Stranger Than Fiction, 15

1995 was a year of more change.  We had a new housemate, whom I will call the Very Nice Young Man, or, VNYM.  Dopey became known as "She Who Must Be Obeyed" and I was "I Have Spoken."  VNYM was a huge improvement over the previous guy and we all more or less got on well, though I was really getting weary of being Dopey's manservant.  VNYM at least helped pick up the slack and I came to value and appreciate his support.  I did almost all the grocery shopping (my other nickname was the Grocery Slut) and (on my meagre earnings at work) paid for the majority of the food with help from VNYM.  Given that Dopey paid most of the rent from her pension it was the least I could do although it was still an unequal arrangement and Dopey's snotty relatives all blamed me, unjustly, for financially exploiting her.  The fact of the matter was that we all contributed all our income and earnings, etc. to the household, from which we paid all expenses and took only what we each needed.  It was a very effective way of doing things and even though we fought about almost everything else, we never fought about money.

I had with my father a severe falling out the previous Christmas.  He took to drinking again after some fifteen years more or less on the wagon, during which time we really worked hard at trying to develop a good relationship.  For a while we became friends and frequently I would spend a weekend at his place in the forest which became a lovely retreat and I always felt welcome there.  His mother, my grandmother with whom I did not have a relationship (when my parents divorced she effectively disowned my brother and me)died early in the year and this must have got my father drinking again given how close they were (in Freudian terms there was a lot of emotional incest there).  Our fragile relationship never recovered.

This for me was the final brick in the wall and I began proceedings to have my full name legally changed.  My father responded at first by disowning me but we still continued in touch though something clearly had died between us.  Hatred of my father, by the way, was not my reason for doing this.  I did not hate him.  I simply no longer wanted the name I had grown up with.  My parents had no idea how to raise me and I didn't think that they should either be trusted to adequately name me.  I acknowledged my separate identity when I changed my name and especially acknowledged the new identity and new life that I was called to.  Twenty years later I still have no regret.