When I got divorced I decided to change my name, not just take back my maiden name.
I never really thought about having another name, I always assumed I'd keep my own. Then I fell in love and when I took his name it was because I wanted to give him everything. During the divorce process I started feeling like I needed something that was mine alone. In a way I felt like taking back my maiden name would always feel like a reminder not only of my failed marriage, but of the person who had so much potential, of who I used to be.
Part of the process of learning to live with chronic illness is letting go of who you used to be. I have done a lot of work, I am doing a lot of work to let her go. I couldn't just step back into everything that name contained and I couldn't keep his after the part that made it mine was gone.
I'm not a traditionally sentimental person, I don't attach meaning to many things, but a name feels like a talisman to me. Even though it wasn't ideal, divorce was still an opportunity to take something on just for me, and I knew exactly what it would be:
Saudade
It is not an English word and there is no appropriate translation. It is Portuguese, I am not Portuguese, but I have never found a word so perfect. A combination of something like nostalgia and melancholy, of longing for a thing that was or will never be. It is a feeling an emotion I think most with chronic illness can relate to, but one I have felt so deeply as to be a part of me.
Maybe it seems strange to take this as my name, but I feel connected to it. I feel like it named me and I named it and so it can't haunt me. Every time I hear my name it is the acknowledgment I need.
Sometimes English feels likes such a dispassionate language, we throw a few words together and get a picture, but the community of a language that can describe such a feeling in a word amazes me, and I love it. They don't shy away from their grief and sadness or their passion like we do, they embrace it.
I will never forget who I was, I will always long for something that cannot be, and knowing that, admitting that, is strangely comforting.