Contributor: Paralith
As I was coming out of the most difficult part my Lost Year, I knew it was time for a different screen name. I know, it’s dorky, thinking that changing your habitual screen name is important. But for me, it was.
My previous set of preferred screen names all came from the fantasy stories and worlds and characters that I’ve been creating ever since middle school. I’ll easily admit that most of the female characters I imagined were basically reflections of myself. There was one in particular, however, that I felt was most like the real me. Well, no, not like the real me. She was most like what I wish I could be. She was practically ageless, she was one of the most powerful warriors ever to exist in the universe, she was wise, she was compassionate. She was thoroughly beautiful, and she was thoroughly undefeatable.
For a long time, day dreaming about being a creature like this was a part of my daily life. And that, I think, well personifies the downfall that was my Lost Year. So much of my mind had been caught up in dreams and ideas so thoroughly unrealistic, that I was completely unprepared for that big baddie, Real Life, when it came to get me. I so deeply wanted to stay wrapped up in dream worlds (which served no purpose other than self-gratification and escapism) that I never really, truly desired to even think about Real Life and what I would have to do to get along with it. I thought I wanted to think about Real Life. I thought that I wanted it. But I didn’t.
It’s hard for me, still, to accurately describe the nature of my problem, one that I still find myself grappling with. I hope that writing in this blog will help me figure that out, and maybe help other people who are going through what I, and Speak Coffee, and City Girl, have gone through in our Lost Year.
But to get back to the original thread of thought. The name of that character, who I held so close to my heart and who I so wished I could become, was my most favored screen name during my Lost Year. And I knew it was time to leave her behind, and stop pretending, even in the feeble way of using it as a screen name, that I could one day be her.
As someone who will spend her life in science, I decided to look to the scientific names of animals to craft a new screen name for myself. I looked up certain animals, I combined different names, and then different parts of names, and at one point, I arrived at the name Paralith. I chose it largely based on aesthetics, though I later did some research to find that the latin root par or para means to make ready or prepare, and the latin word lith means stone. As I prepare to enter the life of a scientist, am I preparing myself to become a woman of stone, with the cold logical heart of science guiding me through life? I hope not. Though I must not confuse Real Life with a fantasy life, I do not want to completely lose all my imagination and emotion. They are, after all, a part of Real Life too.
