What's in a name?

I grew up ‘Erica Lauren Colbenson’, but my family called me ‘Emma’ or ‘M’ for short. The nickname was given to me by my grandmother who has four daughters and an array of granddaughters. When angry, she would yell at us from the bottom of the stairs; “Mary, Liz, Annette, Judy, Jessica, Erica…God damnit!” We referred to it as “role call”.

One particular evening she yelled at me to go pick up my back pack and mess from the kitchen table. Insert role call here. Finally flabbergasted, she said, “For Christs’ sake, your name is Emma.” It stuck. Everyone in my family calls me Emma. It doesn’t help with role call; if anything, it makes it longer. But it makes me feel special. And the best part is, I can always tell when I’m in trouble. With “Emma”, I’m safe. With “Erica Lauren”, I’m not so safe.

My name also says, “Erica Colbenson is NOT a daddy’s girl.” My father’s name is a part of who I am, but that’s all he has ever given me.  I’ve considered changing my name to “Erica St. James” or “Erica Lauren” and just not have a middle name.  But changing my name does not change me identity. It does not change my lifeline or my past. And it certainly does not give me my father back­­. My name represents everything that I am and everything I’m not. Everything I have and everything I never had.

How to save a life....

I never considered myself a good role model. I drink, I party, I have tattoos, I have sex, yadda, yadda, yadda… Needless to say, I am not a Catholic Churchs’ favorite person. But I do stand by myself when I say, I’m a good person. Borderline decent. With that being said, my latest “get me into heaven” project has been to take the girl who sort of ended my most recent relationship, and fix her.

She’s a beautiful girl (when her mouth is shut), but otherwise, she’s childish, obsessive, tactless, and has no respect for herself.  Don’t get me wrong, she is a good person, just lost. As a high-heeled feminist, I pity her because she’s the type of female men use and abuse.

One evening we were sharing stories about our mutual ex and she claims he became violent with her, and she inquired if he ever put his hands on me. My exact answer was, “Nope, because he knows I would have killed him”. She started crying, wondering why most of the men in her life have been physically abusive toward her. I simply told her because she is weak and because (they think) they can. No matter how much they hurt her, in any manner of the word “hurt”, she would crawl back to them when they want her to. That’s what I am determined to fix.

The past few weeks have been very, for lack of a better term, difficult. In trying to “fix” her, I have taken her obsession away from our ex and placed it upon myself. She tells everyone she and I are best friends, or in one instance, after buying me a faux diamond ring, I was her wife. I’m an anti-social person, who lacks patience, and I’m slowly finding out this project is way over my head.

I also wanted to learn something from her; maybe a different understanding of women, or what makes certain people tick.  But as harsh at it may sound, there is nothing for me to learn.  Everything she experiences now, I went through when I was 15.  Or the worst part, she puts herself in these situations on purpose. She knows what the outcome will be, but she acts anyway.

Is it wrong that I help her? Or am I being egotistical in thinking I can?  Either way, I think I’m the wrong person for this job.