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