My Apostrophe

As one grows older you tend to lose things. Hair, smooth skin, firmness. Some lose them earlier than others. I began to lose the darkness in my hair at 18. Early on, I somehow also managed to lose some vowels.

Though you lose some things, you also gain others. Wisdom, experience, friends, family, a home, gray hair and in my particular instance...I also gained an apostrophe. Well...let's back up.

I gained an apostrophe by no fault of my own. You could say it was bestowed on me as there are no accidents, right? The loss of vowels was my choice in early high school out of sheer boredom with myself. If I ever had a nickname, this easy target I painted for myself would have ceased to exist. I guess it was way too appealing to be the center of jokes and ridicule (thanks bro). The yearbook staff gets credit for the apostrophe. Naturally a name without vowels needed some punctuation and I thought they were absolutely right. We were on to something.

My husband, just an infatuation at the time, always refused to alter the spelling. I think it was mostly because it was one more way to defy me, but I always thought it endearing. Once we were certain we would be together for the rest of our lives, I decided to stick with my legal alias. Little did I know the subtle, yet adverse affect it would have on my persona.

There is something in that apostrophe. It's that place where I am at play. It is that place where I create my reality and disallow reality to maneuver me. I've been safe in my vowels and quite frankly I needed the keys to the apostrophe taken from me. Stronger now than ever, my apostrophe now represents something very much like the Dash poem. So, watch what I'm gonna do with my apostrophe.