I don’t necessarily
expect anyone to understand this.
And if you don’t, I
understand why.
Seriously, who, aside
from victims trying to hide from assailants, legally changes their first name
as an adult?
Apparently, I do.
I’m twenty-four years
old.
I just submitted my
petition for legal name change.
And it feels so
freeing.
For as long as I can
remember, I haven’t liked my name.
Not because it’s a
bad name; it’s really not.
I’ve just never felt
it suited me.
And the older I’ve
gotten, the more my heart has felt it.
I felt weird introducing
myself with a name which felt so different from who I was.
Right after high
school, I moved to Texas for two years.
I thought about
changing my name when I got there, but I chickened out.
I wasn’t sure what I
would change it to, anyway.
But when I came back,
I knew it was time to make a change.
In my freshman
English comp class, I introduced myself as “Bri” for the first time.
I needed a place to
test the waters, and that seemed like as good as any.
Guess what?
They didn’t think I
was a fraud.
And it felt really
good to go by a name I actually didn’t cringe at when I said it.
When I transferred
into nursing school, I knew some faculty members, and it was a very small
school.
I got nervous about
how they would respond; so, I didn’t fully embrace the change while in school.
But I did in other
places, like my gym, church, and [eventually] work communities.
And I got to a point
where more people I regularly interacted with didn’t know my “real” first name
than those who did.
But that’s all just
surface stuff.
The real, raw, deep
reason I’m changing my name is I feel like God has called me out of the deepest
darkness and has taken me through an incredible metamorphosis.
I’m so very different
from who I was ten years ago, five years ago.
Even from who I was
six months ago.
And I feel it’s time
to take that transformation and reflect it with a properly renovated name.
It’s like when God
changed the character of Saul, the killer of Christians, and gave him a new
name and identity in the name of Paul, which means small or humble.
It’s like when God
made a promise to Abram, thus changing his name to Abraham, meaning the father
of all nations.
It’s like when God
called Simon, which means God has heard, to Peter, which means rock or stone.
God changed their
names, and the names of many others, to reflect their true identities.
And I feel like he’s
done the same for me.
It just took me a few
years to really admit it.
And I feel like I
need to embrace this gift by shrugging off the old skin of the dead man whom I
used to live in and embracing the new life that I now live.
By making the change
legal.
So, pending the
approval of my petition, my name will now legally be “Brielle.”
Brielle is shorthand
for Gabrielle.
It means “woman of
God” in Hebrew.
I’m not going to make
anyone who’s known me for a long time feel bad for not referring to me as Bri
or Brielle.
But do know that,
regardless of how stupid or crazy you may or may not think I am, this is name
that I’ve chosen to embrace.
Please let me
introduce myself as such.
Yours truly,
Brielle