When I was applying to college I decided to center my admissions essay around the definition of my name. I crafted the perfect, punchy—frankly cliche— kind of opening sentence that I hoped would win me a spot in a school I didn’t even end up going to as I detailed all the ways that I let a few baby name websites dictate my personality all my life.
Babynames.com told me Kaiya is Japanese and a beautiful name for a baby girl with an equally beautiful meaning: forgiveness. I looked that up for an elementary school assignment once, and it somehow joined my cue card of responses when I inevitably laugh my way through mispronunciations from substitute teachers and baristas and classmates who say my name with the syllables jutting out in all the wrong ways like they never really cared to get it right in the first place.
Surely as a little kid I had no idea that a single word would become so intrinsic to who I am, and painting it as such was just a tool for essay appeal. But, it did carry a level of truth to it.
Whether it was playground games or mean girls or a steady arsenal of apologies held at the ready behind my lips, I have always had a tendency for people pleasing. And in that sense, I am quite good at the forgiveness thing.
My forgiveness always came at the denial of grace for myself and every situation became an instance where I needed to fold into the shape of whatever was wrong until everyone else was satisfied. Eventually, all of my acrobatics felt a bit like tears around my limbs as I found myself grasping at people’s affections that I could not attain.
Most of my friends have heard my endless retellings of the time my grandma ended our relationship over text message when I was 15. I still remember my shaking grip around my phone as I angrily pressed the “block contact” button and the brave face I put on for my mom when she asked how I was.
Even after the texts left my phone’s memory, I can remember the size of the message bubble and the words in each line. I still think about how I cried until I wanted to throw up in the bathroom before splashing cold water on my face and slinking off to bed before anyone could see me. The days continued after that and the sadness didn’t. But, for the first time in my life of endless sorry’s and shrinking, I found a strange sense of cold acceptance for what had happened.
Apathy was not the right word, but the choice to go no contact carried no sting as I gained distance from that time in my life. For so long, I had never been able to imagine myself as the kind of person who could live with the knowledge of someone being unhappy with me— and yet, this time I did. That face I saw looking back at me in the mirror that one night as I cried and lost my breath over the all the tears proved to me that I didn’t have to always accommodate people hurting me.
But most strikingly, I found a way to put that pesky definition to bed. Ultimately, forgiveness had nothing to do with all the things I could extend to other people, and had so much more to do with what I could allow myself. The years of healing that followed that day with my grandma lead me to forgive myself for setting boundaries and keeping them. My body rested as I stopped breaking my back to quell my rising feelings, and I was okay with it.
Someone should probably thank babynames.com for the breakthrough!
Last week, I turned 21, and in many ways I feel like a far cry from the person I was at 15. Don’t get me wrong, I still cry a lot, and I worry over people’s opinions of me way more than I should, but the sting hurts less. I have found the kind of love for, and in, my life where I want to live with a sincerity that does not allow me to be walked over.
And with that has come a newfound relationship with my grandma; who I forgive now, and always have. Which brings me to the freshly inked tattoo on my right arm.
As much as my name has always been Kaiya, it’s also been Ladybug to my grandma. As long as I can remember, I was Ladybug and I was hers. No matter where we stand, speaking or not, I look back on the feeling of someone caring for me as much as she did with warmth. Even in the confusion of that love ~seemingly~ ending all those years ago, I feel lucky for having carried it at all.
When I spent my teenage years in on again, off again, phases of contact with my family and grappled with who I wanted to be in spite of it, I felt like the symbol of ladybugs always stuck. Hanging among the dangling charms of crosses and anchors that I received during my church years, the small silver ladybug on my James Avery charm bracelet is my favorite. And before big interviews and daunting tests, they seem to appear— resting on the sidewalks and car windows that usher me forward.
Since I was old enough to get a tattoo, I knew it couldn’t be anything but a ladybug.
After telling my mom, I remember her saying she thought the same before worrying if the ladybug reminded me of the sadness I had felt with its namesake. But the fact is, ladybugs simply feel like me, and even the aspects of them that remind me of emotional trauma or my once-strained relationship with my grandma are a part of me too.
The neat black ink of two tiny ladybugs with heart shaped spots is healing on my arm right now, and every time I see them, I know it was the right choice. In the days after getting them, I found myself thinking back to my college essay and baby name websites and my hard-fought battles with finding meaning. I guess in some ways, my tattoo and my second name of Ladybug are defined through my capacity to heal and forgive too.
