My name is something I keep around like old trophies from youth competitions or scrapbooks of memories from a better time. It is a reminder and a bittersweet one of that of a thing I cannot change. I never liked my names. I wondered why my parents decided to drop the second half of my Korean name for the sake of 100% inclusion. Is nothing sacred? I wonder if they knew that by doing that, they stripped me of my origins. I despise my name. I despise the projection and enforcement of family it relays. How far are you willing to go to make sure the kid knows they are yours? Hell, make it into a ******* name that will follow them around for the entirety of their life. The fact that it’s so beautiful will offset the pain of hearing it butchered so many times, will offset the pain of hearing what isn’t mine, will offset the nullity I have come to feel every time I hear it. My name is a prison number of conformity.