My Last Name

What's in a name? Letters? Belonging? Legacy?

J
A
N
G

That is my last name from the two people who brought me into this world, but after doing so, gave me away. The tears of my life are felt in every moment I think of them and realize I have nothing. Not a memory. Not a moment. Not a thing that is mine, and only mine to keep — not to cling on to, but to live through.

I used to think I had a memory of my mother. I used to see her face every morning when I woke up. And in every moment I felt fear, or concern or anger, I would see her face and though I could never remember her voice, I could see her lips move telling me to smile, and that she would make me laugh until my frown went away. And she did.

The memory of her carried me through every moment in life that I needed her to. And it was during those times, I didn't need a name — JANG — to live through, because I had her. Her face when I needed to see past what was hurting me.

Then one day, when looking through photos, I saw her and my whole fucking heart broke. The picture was not of my mother, but of me in the orphanage, next to a social worker. The confusion took me to a place where I felt five all over again, crying in bed on my first night in the US. The cold, dark room was probably warm, but my fear let me feel no heat.

Looking at that photo, I kept thinking this has to be a mistake. Was this one of my other brothers? Was this her visiting? No, none of that made sense, and I knew. It took almost five years for me to admit it, and the day I did was the day I felt so tremendously alone. Which is strange, because what made me feel alone wasn't that in that moment I was — it was that I realized the only thing that had gotten me through my hardest times as a child wasn't my mother. It was no one.

And that is what I felt like from that time on. Like a NO ONE — until on August 17th, 2017, I when I officially became someone I had always wanted, I became Andrew Jang. Keeping the first name given to me by my adopted parents to honor them. And finally being reunited with what felt like a dream, the only thing given to me at birth , my last name. J A N G. I remember crying for a fucking week. I was so hopeful. So proud. I would look at my driver's license sometimes twenty times a day just to see my name. And in that year I didn't hurt as much for not having the memory of my mother, because I had this. And as weird as it sounds, it was truly the first thing I ever loved about myself.

Then the Wall Street Journal article came out, calling me a fugitive. Declaring me as a man on the run and someone people needed to look out for. There it was, blasted and posted and reposted, shoved down my throat. I never read it back then. I couldn't stomach it. I had spoken to the writer and his editor before they published that piece. They asked me about my name change and I told them about why but meant so much to me and told them me leaving Seattle wasn't about fleeing the law, it was about recovering from my suicide attempts.

But that didn't matter. They said what they said, and to me it felt like they intentionally wrote that part not as journalists, but as a firing squad — firing their bullets carelessly and recklessly, because my life and the only thing I had that mattered didn't matter to them.

I truly hated them for that. And caught between the constant fear of people finding out my name and seeing that article, I ducked through society for the next three years. Genuinely on pins and needles. And when people found out, the embarrassment and fear dug a hole into my confidence to live.

Things got worse when I was evicted because of that article. Worse when I couldn't get a job. For the next three years no one would hire me, and it took one honest person to tell me why for me to understand just how difficult the road ahead was. And it made me hate the one thing I had always wanted and for a short time got to love publicly, my last name. But all of that was gone. Dead, was any desire to own it, any desire to hear it, any desire to be it.

I effectively disappeared and that is why I attempted suicide for a third time.

Living after, would actually prove to be the REAL struggle. How do I find purpose? How do I build a life, when I cannot use my past and will not use my name ?? Now that will have to be for another story. Because for this one, I need to close this chapter.

My last name may never be great. It may never hang atop a building, or among the world elites. My last name may never repeated as an inspiration or a name that lives beyond my last breath. But it mine. The wall street journal didn’t end my legacy. They created a window for me to create one, not because the name gave it to me, but because I did. Name or not, I survived. I lived to not just share my story, but to be proud of it ----- forever as Andrew Jang.