name change

i have a thing about last names.
- i was born with one name.
born in the spring of 1979 i was the apple of my parent's eye. clearly.
in love with my given name.
easy to spell my last name. life was good.
- i was given an additional name.
around the spring of 1991 my step dad adopted myself, younger sister and brother.
my mother decided to keep our birth name and just add his to the end.
she did this to soften the blow to my paternal grandmother. the blow that her own son just threw his kids out with the wash.
i hated it.
- moved 3 hours away from my beloved memere around the summer of 1994.
started using just my step dad's name in school.. seemed much easier that both my parent's had that name.
still had to fill out 12 letters on those damn standardized bubble sheets.. not forgetting the space in the middle of the sneaky hyphen.
never let on to memere that i was using this new identity.
had two high school diplomas printed up, one with each name. should have seen the gleam in her eyes to see the birth name still there, in black and white.
- entered college in 1997.
the constant spelling and telling people there was a hyphen.. "what can't find my class list? oh wait, you put it in without a hyphen.. yeah.. that's me".. "what do you mean i didn't pay tuition?"
at this point i hardly identified with the birth name, it wasn't my life anymore.
- married fall of 2007
took his name.
i'm still struggling with this.
i want my caboose name back. the one of the end.
i worked hard to build that identity.
i already had one taken away.