I don’t like labels. Never have. Even as a kid, I hated being known as The Shy Girl. At one point I tried hard to change it and in fourth or fifth grade I was given the principal’s award for “Outstanding Citizenship.” I really had no idea what it meant at the time except that, “Great, now I’m going to be labeled a CITIZEN.”

This loathing of labels, as you can imagine, has done nothing but given me multiple labels throughout my life. I’ve been wishy-washy, noncommittal, lazy, even snooty to some people. I went through this period in college where I was really intrigued by angels. Word got out to my family and pretty soon everyone was buying me books about angels, angel earrings, angel figurines, pillows with angelic embroidery. It really made me squeamish because this meant I had just been tagged… you guessed it… as an “Angel Collector.” Heaven forbid. I had to do some quick damage control and make it known that I wasn’t really into angel STUFF. Just, you know, the angels in THEORY. This was where the snootiness label came in.

And yes, there is some truth to the wishy-washiness, too. I can’t really decide whether I’m FOR being a hair dyer or against it. Or if I’m FOR being a Ghost Hunter enthusiast or kind of impassive about the whole thing. I recently mentioned to a co-worker that I was reading up on Buddhism and I immediately felt a box closing in around me. Was I going to be one of THOSE people in her mind? I imagined that she would now believe that I burn incense in my free time… as I write to my senators and congressmen, asking them to fight for the legalization of marijuana… all while in the Lotus position. True or not, why must I be LABELED as such?

Well. The damage was already done. I had put my fear of labels away long before the Buddhism thing, filed them under “No Longer Important” when I decided to campaign for Obama. For the first time in my life, I quit caring what anyone thought about me and followed my heart full throttle.

Let me tell you, ladies and you gentlemen there in the back row, it felt SO. GOOD. I discovered a whole new world of people around me that I never knew existed in my neck of the woods, people like me who readily admitted to not having all the answers to all the hard questions but who felt like, for the first time in their lives, knew which way was the right direction and were compelled to help us get moving there.

My reevaluation of label-loathing had begun after the last election and now was all but dead. Yes, I related to this political party more than that one. And, okay, more than just a little. But I had convinced myself that it wasn’t necessary to speak publicly about where I stood on any given issue because, well, why would I? Who was I? And aren’t these things private anyway? And wearing your heart on your sleeve, marching for a cause, standing up against something… those were things that my parents’ generation did back when progressives were being assassinated. Now it could only be clichéd. It wasn’t en vogue to care so deeply anymore. Not out in the wide open space.

Or was it?

Remember those people in Close Encounters of the Third Kind? The ones who were determined to find that THING that turned out to be Devil’s Tower National Monument in Wyoming? Remember their obsessed conviction? THAT was what I felt at the beginning of this campaign season. Not because MY husband died in Iraq. Or because MY job had been shipped overseas. Or because MY civil liberties had been stripped away. Or because MY retirement savings was obliterated. But because SOMEBODY’S is, had, and was.

So I made the gradiose decision to give my blood, sweat and tears to the person whom I thought would best get us back on track. I don’t regret all those other times that I could have participated in the political scene and didn’t. I believe that everything happens in its good time. I believe that the world was ripe for THIS leader . THIS is the guy that that I felt good about putting my name behind. ME. MY NAME. I suppose it’s just a label anyway. Catherine. Mother. Daughter. Wife. Latina. Yoga Practitioner. Hair Dyer. Ghost Hunter Enthusiast. The girl who’s going to be watching the inauguration today, squealing with joy and looking for her two sisters and their high school students out in the audience.

So Happy Inauguration Day, everyone! Here’s to moving forward!!

Now you can label me a cheeseball as well.

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