Stormy times

Travelling through

London Heathrow in the midst of Storm Ciara, the man who looked at my boarding pass at security greeted me by name, “Safe trip, Ciara. Now I know how to pronounce it.”

I had been very aware of my name lately, seeing it cursed and accused of causing misery and devastation in headlines. There was no information leaflet with guidance for living with a storm name. My phone didn’t stop dinging: I was humiliated by Storm Ciara (‘windy Ciara’) and slut-shamed by Storm Ciara (‘Ciara blows’).

A couple of hours later I, Ciara, sat on the grounded plane, looking out at the fury that the storm, Ciara, was unleashing on London Heathrow, forbidding our

take-off. My mouth was dryer than it had ever been and I was desperate for a wee, but the seatbelt sign was on and I was by the window; the man in the aisle seat was deeply engrossed in Marriage Story.

Ciara raged outside. Inside my living metaphor for self-sabotage, half-wild with discomfort, I thought about names.

I thought about being Ciara in a childhood that straddled Ireland, where it was so common as to almost be an absence of a name; and England, where it was difficult and begged questions and broke ice, and demanded a more forceful personality, lest you become ‘Sierra’.

My lips cracked. Storm Ciara, a few inches away, looked the opposite of thirsty.

If the plane takes off, I decided in the hour of magical thinking, then perhaps that means something: that I (Ciara) can prevail in the face of those who would stop me (also Ciara).

The idea that I was my own worst enemy felt incredibly profound as I contemplated urea poisoning.

We took off. I went to the loo; I drank some water: catharsis. I felt reborn, baptised: Ciara, the woman, the storm. I was the cailleach, an ancient storm hag who created and destroyed, and flooded by enemies and DGAF.

I revelled in the weather for the next few days, until it almost seamlessly became Storm Dennis, at which point the rain irritated once again.

Men.