I found this file when I was transferring my documents to my new laptop. I believe this was an assignment for an English class, as it’s dated 25 May, 2005. ‘Tis only here for archiving purposes, but if you want to comment, feel free to leave a review. Stylistically, it sucks, but this was one of my first pieces of prose.

Really, if you want to read something good, look at some of my poetry.

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They named me Cristina. I can picture Mum lying on her bed on that warm September night, holding me in her arms. And I can see her kissing my brow and smiling, then cursing me with a name that traps me like the sickeningly white walls of the hospital, where they say I’ll end up one day if I keep acting the way I do.

Mum says it was Dad’s idea to give me my name. Cristina – as common as a withered garden weed, as dull as a rust-coloured, poorly-painted sunset. But my life is not painted on a canvas. It never has been, though sometimes it feels that way.

In Spanish, my name means “Christian.” Cristina means conformity, pretending, and a dusty, barren desert valley with mountains rising high into the azure sky: mountains set there by those who say they love me. My name is foreboding, bare, and plain. No, no hope here, just a lifetime of conformity and sorrow.

My life was once hopeless and desolate, it is true. The boy who abused me left me alone in despair almost three years ago. That was my desert. That was when I lost hope. That was the only time I felt comforted by my dismal name.

My parents always say they gave me my name for a reason. We want you to be a respectable woman, they say, an intelligent young woman with morals. They want me to be someone I am not. I cannot be who they wish for me to be. I cannot change the way I think or who I’ve become, nor can I capture my spirit and leave it to die in a cage with the animals.

I do not like my name, I reply, it is not me. But they only laugh and tell me to finish my supper.

Sulindien, I whisper to myself, someday my name will be Sulindien. It means “maiden of the wind” in Elvish, a symbol of the spirit I wish I could liberate in my parents’ presence. Sulindien. It is a beautiful name.

One day I will go into the depths of my soul with a paintbrush in hand. I will paint over the dusty reds with hues of blue and green until it is too late to erase the strokes of colour. Sulindien, I will sign it, not Cristina. That was not me. It never was. In my heart, I have never been Cristina.

Cristina, my mother will scream, what do you think you are doing?

But I will not answer. I will continue to paint until the desert becomes a tranquil ocean and all my memories are covered by the soft blues and greens.