Warning: Disturbing and leaves a bad aftertaste.
I never really liked my given name, and a little over ten years ago, when I reached adulthood, I went through the legal process to change it.
It wasn’t a ridiculous or trendy name, but the kanji and the reading didn’t match—like having the kanji for "Hanako" but reading it as "Emi." Because of that, people constantly got it wrong, and I was so sick of it that I changed my name without telling my parents. Whenever I had complained about my name in the past, they would just say, "What's wrong with it? It's a nice name." Convinced that they would vehemently oppose the idea, the younger me had just assumed they were unreasonable and kept it a secret.
So, I changed it—making the kanji and the reading match—and when I finally told my mother, she went insane.
It wasn't that she was furious or weeping uncontrollably. She just lost her mind. Over and over, she chanted like a madwoman, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
Up until that point, she had been a completely normal, ordinary mother. But after that, she couldn't do housework or work her job. She became a shut-in, engaging in repeated acts of self-harm. She would use pencils, makeup items, anything she could find to brutally gouge at her own flesh, so we had to throw all kinds of things out of the house.
According to what I later heard from my father, my mother had two older sisters who died in a car accident with her before I was born. Apparently, their bodies were in an utterly grotesque condition after the crash, and back then, my mother had lapsed into the exact same mental state she was in now.
My name had been made by combining the names of those two sisters.
I knew my mother had older sisters, but I didn't know their names. It wasn't that she was projecting the two sisters onto me; rather, my name had been her "anchor." At the time, she had only ever been loved by those two sisters. Her parents and relatives had doted exclusively on the older sisters while abusing and neglecting her, which my father said was likely part of the reason the revelation drove her completely mad.
Because she had seemed like such a normal mother, my father said he never realized she had still never truly recovered from the trauma.
Eventually, my mother passed away, and my father—consumed by regret for failing to save her—died in an accident shortly after.
Why did I change my name? Why didn't I ever ask the meaning behind it? And even if I hadn't asked, wouldn't it have been nice if she had told me anyway?
For over ten years, I've done nothing but blame myself, my father, and my mother, over and over and over again. When I think about how things will probably stay like this forever, I'm just so tired.
I'm sorry.
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