When I texturize my name I think of warm, sticky honey. Like running your hands under water, no matter how hard you try, your hands will always feel stuck together. Telling other people my name makes them hard to forget it too, simple, but leaves a long lasting impression. 

Commonly, most families want to wait to know the gender of a newborn.The story starts with my parents wanting to wait. Picking out one name for a boy and a girl, “Michael,” born from the bible, “like god,” and “Emily,” rival. Two voices. Two halves of the same whole. 

They weren’t disappointed when they introduced me to the world. With my parents not knowing whether I’d be a girl or a boy they were very neutral with the pregnancy. There was no traditional blues or pinks. But pretty, soft yellows that filled the nursery. I was given two names instead of one and given personality traits from both.  

These two voices have very different perspectives, like yin and yang. A story of light versus dark coming together. “Emily,” is like the yin, representing the moon, femininity, the Earth, and the dark. Where “Michael,” amounts to the sun, activity, the heavens, and the light. They stick together like the noted honey that has me wholly immersed in my imagination..

I wouldn’t change either of my names. I see both leaving an impact. Michael. Like the light. A good vacation. Relaxing on the beach in a hammock tied to palm trees. The sun is beaming down, but the ocean is right there to save someone from the golden rays. This name is my savior, like god. 

And then there is the darkness. Emily. Like being swallowed whole in a never ending abyss. The absence of light, the absence of my Michael. The part that I will never truly be to anyone but myself. 

But fate took over, and in most stories the light would overcome the darkness. In a twist of events Emily won the battle. The light lost and the “darkness” took over. There’s a balance between the name that could’ve been and the rival inside my own.