What is My Real Name?

After reading a couple of blogs today, I had an epiphany (the topic of one of the blogs http://joanneeddy.com/2016/01/06/epiphany-on-the-wisdom-of-the-unexpected/?c=1467#comment-1467) about my ‘real’ name (another blog topic). So I decided to write a bit about both.

The epiphany came when the writer asked ‘what is your real name?’

It’s a question I’ve fiddled around with for many years, and have wondered what name I would choose if I decided to change it. I’ve spent most of the time playing with my last name, since I’ve had quite a few. I remember my mother explaining that Johnson was the nicest last name I have ever had, although she didn’t think Fields was so bad. And since she had used Williams as her last name for 28 years, that didn’t seem awful, except it came from my father. (Obviously that marriage didn’t end on an up note for them).

Between marriages I thought about taking Poe as my last name (that happened to be the name of my maternal grandfather’s family). But, alas, Margo Poe just didn’t have the ring to it I envisioned.

But I think the writer was pointing her question to what name identifies me, and wondering just what first name  is ‘connected’ with my inner me. I like the name Margo, it’s unusual, and most people seem to remember it. But, I knew immediately the answer to my ‘real’ name was: Sunny. I’ve never shared that with anyone before, but I have always felt I was a Sunny. My personality seems Sunny to me, I like the sun, I have to have lots of it. And, I think of myself as being Sunny. That is interpreted in my mind as open, fresh, bright, light, and sometimes hot (in whatever way you want to use it).

Even when CBs were popular, my ‘handle’ was Sunshine Lady. Somehow that fit how I saw myself.

For some unknown reason sharing or changing my name to Sunny was embarrassing. Perhaps it revealed too much of myself.Whatever the cause of my hesitancy I’ve kept Sunny hidden; protected in some secret inner part of myself, fearful of claiming my Sunnyness.

Thanks to the bloggers who wrote about epiphanies and real names that jolted me to an epiphany of my own about who I see when I look in the mirror.

Yep, I am sunny most days, even if the sun isn’t.