Names

I've not vanished...I've been thinking

It’s a new year, and people generally spend that time making resolutions, changing themselves, failing those resolutions, shrugging, and then starting the cycle over again. I don’t do resolutions, oaths hold a special place in my practice and to break them was tantamount to death. I won’t take a resolution or an oath under a light circumstance, plus Mesopotamian new year is in spring regardless.

But self image,, the changing of it, self-identification?

That’s what I live for.

The irony is not lost on me that this is my first post since I spoke my truth last year, and that it is about identifying, and image, and all these things,

When I was born, I was given a name, a name showing the personality of my mother, a name honoring my family, and a name declaring my ancestors.
When I was adopted, one of those names were changed.
When I entered school, i had nicknames, given to me by friends and by detractors alike.
When I first got online, I had a chatroom name.
When I joined my first magical order, I had a magic name.
When I got involved in activist chats, I took another name.
When I made a discord account, I took a name
when their ToS changed, I changed that name.
When I made my second account I took a new name
When I published my books, yet another name was taken,


A million instances, and a million different names. All part of a million aspects and facets of my life. And which am I?
Am I Cyprian?
Am I Dari?
Am I my birth name?
Am I the name my first love gave me?

Who actually am I?
Without the context, without the masks, without the goals or the groups, it is hard to say.
I am a person
I am a father
I am a flawed and growing person
To borrow a phrase from a well known book
I AM

And that is the secret isn’t it? No matter the name or the face or the mask or ideal that we put on…because those will change a million times, a million times a million times will they change, but the one thing that does not change.

I am here
I am now
I persist
I have a voice
I have work to do
I am in the context of those who surround me.
I AM WHAT I AM

And that’s…that is the beauty of the human soul, a thousand names and descriptors can never encapsulate who and what we are, the parts never become greater than the whole. Every experience and name change I have undergone tells an ocean of a story, but still doesnt tell MY story.
I am in my own way infinite, and undying soul that none, not even myself can fully grasp and understand. And yet, in all of that grand complexity, I can make friends, I can take lovers, I can make and end connections, I can reach out to other infinites and a spark can created that can grow into an even larger infinite, be it love or friendship or comradeship.

I’m not my name,
I’m not my identity,
But they are me
They are facets of the jewel of my existence