#i'm talkin 'bout my PD and neurodivergency and names and stuff

[ruffboijuliaburnsides]

if there's one interesting thing about having such a weird relationship with my deadname and sense of identity as a kid, it's that i went through like 5 nicknames between the ages of 12 and 19 in an attempt to make it fit me. And this is entirely self-indulgent introspective rambling so it's going under a cut.

Like, up to 7th grade, I'd just gone by my full name, no nicknames at all (unless you counted my dad calling me Scooter sometimes). But in 6th grade was when my autDHD burnout had started and and my depression had really started to be A Thing, and I was desperate for 7th grade to go better than the disaster that was 6th grade, and I wanted to reinvent myself. Which is very hard when you go to a tiny private religious k-12 school where you had like 60 kids in your entire grade and 95% of them had been there since at least 3rd grade with you.

So I tried [Nick 1] which is staying unspecified bc i like to minimize the amount my deadname is attached to my online presence, as it's still legally attached to me, and both [Nick 1] and [Nick 2] are obvious derivatives. 7th grade and [Nick 1] were unsuccessful. I felt even less attached to [Nick 1] than my full name. so 8th grade I tried a different approach with [Nick 2]. A little better but still not right.

But then I was switching schools finally, going to public school where no one would know me or the embarrassing facts of my childhood, and I could be someone NEW.

And I was, tbh. I branched out of any like. recognisably related-to-my-full-name nicknames and decided to go by "Lisse" (pronounced "Lissie", but I was a pretentious 14yo so), and I really liked that one, actually. Kept it for probably 3 years I think? And then I went on a summer trip and was informed by my tripmates that I reminded them of Evie from the Mummy movies. Which, I adored her so I was fully on board with this comparison. But then they just started calling me that, and it fit so much better that it stuck for like... well 2003, probably at least 6-7 years, with a couple attempts at other nicknames online (Bee was one, hilariously now that I know of my sibling who also goes by that), until I changed the base name I was going by entirely and never looked back.

It's just. IDK it's wild, bc especially in that period of my teens, I essentially WAS a different person with all of those nicknames. Not entirely different, not unrecognizable, but it was like I associated different character traits with those nicknames, which meant I changed how I acted when I was going by them, without thinking about it. And I know this probably ultimately ties back a bit to the fact that I was developing Borderline Personality Disorder at the time, but it's just wild to look at all those people (+ Mina and Rosie, my two main internet handles over that period) that I was, none of whom were precisely me and all of whom were entirely me.

IDK I don't have a conclusion to this, it's just odd to me. Like I have memories of things that definitely happened when I was 11 and 15 but both feel like they should've happened when I was 13 because when I was 13 I was [Nick 2] and I associate that person with one of my earliest rebellious stages. and because I have such a golf-ball-sized-hole sieve of a memory and a dubious relationship with the passage of time, I look at those two things 4 years apart and say "yeah it all happened right in the middle there" and despite knowing it's impossible (one thing was an album that didn't even come OUT until I was 14), it's somehow the truth that both of those things happened when I was 13, because that's when I was [Nick 2] and that's when my memory and sense of self will allow these things to have happened.

brains are fuckin wild, man, especially when they're not working like they're supposed to.