Doctor

I was tearing the address labels off a stack of magazines to put them in the recycling (I don't mind publishing all my inner thoughts and feelings out here on the internet for all the world to see, but I am concerned enough about identity theft that I don't like having things in the recycling bin with my name and address on them), and one of them is addressed to "Dr. Ellen _____"

That's my name, and back when it was new it was very important to me to always use my title. Coincidentally right when it was new I moved to Australia where titles are required for every address you give to anyone - bank account, setting up the phone, library card, everything. But now not only do I not really use it professionally, hardly anyone knows that I have it.

Seeing it there I could imagine an even more extreme experience, where I'd for example moved to some uncharted tropical isle and had been living very simply, very close to nature, with a group who had a culture very different from my own, learning their language, adapting to the rhythms and colors of that life. And the coming back, and having those experiences people describe like being alarmed at sharp corners in rooms inside buildings, and forgetting that you have to use money before you take things out of a shop, and feeling insecure from not being able to see the sky and the birds and the movement of sun and stars all the time, and all that. And my feeling today is a small version of the feeling that person would have when stumbling across an address label that had "Dr." on it.

Yeah, that was me, but so long ago it was like in a different world. Yeah, that's something I did, but I hardly remember it, the now is so different from what that past was like then.