I was born “The [Mom's Maiden Name] Girl.” My mother had not yet picked out a first name for me. She was living in a hole-in-the-wall shack in a poorer town in agricultural central California — it was where she ended up after my father kicked her out upon discovering her pregnancy. Get an abortion or hit the road, he said. I knew this as a child, but it wasn’t until I grew older that my mother also informed me that he was threatening to beat her, to punch and stomp on her stomach to forcibly terminate the pregnancy. He tried to send her out with no belongings in a scrap car — which was to get her from her then-home on the northern border of Oregon to her adult sons’ home in central California. That’s over 900 miles. She was 43 years old and not in the best of health. My oldest brother — something of a giant — had to gather some friends to physically threaten my father for him to make sure that she was able to make the trip safely.

I’ve never had a moment’s contact with him. My mother claims that when I was around six years old, he called her, having “dropped by” and wanted to take me out for some ice cream with his new girlfriend (with whom he had been involved during the short months my mother was married to him). Fearing for my safe return, she refused. And never heard from him again.

During my first months, my adult sister lived with us — she has told me stories of having to brush cockroaches off of me while I slept. And it wouldn’t be until I entered adolescence that my mother and I settled down in a permanent home: before that, there was not one residence I was able to stay for more than a single year’s time; we hopped around looking for the lowest rents, and spent time living in spare rooms in each of my adult brothers’ homes (three times with one, once with the other).

When I was five years old, my mother married a long-time family friend. When she did so, he legally adopted me, claiming to be my father and being added to my birth certificate as such — whether my mother just went along with this or actively sought it for reasons of future security, I don’t know. Regardless, my name at the time changed from [Mom's Maiden Name] to [This Man's Name].

A little less than a year later, after struggling with him over finances — he wanted her to continue working to support his retirement, with no support for either her nor I — she divorced him. And there, a problem cropped up: in order to get my name changed back to my birth name, she would have to go to court to prove that he was not, in fact, my biological father, and have him removed from my birth certificate. As a newly single mother, she did not have the resources to take on that task. So, even after the divorce was finalized, I remained [This Man's Name] — and she kept that name as well in the interests of having the same name as her daughter.

And that name remained mine for the rest of my childhood, adolescence and early adult life. I hated it. I hated the sound of it, I hated the man it came from, I hated the way he had treated her, I hated the way we were stuck carrying his family name despite having no ties to this family whatsoever.

Ever since I can remember, I have been very eager to get rid of that name.

And ever since I remember, I have been wholly uninterested in weddings and traditional family life. I had no interest in boys or girls as a teenager. I never dreamed about “my day,” about dresses and flowers and music, about honeymoons and housewifery.

Part of that, especially as I grew older, was that I had a distinct sense of my undesirability. I wasn’t interested in anyone else because I thought no one else would be interested in me. As I grew more aware of my health and struggled with my increasing limitations, I never even entertained the idea that anyone could ever be interested in me — not to kiss me, not to hold my hand while we walked through the mall, not to cuddle, not to call me “girlfriend” or “go steady,” not to live with me, not to propose to me and certainly not to legally commit to be stuck with me for the rest of their life. Who the hell would want that? I was a burden; my health was growing worse; they would have to help take care of me, and I wouldn’t be able to contribute to the household enough to count as an equal. So obviously, I wasn’t on the market. It never even got as far as whether or not I wanted to be: it was simply a matter-of-fact acknowledgement of a reality that would never change, and thus there was no point wasting energy trying to change it.

All this is to say that I wasn’t dreaming of changing my name as part and parcel of the supposedly-universal little girl’s dreams of wearing white and being pampered and fawned over and having pretty pictures taken in rolling green fields. I never had those dreams. I just really fucking hated that name.

So before changing my name as part of an adult relationship ever became a possibility, I had three names to contend with. My father’s name (which I’ve never officially carried), my mother’s maiden name, and that other man’s name.

And not a single one of them was a name I wanted any part of.

My father’s name? Sounded pretty cool phonetically, but it was the name of a man who threatened to beat my mother, cheated on her pretty openly during their short relationship, had some pretty serious class bigotry going on, and was by all accounts — including those of his other children, the half-siblings who wanted nothing to do with me — a complete asshole. Yes: there’s a name I want to adopt!

My siblings (on my mother’s side) actually shared a completely different name — they were from a different father — my mother’s severely abusive first husband who thankfully died in a motorcycle crash, and every single member of my family is convinced it was for the better.

And then there’s my mother’s maiden name. The name shared by my aunt and uncle and family up in Oregon, the name I was born with, the name I went by for my first five years of life.

It doesn’t matter. I don’t fucking want it.

I want nothing to do with any of those names. I grew up in a severely emotionally controlling and manipulative family and experienced abuse to the point that I am just being introduced to the idea that I may have PTSD by my counselor. (I protested, and she said “OK, well, we don’t have to put a name to it, but…”) I have pretty bad dissociative issues I am only just beginning to explore; I escaped with moderate to severe anxiety disorder and panic attacks that don’t qualify as panic disorder only because instead of being random, they are triggered by contact with my family. I fit every other qualification.

I was stuck at home with a mother who afforded me no space to develop an individual self, unable to make it on my own away from her because of my disability. I couldn’t work, couldn’t afford rent, couldn’t live independently. I pushed myself to return to college earlier than I should have — after I dropped out the first time and spent months housebound — cutting short my recovery time, just to get away from her. I lived for a year on Social Security disability (after I was approved), $7500 in needs-based college grants and several thousand more in student loans before everything started to run out — money, my ability to continue school and maintain grades high enough in a busy enough schedule to qualify for further student aid — and I couldn’t stay out on my own anymore.

And then I spent a very painful and traumatic six months stuck in close contact with an abusive mother who was keenly aware that she was losing her grip on me and escalated the abuse accordingly.

And then? I was able to move 2500 miles the hell away from all that shit to live with… a man. Whom I married. And whose name I took.

I was able to move to a place I wanted to move to, to live with this amazing person I wanted to live with, who loved me dearly, who was respectful and affectionate and treated me like a whole person, a person of my own whom he just so happened to be enamored with, whose family was warm and welcoming and accepting and easy to be around…

I was able to choose where I wanted to be, who I wanted to be there with, who I wanted to be, what sort of life I wanted to live…

I chose the family I wanted to be a part of. I built the life I wanted to live. It’s a life I just so happen to love deeply, a life that has given me so much more opportunity than I ever had on the other side of this country, thanks to the person I chose to build it with.

That person? Is a man.

I took his name.

I don’t think that’s a capitulation to patriarchy. I don’t think that’s a compromise of my feminism. I think that is a demonstration of my feminism.

I have a name now. It is mine.