urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:irishnessnessirishnessnessirishnessnessirishnessness2008-04-21T01:30:33Zurn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:irishnessness:628Legally Nessa2008-04-21T01:30:33Z2008-04-21T01:30:33ZSo for my first entry, I have some really, really good news.<br /><br />Oh, maybe I should introduce myself.<br /><br />Hi.<br /><br />I'm Nessa.<br /><br />Ok, now that we're formally introduced, on with my entry.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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."<br /><br />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.)<br /><br />So, tomorrow after work, I'm going to go down to the county records office and get the forms to legally become Nessa.<br /><br />And I suppose I'll change my last name too.<br /><br />Yay for awesome moms ;)