Ain't Worth the Stink II: What's in a Name?

In my first marriage, I kept my surname. Call it providence, call it premonition, but I knew I needed to keep my name. Which made it vastly easier to reassert myself when it all came tumbling down. As for my first name, my Ex had a nickname for me that was an abbreviation of my full name, that nobody liked. Even the sound was a little irritating. Fast forward to second marriage. Well, second dating. Jason, within weeks of our first meeting, began calling me Ree. Ree! Try saying it without a little smile or a squeak entering your voice. If you try to yell it, glower it, say it menacingly, the ending vowel sound twists, and it isn't Ree any more, it's something else. Ree somehow stuck. All kinds of people don't even know my birth name, because Ree is more.... well, it's way more who I am now. And then, there's the last name. I knew, deeply, that I wanted to be a Unified Front with Jason. And that meant we had to have the same last name. It just felt right. And during that time, between Marriage 1 and Marriage 2, I'd realized that actually, the Fergusons I come from are a pretty miserable band of folks (who are almost without exception dead, and so utterly beyond offence at anything I write here.) I only know one other Ferguson, my pal Daymon, whose blog is linked to in the left nav here. Hella funny guy. He and I used to bag on our banjo-picking pinchmark white-trash ancestors with abandon. Fun stuff...but I digress. I was stoked to end my line of Fergusons with my marriage. Tah-dah! Ferguson eradication! Imagine my chagrin and dismay when the two worlds merged, horribly, on a credit card solicitation (I'm beginning to think they're portals to hell, dropped in bulk shipment.) Ree Ferguson. Ugh! Ugh ugh ugh! Even typing it gives me the creepies. The symbol of my survival and triumph, paired with, well, the symbol of my colorfully alcoholic and wildly disfunctional ancestors. Concurrently enraged and chagrined, I set out to trace the heinous pairing back to its source. Oh goodness. Seems I'd left traces of my old name all over the place. My PADI instructor card. My REI membership. My freaking credit report (speaking of a hellmouth. But yet again, I digress). I've been a Hudson for nearly six years at this point, but there were still all these weird little lingering bits of... well, of trapped energy. Trapped in the past, anchoring some little bit of me back there. It's been really illuminating, figuring out which Items of the Name to eradicate with tactical nuclear devices, and which things to take out, dust off, pretty up, and replace within the structure of my new (real?) life. Bits of me I see fit to nurture, bits of me that died along the way. Cleaning house this deeply feels really good. I feel all kinds of psychic dust bunnies being swept out of corners they've lurked in for, well, six years, and I'm applying hairspray and a match to the lot of them. I suppose on the mercantilist upside, at least from here on, I can tell the charming operators on the "Do Not Contact" phones exactly how out of date the lists they're purchasing are.