She's loving
Dearly beloved, mother of life and all her children:
Patrick isn’t dead.
Let me be clear: I, Patrick, the second child of a Leo and Capricorn, am here. Which must mean, I am not dead. Yes, for a long time, I surrendered the name my mother held for her firstborn son, even when that meant forgetting most of my childhood memories. And still, the lifeforce once named and called and ridiculed as Patrick, continued.
By the time I realized my queer spirit would be a reason for lifelong othering, I looked for ways to cut to the chase. When I was younger, I really liked my name, Patrick. Not many Mexican boys around shared my name. And both Spongebob and the Irish Saint tale gifted me with weird, but funny moments. On the baseball field, my nickname Pat sounded like friendship. I tried to show my team how valuable I was, and in return, listened as they cheered my name aloud. How fun it was to hear masculinity welcome me home. Pat was sweet talk to a skilled young athlete and closeted gay kid. Pat was a soul kiss to the girl who hadn’t realized she was one.
How quickly sweet talk can turn dangerous. Midway through high school, I told people around me that I was a girl and asked them only to call me Pat. Suddenly, my mother’s first gift to me, my name Patrick, became a weapon. Anytime someone on the bus or at school wanted to knock me down, they’d ask: “Is Pat short for something? It must be.” Damn, did it always hurt.. until it didn’t, but even then..
Eventually, it felt as if both Patrick and Pat were taken from me. I began believing the idea that I had no control over my name… my body… my mind… my self. After years of stuttering and speech therapy, I cut off my tongue and swallowed it. I called myself many things, grasping for a sound that would guide me home. Along the way, even well-intentioned people tried to help me forget where I had come from. I wish they hadn’t.
When I said Juniper, you heard: Patrick is dead.
When I said Juniperangelica, you heard: Patrick is dead.
When I said Gia, you heard: Patrick is dead.
Some people never met Patrick, but in hearing any of my names, they could only guess a little boy had died.
I must say that for many years, I questioned whether I (Patrick) was still alive. I really wondered if renaming myself meant I must also kill myself—something like the caterpillar and butterfly, but with more shame. I may not have allowed myself to say it aloud until recently, but Patrick has echoed inside my chest ever since my mother first held me close.
The concept of a deadname feels a lot like burying myself alive.
By my 25th birthday, I had given up trying to outrun my own mind. My brain hurt so much, like actual neurochemistry aflame inside my head.. bridges crumbling and pathways sinking too low to be pathways. My journal pages began to sense comfort in the possibility I had in fact died. I sat still as my heart comprehended the trap that my mind had led my body into. I cried like a girl buried alive, scared any more crying would waste the little oxygen I had left. It wasn’t until I considered holding my breath forever that I realized I had already been holding my breath since before I buried my first (dead)name.
Patrick was scared and alone and I had done nothing. Pat tried to ween Patrick away, against instinct. Juniper tried to be everything Patrick couldn’t. Juniperangelica was the one who refused to forget Patrick’s lineage. Gia, thank god and grace, found Patrick and pulled him out of that room—the room inside my head where I both stayed alive and played dead.
I worried for a long time that I was a fool for paying attention to the echoes in my body. Like too many other women in my family, when I couldn’t help but hear them, the “voices,” I accepted that there was no way out. Silence. Or noise. A lot of it. So much so that it may as well be silence. It is wild how children teach themselves to forget the room inside our mind, the room of staying alive and playing dead; wild and beautiful to be caught up by my own limitations, forced to sit down and learn to breathe again.
I do not know what to say beyond: Patrick isn’t dead.
How do I know? Because I can feel. My heartbeat and each breath and every strand of hair. I am grateful that trusting my gut was one thing my mother made sure to teach her daughters. Years of trying to kill everything behind my eyes, while the mother inside my heart refused the question without hesitation.
Trust the “noise” and remember your first voice– the sound of you responding to mom calling your heart’s name. Hum when you have no words to sing. Allow life’s pendulum and gravity to do their thing.
No longer is Patrick alone in a room burying herself alive. Grace is here and there. God is here and there. Gia is here and there. Gia holding Patrick, almost burying by habit, but now also pausing. In those nanoseconds of pause, of choice, of freedom, we begin to hum.
Stillness helps me to hear my heart giving me another chance. Another beat to be blessed with and dance to. The choice, yes, was always in my body. And Patrick loved me long before I was ready to open my chest door and welcome her home. My sweet baby, my miraculous flesh heart that never broke but felt everything. Remembered everything. Loved everything.
Thank you to my baby (Patrick in my mind and Tiger in my arms) for showing me how to choose life. Thank you for singing to me, my full loving name.
~
I offer this with a fierce lifeforce that I never imagined was possible. Thankfully I was wrong in thinking I knew my limits. Thankfully I continue to be wrong as I transcend them. After a quarter-century and some, I am still here. Dancing under the trees as Lauren Hill’s 1996 thesis plays— life dancing all around me. When I began writing this, yellow leaves were falling, trusting the wind to carry them to the ground. As I finish editing, the green buds on trees everywhere let me know it’s time to bloom.
Juniperangelica Giapatrick Loving