Why Your Name Matters

instead of going to school when cold

into morning

my mother sisters and i sat with our

lawyer in a courtroom line

for what felt like a lifetime i sat

there with the paperwork for my name

change clenched in my shaky hands

all my life and everything i had ever

known to this point was in that manila

folder

the time came and we were asked to

approach the judge i handed her the

folder

and stood there like a deer in

headlights

this woman was now quite literally

holding the future of my identity

my name in her hands

when she had finished reading she slowly

removed her glasses and took a long hard

look at us standing there before her

she said she approved the name change

and wished us good luck

i had finally been legally released from

my past and i walked out of that

courthouse

feeling reborn so why was i changing my

name you may ask

looking back on my childhood the reality

that i lived was traumatic

but in the moment i saw nothing wrong

with it

if you asked my classmates and teachers

they’d say i was a normal happy kid

but what they didn’t know was that i

lived a childhood in which i felt fear

on a daily basis

day to day the extent that i felt that

fear varied but

i can’t remember a single moment where i

didn’t feel it at all

i lived a childhood where the sound of

my father’s footsteps

triggered me to hide underneath my bed

if i acted out at dinner i could expect

to be dragged by my hair

up into my room and even now

i can so clearly remember the feeling of

his tight grip

on my thin arm

like many abusive relationships i saw

nothing wrong with it

it sounds ridiculous but i truly

believed

that everyone’s fathers behaved this way

although now i know that’s not true i

also know i’m not the only one who

experienced this reality

approximately 10 percent of children are

exposed to domestic violence in their

childhoods

and 25 experience at least one event

that means that in weyland high school

alone a little over 80 students

are living the same reality that i did

as for my story the abuse reached its

pinnacle the summer i was going into

eighth grade

like i said some days were worse than

others but

nothing was as traumatic as the summer

night

this was the night that my father tried

to kill my older sister

smashing her head just an inch away from

a glass coffee table

in our living room what followed this

event

was my mother’s sis my mother sister and

i

having to confront him at court

we all had to give a detailed testimony

of the years of domestic abuse

that he imposed on our family

as we spoke he sat there

and as the judge puts it like a stone

cold abusive monster

i haven’t seen him since that day but

what i didn’t realize

was that the journey to escape his abuse

had just begun

i spent the rest of the summer locked

inside of my house

out of fear of seeing people that i knew

i couldn’t even bring myself to see some

of my best friends because i was so

scared that they had known what had

happened to me

and my family and once summer judo

closed

and it was time to return to school i

grew anxious to see my classmates i was

terrified

without realizing it i had let what

happened to me

take over my whole identity in my entire

life

months passed and i became accustomed to

my new reality

living with a secret childhood of abuse

i proceeded to push the situation back

in my head and

as time went on it became easier and

easier for me to pretend to forget what

had happened

instead of confronting the repercussions

of what i went through i focused on

other areas of my life

i found a lot of success but i still

wasn’t happy and this led me to question

why wasn’t i happy when i felt like i

had everything

that i worked for

this question led me to my senior year

of high school

it was around this time that my family

decided to change our last names

initially i opposed the idea i didn’t

think changing our names was necessary

and i thought it would just draw more

attention to our family and our

situation

weeks passed but i couldn’t shake this

name change

concept from my head it was so weird

because

all of a sudden i became hyper aware of

my own

name i’d pause before writing my name

at the top of my schoolwork and

eventually

i stopped writing my last name on

anything at all

the concept of a name seems so simple

it’s just

an identifier or label for an individual

but as i became more aware of my own

name

i realized it’s not that simple

i completely underestimated the

significance that someone’s name

has on their identity and even more so

i undervalued the power of being aware

and control of your own identity

without changing my name i connected

myself to my abuser

a man who had control over my life for

14 years

i thought that without him physically in

my life that he would lose his control

but evidently that was not the case

was at this moment that i realized that

i needed to reclaim my identity from him

and that started with recreating myself

with a new name

finding myself with my new name amongst

a group of kids that i’d met in

kindergarten

was difficult

but it was my senior year of high school

college was just around the corner and i

wouldn’t ever see any of these kids ever

again

the transition from high school to

college to put it simply

was a fresh start and i’ve never

experienced a fresh start like it before

i spent 13 years in the same school as

these kids

and that in combination with the small

town that we lived in resulted in

everyone knowing everyone

so i was excited to go to college

knowing no one there

all my life i heard about finding

yourself at college and i knew that this

was something that i definitely wanted

to experience

so when the time came i packed up my

room and got ready to leave everything

that i knew before

the short drive up to dartmouth college

felt long as my mind

raced thinking about the new opportunity

i had to

change myself with my new name

as we arrived on campus excitement grew

as i collected my id

room key an array of pamphlets and

information packets

it grew even more as my mom pulled up to

my first college dorm building

i ripped my bike off the back of her car

ran it up to my room when suddenly

my heart dropped i couldn’t believe what

i saw

just when i thought that i’d escaped my

old identity

i was confronted by it again i was met

at my freshman college dorm room with

the last name of my abuser

on my door

as i stood there i realized something a

lot has led up to this moment

i survived a childhood of domestic abuse

i have changed my name and most of all

i’ve committed myself to reclaiming my

identity

but what i hadn’t appreciated before was

that the road to achieve this goal would

not be linear

nor would it end with me going to

college

i was now quite literally standing

before the rest of my life

the door to my freshman college dorm

room

dramatically i ripped my name tag off my

door crumpled it in my hands and finally

felt ready to start down this road

and who i am standing here today four

months later

is a little different than who i was

then and i will continue to change

knowing the control i have over my

identity

this is a story in progress

so why am i telling you all this

although my story is unique

in many ways it’s not i was confronted

with the blatant opportunity to think

about my identity

that being changing my name but before

that

my identity wasn’t something that i even

thought about

it took years of me feeling ashamed of

what happened to me

to confront this difficult question but

it wasn’t until i confronted this

question

that my life became much simpler

when i became aware of my identity i

became aware of myself

and today i feel proud of the control i

have over my own life

so i ask you to reflect on your own life

and question whether or not you’re proud

of who you are

if the answer to that question is no

chances are you are

unaware of the con of the power of

taking control of your

own identity because at the end of the

day

we all deserve to be proud of who we are

and i

am proud to be jenna martin