the burden of my name

Now that my eyes are locked on something, I have to deal with one thing that I feared most in my life: my name. To the least, I don’t hate my name. I was named after our national hero after all. What I hate are the atrocities in it. My real name is Jose A. Capistrano Jr. 4th, ‘mind you that there are no typos’ there. Yes. That’s how exactly my birth certificate shows. 4th. Damn. It was a revolting revelation to me when I first laid eyes on my birth certificate. Literally, I don’t know what to do. But my head shake voluntarily. And the images of horror pass before me, “This cannot be good”, I uttered.

For the last few days, I’ve been dodging lines, begging to people, and being to places I never thought I will be. Do the math: your name, as you know it, is not what it is. How bad could it be? Well, let me put it this way, bad is a mediocre word for that. You know what’s the most frustrating part? It was a stupid mistake. Why in the world would someone put ‘4th‘ instead of ‘IV‘ in a birth certificate? That person for sure never attended a single history class. Kings have roman numerals suffix. Even Popes. Even common people. Bummer.

So right now I am slowly fixing things up. And I consider myself lucky. Though tedious, it’s been very fruitful. Wish me luck peeps!