White Girl Irony

When first reading this assignment, I was excited because I had an excuse to look up what my name meant, something that I never have done before. I've heard of people's names meaning "princess" or "kindness" and stuff like that, but when I searched the name "Melanie," here's what I got:

Melanie; "From the French form of the Latin name Melania, derived from Greek...meaning 'black, dark.'"

Well, that explains a lot. The whitest white girl in the world was literally named "black."

I read on. The name "Melanie" was the name of a Roman saint who donated all of her wealth to charity, as legend tells. This connects to me because I have always seen the importance of kindness. No, I am not perfectly kind one hundred percent of the time. But I do try to be. When I was younger, I wouldn't want to tell my mom that I didn't like the clothes she was picking out for me because I didn't want to hurt her feelings. So naturally, I did the kinder thing and let her buy them anyways and then never wear them. I also need to be more charitable through monetary means. I often get so caught up in what I need that I forget the much more important needs of others. I could provide food for a starving family, and I'm here worried about getting a dress for homecoming.

The conflict between living up to two names is that the individual is never the same as the whole. I, personally, see myself as an outgoing, extroverted person when I am not with my family. However, I am pretty much the complete opposite with my family. In a family of six strongly opinionated people, it is hard to voice your thoughts. So naturally, I step back to allow room for others.
Consequently, I am two completely different people depending on the environment in which you interact with me. Those who know me through church or have met me through my family see me as a more quiet and reserved individual. If you were to describe this version of me to my friends and others, they wouldn't think you were talking about the same person.
In this dual personality, I guess there lies the issue of which person is really me. I guess I have to settle with being both; the fact that I morph into my environment is part of who I am. I try to allow for others to voice their opinions when they need to and when there are less extreme personalities in a situation, I step up to fill their place. I guess, in that way, I am charitable.