Names

Growing up, she hated her name. Everyone asked if it was short for another- it was not- and then, as she patiently spelled it out for the dimwitted fools, almost always proceeded to misspell it. Her own cousin left out the crucial letter 'E' on her birthday cards for at least six consecutive years.

It wasn't always to be hers, the name. Her mother's sister had loved the name, dedicated to her recently-deceased father, and reserved it for her first daughter, though the child wasn't born for nearly two more years. Her mother stole it from her sister. No hard feeling, right?

She recently rediscovered her middle name, and now tends to use it obsessively, her poison of choice in a drug-addicted world, except that her middle name isn't harmful to herself or to others surrounding her. But, as long as her two names are put together, her name just isn't that ugly monster it once was.