Hi my name is Kristina.

A couple posts in and you’d think I wouldn’t have to say this but to be frank, it’s hard for people to comprehend that.

I’m Kristina. And that’s pretty important to me lately. I’m well aware that people who knew me in high school or the early years at Kings, you may have also known me as Benny and this is me kindly asking for you to not call me that anymore.

A name is a pretty important thing to a person. For a long time I wasn’t comfortable with who Kristina was because I was in such strong denial about who I am due to absolute fear.

I always tell people that I chose to start using Benny as a name because of the fact that I ended up in quite a few classes with other (K)Christinas and when people would try to get our attention it got pretty annoying. As much a that is true, I just really hated who people wanted me to be. There was so much negative connotations with who I understood myself to be to the point that I just reinvented myself completely as Benny.

For the longest time, people kept telling me who I was supposed to be. I was so scared of failure to match up to what they wanted me to be that I saw the best solution as not failing anyone by creating a whole new version of myself.

For years I was okay with people calling me Benny because how could I fail? I could say that everything I did was part of some grand scheme that I totally intended. But then I had the best summer of my life this year and I realized being Kristina wasn’t as bad as I thought. Being just Kristina wasn’t about how happy I made other people, it was about how happy I was with myself.

Kristina was who I was who I am. No one was borrowing my body and living my life and going through the motions that I experience. As much as I care about other people I couldn’t let their perceptions of me dictate who I let myself be. The biggest struggle was realizing that I needed to stop treating myself as an obscure objective that needed to be achieved and instead treating myself as the human being I am. I needed to start living my life and now I understand.

Kristina is somewhat of a dork but with a well meaning heart. She let’s her work get the best of her sometimes but she still tries to be someone worth respecting. Kristina doesn’t give up because that isn’t who she is and you can guarantee that 110% of her heart goes into every single project she does. Bad jokes, sarcasm and a sharp wit is how she copes with the world around her. But most of all, Kristina is me. I don’t always understand what I’m doing but what I do know is that I need to do what’s right for me.

So let me reintroduce myself. My name is Kristina. Give me a chance to be who I am and I can promise you that some sort of adventure is ahead. Please don’t call me Benny, please give me a chance to be myself and from there you can develop your own opinion of what you think of me. The age of Benny is over and I’m okay with that. So please, even if it feels weird because you’ve called me Benny or something else, just call me Kristina & we can figure out just who that person is together.