irishnessness

So for my first entry, I have some really, really good news.

Oh, maybe I should introduce myself.

Hi.

I'm Nessa.

Ok, now that we're formally introduced, on with my entry.

My "real" name is Vanessa.  However, I don't introduce myself as Vanessa, and unless you're family and you call me that I will forcefully will remove your head from your shoulders.  To everyone other than those that I am blood related to, I'm Nessa.

My legal last name is Heller, but I use Willson.  But, on legal forms and whatnot I have to use Heller, which annoys me to no end.  Willson is my mother's maiden name, and Heller is my father's last name, just to clarify.

However, it's soon just going to be Nessa Willson.  I cannot even begin to tell you how happy that makes me.  I've always known that I was eventually going to drop Heller and replace it with Willson, but I always figured I would be stuck with Vanessa as my first name because my mom would be pretty unhappy otherwise.  I love my mom to pieces, and she rarely asks for anything from me, so whatever I can do to make her happy is okay in my book, even keeping a first name that I hated.  I can just tell everyone it's Nessa, right?

Well, at lunch today my mom and I got to talking about if I'm ever going to drop Heller, and I finally got the courage to tell her that I wanted to change my name first name.  I was fully expecting her to be disappointed, or sad, or offended, or a myriad of other emotions that do not equal happy.

She looked at me and had a kind of grin on her face.  She then said to me, '"If I were going to name you today, I would name you Nessa, not Vanessa.  I think that changing your name is a good idea."

I was completely blown away!  Not only is she okay with it, but she WANTS me to change it!  She said that I'm not a Vanessa anymore, but I've grown into a Nessa (whatever that means.)

So, tomorrow after work, I'm going to go down to the county records office and get the forms to legally become Nessa.

And I suppose I'll change my last name too.

Yay for awesome moms ;)