Brown Eyes

Call me Crazy

I was born with complications. For a while, my mother didn't know she was pregnant, not for at least 6 months before she noticed getting bigger and bigger as weeks passed. She had done alcohol, not knowing that she was pregnant and still to this day blames herself for all the sins she has committed. But I don't blame her. She didn't know her baby would be premature.

And when complications were finally set aside, I was born November 2nd, 2000 that was set to be my mother's best day ever, or so she told me. But when I was born, she didn't believe in choosing a name for me, she wanted one that I thought would be perfect. But to get the birth certificate signed, she just called me Anna. And until I was old enough to decide for myself, I would be called that.

I was five years old when I asked her why she named me that. And she finally told me what she really wanted to do.

"Anna is not your name," she explained once while we were sitting at the park. "I gave you that name so you could start off life with one, but when you're old even to make that decision, you can name yourself whatever you want."

"Why not Anna?"

Mother smiled sweetly. "It can be if you want to," she said. "But that means you'd have to stick with it for the rest of your life."

She said that it was a decision I had to make in my teen years, the very earliest thirteen. And years passed, school went by, a father coming in and out of my life I had to decide. I was moving, so any friends who knew at my old school couldn't find me anymore.

But I waited until I was fourteen, and I decided a name that I had been wanted to call all my life.

"Mother, I want to choose my name today," I told her on my birthday.

"Of course, but you must know that once you decide you won't be able to change it, not until you're at least an adult."

"I know, I thought long and hard. And I want you to accept me for the name I choose, no matter how crazy it sounds."

"I always love you, honey," Mother said.

"I want to be called Brown Eyes."