Hello my name is not Aya

Hello my name is Aya...

No that's not quite right.

My legal name is Kaitlyn. I went by Kaitlyn or Kaydee until after I graduated high school. If you've read my other posts, you will notice that I was a kid that went through some rough times, and I didn't always handle them well.

Enter Aya, her full name is Ayancia Elizabeth Fera. It took a while for her to morph into her full form, but I eventually found her amidst all the pain. Aya is an elf. She's 6 foot tall, long blonde hair, adept at combat, and has powers of the telekinetic and telepathic variety. Aya is constantly changing and shares many of the problems I do, just on a magnified capacity. She is a guard to the Queen of the elves and spends most of her time making sure security is tight and monitoring her people telepathically.

I created Aya. She became my role model, my hero, and my friend. Every night I would lie awake in bed and go through the events of the day, translate them to Aya's world, and see how she handled them. I would use this imaginary figure, who was everything I wanted to be, to deal with the problems that I couldn't. As a kid I was depressed, anxious, abused, and socially sheltered, so it was rare I knew a good way to handle a situation. Aya is strong, informed, attractive, and deals with these situations like they're nothing. After a while of doing this her story started to flesh out and I wrote about her daily. She became my life, my obsession.

My father died during my junior year of high school. I was devastated as I'd never really felt loss like that. My world, and my family were thrown into absolute turmoil. I dated, I loved, I lost, I graduated, I moved, I moved back, I felt guilty, I felt incomprehensible pain, we fought, and finally...we lived.

I eventually started to see the weight that was placed on me from my childhood, and from him. It was at this time that Aya started popping up in my thoughts. I found that she probably would have handled things pretty close to how I did, but she would have held her head up and made her own decisions instead of thinking she was "forced" to. I started using her again. I used her during the day now. I called upon her for strength. I called upon her when I felt lost or afraid. Suddenly she became even more ingrained into my life. When I imagined her in my shoes, I'd be the one in control. The moment I heard the name "Aya" my head lifted, and my shoulders rolled back. It's subconscious, but she became the strength in me, the one I never knew I had. It felt...comfortable. Suddenly someone being mad at me didn't really tear me apart because as Aya, I would just handle it as a part of my busy day. There were bigger things to deal with, and someone being mad was an easy fix.

A few years later I began working in some pretty bad places. I was screamed at, locked in rooms with mad people, had things thrown at me, threatened with death, and just overall torn apart again. It was at this point that I went one step farther. One day I introduced myself as Aya, and upon hearing someone call me that name I realized something...I could be her. I would use this tool as a part of me. To this day I go by the name Aya because it's a reminder to me. It's a reminder of what I've done, what I've lost, what I've endured, and more importantly, the fact that I can handle today because last night I saved the queen and reorganized the barracks. I can be this inspirational warrior that is able to handle things with ease and doesn't need anyone to be anything for her because she doesn't need others to shoulder the things she can handle on her own.

What if we found one person who did things the way we want to be, and then we became that? What if we saw a reaction someone had and adapted it? What if we took all of this one step further and turned ourselves into something we admire? Think about it, and if you adapt it and it works for you, share it with someone else. It might just save someone's life, or help someone who needs that one extra boost.