(Spoilers, discussion of content that may distress.)
Ren
I was on the phone not so very long before writing this with an old friend who, like me, struggles with mental health problems, and my friend said something – and I cannot remember his exact words, or how it came up – to the effect that I should seek that feeling of affirmation that comes when somebody speaks your name. I had a weird sort of epiphany then. I have never considered myself to have a name as such, and hearing the placeholder designation on my birth certificate uttered produces, normally, only a sense that something is wrong. My friend’s statement, then, inspired the realisation that not only do people exist whose names mean something to them, but that these people are somehow in the majority.