When I was little, we used to visit my mom’s parents at a house on the coast of California that the family called The Brown House. It may surprise you to hear, but the entire exterior of the house was indeed brown.

As the youngest in the family, and the most compact, it was my duty to share a room when we visited. To share a room with my grandmother. Which meant she had to share her room with me. And also her bed. And this brought about the nickname that gave me the most shame. Maybe ever. The nickname that probably wasn’t as much a nickname as it was an exclamation. Or a curse.

My grandmother called me Calamari.

How sweet, to call a little girl summering at the coast with her grandmother at the family home a cute little aquatic nickname. Never mind that calamari is what we call squid when we’re going to eat it. I was going to make a whole comparison to calling a pig pork. But then I went into an anti-authoritarian, anti-fascist spiral, so we’ll just say that as a child I found it upsetting to be called calamari both because I was not a wiggly, wriggly sea creature, and I certainly wasn’t anyone’s food.

But the nickname persisted.

Was it affection? Was it a taunt? I didn’t know, but I didn’t like it. And it wasn’t even for either of the reasons I just said I didn’t like it.

I didn’t like it because she was right.

It was accurate. I was a wiggly wriggly C creature.

Sea. C. Me.

She was calling me a calamari. Alliteration makes calamari obviously superior to calling me a squid or an octopus. Because I wriggled sooooooooooooo much at night that it seemed to her I had eight appendages.

We didn’t get into a long conversation about it. I was like five. But I understood the meaning.

I was doing yet another thing wrong.

I had worked hard to perfect a method by which I could fall asleep without fail and without causing anyone any inconvenience.. . But it primarily involved two important factors, wait no… three:

That I not have to share a bed or a room with anyone else. That I be allowed to wriggle, wiggle, roll over, twist around, and generally move every part of my body until it finds its perfect place to rest. And also there is this whole guided meditation thing I’ve been doing to get myself to fall asleep ever since I was little and had no idea what I was doing. But on the evening timeline this comes after the squid-like wiggle fest in search of comfort.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this of late. It usually comes up at night. When I’m tossing and turning in bed, throwing my four limbs around like they’re doubled—flopping, flooping, and taking up far more space than one would think a woman of 5’3” could possibly take up.

And that happens the most when I’m suffering insomnia.

So here we are.

I’ve always been ashamed. Of the insomnia and the extra limbs. Calamari is the name I hear in my head when I feel like someone is taunting me. When I feel weak and wrong and broken and someone tells me. And I already know it. But wow does it hurt to hear.

I’ve healed some pretty big wounds. This one still needles me in the ribs in the most melodramatically painful way.

Also I’m not food.