From Charlotte to Charisse (and back again)

I was born Charlotte Lynne Jones.  My first name change occurred when I was adopted by my father.  My mother is my biological mother, but I am uncertain who my biological father is.  Of course, I thought my father was my father until I learned otherwise.  My father thought I was his biological child when he adopted me.  Are you confused yet?  My mother was married to a serviceman by the last name of Jones when she became pregnant with me.  By law, whoever a woman was married to at the time she conceived was recognized as the legal father.  According to my mother, there is no possibility that Mr. Jones could be my father, but she also told me my father is not my father.  It came out in the middle of an argument between my parents.  I think that was the first time my father was told he was not my father, too.  To hear her tell it, she was babysitting for a family who also had an older son.  While babysitting for his younger siblings, she had an affair with him.  She swears I am his daughter, but she refused to ever give me his name.  I asked my father if we could be tested through DNA since it was fairly cheap to do, he declined.  He said as far as he was concerned, he was my father and a DNA test would not change that.  Quite noble of my father to feel like that, but he was missing the point.  I need to know what the truth is.  Without it, I can't have any sense of family history.  Not knowing who my father is when it would be so easy to be tested leaves me feeling like a balloon floating toward the sun without anything to ground it.

There is a strong resemblance to my father's side of the family, but I also carry many of my mother's features, which are more dominant.  I look a lot like my half sister Sherry when she was younger.  But it is far from definitive and I want definitive.  I understand why adoptive children want to find their birth parents.  Not knowing the biology of yourself leaves a sense of disconnect inside.  My father was a terrible father, but I am not looking for a new one.  It has nothing to do with it.  It has to do with a sense of roots.  I want to be able to claim the roots which are mine to claim.  Legally, I can claim my father's family as mine, and trace back the family tree, but it is not the same as knowing where you came from.  I don't know if those people are my people.  I just want to know the truth, and the truth is elusive.  So as Charlotte Lynne Pitz, I have heritage through my legal father's family.

The first 7 years of my life my nickname was Charlie.  I was a bit of an adventurous tomboy, so it fit me well.  I liked being called Charlie.  On my seventh birthday, my mother scheduled to have her last child by C-Section.  She thought it would be cute  to have her eldest child and her youngest child born on the same day, seven years apart.  She named him Charles.  Turns out she didn't like me being nicknamed Charlie, so that's how she put a stop to people calling me it.  In one day I lost my name and my birthday.  Later, I lost my birthday cake, too.  I loved chocolate, and my brother Charlie did not.  We only had vanilla cakes from then on.

When I was around 10, I decided to change my name without telling my parents.  I went down to the Great Northern Bank in downtown Barberton and opened up a savings account under the name Alisha.  I thought Alisha was the prettiest name I had ever heard.  I read about a character in a book named Alisha.  It worked well until the bank mailed a statement to my home and my parents sent it back.  When I went it to make my next deposit, the teller wanted to update my address.  I had to tell my parents I was Alisha.  They made me go close the account.  It amuses me now to think having been named Charlotte was a problem.  I think I should have changed the Pitz because I took a lot of teasing over that name.

The next name change came about when I got married.  As customary, I took my husband's last name, Harold.  When the marriage terminated, I did not want to keep his last name, but I did want to have the same name as my children.  So though we divorced, I kept the last name.

Being named Charlotte didn't feel right to me.  I didn't feel like a Charlotte.  I don't know what a Charlotte is supposed to feel like, but I didn't want to be one.  My childhood was marked with profound physical, sexual, verbal and emotional abuse, so every time I heard the name Charlotte I felt bad about myself.  I was in counseling, but I was stuck.  I didn't think I could move forward unless I removed the most blatant reminder of my childhood, my name.  I experimented around with various versions of my name (Charlie included) and settled on being called Char for a while.  It still didn't feel right, but I didn't have any other ideas, either.  I tested out various names, but nothing seemed to be what I was looking for.  So for the time being, I was Char Harold.  `

Things with my ex-husband went from bad to worse.  He was very abusive and was stalking me.  This was before there were any laws in place to protect me.  There were multiple court hearings, none of which went well.  My life was a mess.  One night I went out to a bar.  I went out frequently and had my usual hangouts, but this night I wanted to disappear into some place where no one knew me, and where I could just hide.  I wanted to leave my life for a while, and go where I had no past.  Some guy came up to me and started a conversation.  When he asked me my name, I said "Charisse."  That shocked the pants off me.  I have no idea where that came from.  I do not recall ever hearing the name before, or if I did, I don't remember, it just came out.  I did not plan to give someone an alias.

For the next couple of months, I kept the name to myself but I claimed it when meeting new people.  I was trying it out to see if that's the name I wanted.  I liked how it sounded, and when people referred to me by it I didn't feel bad inside even though it was close to Charlotte.  It was my name.  The name Charlotte carried such shame to me, every time I heard it, there was shame.  With Charisse, there was a blank slate.  It felt right.  I went to the Stark County Court House and filed for a legal name change.  The day the name change became legal, I invited all of my friends over to my house for a party.  I gathered up some clothing and other items identifiable to "Charlotte" and we held a memorial service for her.  We sat around and talked about all the things we liked about Charlotte, and how I would be moving forward in my life as Charisse.  It was a nice party and it enabled me to leave my past behind while I healed.

It was exactly what I needed.  As Charisse, I didn't have a history filled with shame and abuse.  As Charisse, I was able to gain control of my life in ways I would not have been able to do as Charlotte.  For the first time in my life, I felt as if I had control of it.  Of course, many people thought I was nuts, and by this time I was getting used to being called "eccentric" or "different." I didn't care.  I knew I needed to do this, even if I wasn't telling everyone the reason why I did.  My parents and family in particular had a difficult time with it.  It was really interesting to go to my high school reunions with my new name; I had some explaining to do!  I just told people Charlotte never really fit me as a name, so I changed it.  People expect your last name to change through marriage, but no one I knew had ever heard of anyone changing their first name.  Every once in a great while someone will call me Charlotte, but now it is OK.  I have healed a great deal of the wounds from my childhood and realize that Charlotte was not a bad name, and the child who was Charlotte was not a bad person.  In other words, I never had anything to be ashamed about.  That shame belongs to the people who hurt me.

It took a lot of years for me to understand that.  It is amazing the amount of shame and guilt I carried that never belonged to me.  I am Charisse, I love my name and all the things I feel it represents.  I believe my spirit gave me the name, since I had never heard of it before.  The thing I think is really neat, though, is that I am also Charlotte.  Sometimes I see glimpses of her peeking out now and then. When she does, I no longer feel the shame, disgust and hate I used to feel.  When Charlotte peeks out, it is like a fond memory, an old best friend, or your favorite sweatshirt.  I am happy to see her.  Charlotte is every bit a part of the woman I am today.  I can look at pictures of me as a child and I feel a certain fondness.  Charlotte was no victim.  She was and is the strongest person I know, and she is a part of me.  Charlotte didn't die, she just went into hiding until it was safe to come out again.

I love being Charisse, but it wasn't enough for me just to change my first name.  I needed a name I could be proud of, one that more closely fit the person I felt I was.  I wasn't quite there yet, and so the second part of the story of becoming me will be at another time.  For now, my name was Charisse Lynne Harold.  I wasn't done finding out who I was going to be.