. I started going by "Murphy" months ago. But "Grace" still happens - often, even in my own head.
Why would someone go from the perfectly good name "Grace" to the name "Murphy"? I have a perfectly good middle name - Katherine. My mom still calls me "Kate," from it. I could have been Kat. I could have been Kathy.
I could have been HAZEL! (It was in the running. I do love that name. Thank the rabbits.) I could have been Cleo. I could have been Ana, or Carol, or Edna, or Meghan, or Deborah. Of all of the names, the wide world over, why Murphy?
I remember being in elementary or middle school, suggesting changing my name to my mother. What did I pick at the time? Tarren. It didn't stick, and I was so embarrassed by anyone's lack of trying that I never suggested anything of the sort again. But I never did like the name Grace.
Grace was a girl in pigtails. Grace wore pink, with curls in her hair. I never was a Grace.
I jokingly suggested Justice to my mother. But no.
I was more interested in pixie cuts, leather, and debating people with confidence. But that was something about myself that didn't quite fit what a girl "was." My friends were interested in their hair, in their skin, and were great at being "demure" for the boys. But I would rather be dead than demure.
A kid called me a "lesbian" on the bus. Bullying, and some such. But as a good Mormon, that hit me. Was I? I'd never felt like I fit in with the other girls. Was I a lesbian then? Hormones convinced me otherwise. And Sean Bean. Wowza. I was not a lesbian. But I didn't fit.
I knew this because I was a girl. I knew that because of my gender. As a good Mormon, I knew that my gender "was established before [I] was born into mortality, and [was] an essential characteristic of [my] eternal identity." And also, thanks to the Family Proclamation, I knew that, due to this eternal identity, I was supposed to play second fiddle for eternity, as my husband would "preside."
I was not, and have never been content playing second fiddle. I knew that THAT was in my nature. It had always been. Maybe I was just a tomboy, which seemed acceptable to be, in Mormon culture... But I didn't like sports, and I wasn't particularly good with my hands.
"Grace" was a name that was far too feminine. It played much too much for the "girl" team, and, thanks to my religious upbringing, "girls" were something I associated as being weak. "Girly-ness" is not inherently bad, but as it was forced upon me, as an impossible standard for myself to live, it was easier to despise it. Unfortunately, "feminists" were frowned upon, by those of religious authority, as they dared believe women were equal, so I could not "really" be one of those, though, either.
I was also the best damned Mormon you'd ever met, so this feeling of not having a place within my own prescribed gender was a personal failing, on my part. Mormon culture taught me that "girls" were one specific thing, which, intrinsically, I knew I did not fit. We had leadership quoting things like, "We have enough women who are tough; we need women who are tender." It felt like a rejection of who I was - that I was flawed, and unacceptable.
Being free of the church is a blessing. I get to look back on anchor-less me, and call it what it is.
Gender is a social construct. Conservative gender constructs are NOT one size fits all. (As a fat woman, I KNOW that one size does NOT fit all.) I was raised in a culture that taught me that "girls" were helpmeets, were support staff to the men in the family, and that was the identity they should be happy with.
If I had remained in Utah as a member of the church, I believe I eventually would have come out as Gender Queer - a Demigirl. I managed to escape that culture with all its pervasive gender constructs, however, and getting away from the church has allowed me to redefine what it means to be a "woman" for myself - and all the kick-assery that womanhood entails.
I'm still "figuring this out," for myself. But I'm figuring it out for myself, as Murphy. Because gender is STILL a social construct, and there are ways that I still feel like I will never quite "fit in." Choosing to move our family to Missouri, I knew this was my chance to finally change my name to something that fit my soul a little better, androgynous as it may sound.
The added bonus is that on resumes, it's not immediately clear if I'm a boy or a girl. And with sexism being the problem that it STILL is, I prefer it that way.
