My name is cool and crisp. It is the chills when you get out of bed in the morning and want to crawl right back into the covers. But my name is not warm and soft. 

My name is not like the number 0, my name is 1. Sharp, uncomfortable, and alone. It is a dull purple, like lavenders wilting in the fall. It is an empty school in the middle of the night. It is void of all imagination. All happiness. All warmth. 

My name means hope. My mother gave me the name so when I grew up I could be reminded that there’s always hope everywhere. That no matter what is happening, there is never a reason to give up hope. Her intentions were good—but gravely misplaced. 

When I hear my name I think of my childhood. There was no hope in my childhood. Only an empty pit of hopelessness and loneliness. I have five siblings, there was always someone with me when I was a child. Yet I was alone. My mother tried to give me hope through my name, and then began to tear it down. She never meant to hurt me, and I don’t hate her. She raised me the only way she knew how; the same way she was raised. It tore me down but I choose to resent my name. Not her.

Why could I not have been destined to bear my sister’s name. Teresa. It means late summer. Her name reminds me of lying in the grass just before the sun goes down. Golden. A soft pink coating the sky. The radiantly vague feeling of moonlight on my skin. Cool and beautifully pale. Tints of grey and white clashing with the gold and pink. Instead I am trapped with Catherine. A name surrounded by memories of hurt, darkness. Incomprehensible. Forgotten by so many.

One day I will change my name—I will be able to smile when someone calls out to me. I will be able to think of the good memories. Maybe something like Vesper. Something to remind me of the late night memories. The ones that remind me I have a reason to keep going. Yes. One day my name will fit who I am, what I am doing with my life.