1:37 am
"Does it bother anyone else that someone else has your name?"
Yeah, I guess. I mean, Alexis West is kinda shitty. I don't like we have the similarity of our names. I like that Alexis Texas has my name because it sets me up for fun jokes. Did you know Alexis Texas (the non-porn star version) was almost Hannah Montana's stage name? I wonder if that would have made me like her more or less. Probably less.
But I don't think the dislike stems from purely name sharing, I think it has to do with my associations of the people I know with my name.
When I was first starting to talk I couldn't say Alexis, I couldn't even say Lexi, so I called myself CeCe. It was cute, and my nickname for a few years. In hindsight that makes me happy; I don't know anyone else with the name Alexis who had the nickname CeCe.
My family, especially my nana, has often referred to me as Lexi. I was never a fan. I always preferred "Alexis" because it was the "fancy version". But now I like when they call me Lexi. It makes me feel special for some reason.
Lexi doesn't have the greatest connotations with me, because that's the only thing Mallory would call me. I think maybe I subconsciously wanted her to though, because I told her I'd call her Mally (she hated being called that) and then started a conversation about how I hated being called Lexi. It makes me sad I refer to her as Mallory now, because she was always Mally to me. I even made her like it.
I love being called Lex, but I would never tell anyone to call me that. I'm terrified if it feels forced it will lose its magic. Only my closest friends call me Lex and even that's a rarity. Each time they do it's like stumbling on a gold mine.
I've had other nicknames like Alaska and Allister, but they were so niche it never came to fruition. I'm okay with that. But it makes me happy when they resurface sometimes.
When I was a little kid I wanted to be called Nick and use he/him pronouns. One of my uncles is named Nick, and my middle name is named after him but the feminized form. Being called Nick kind of made me uncomfortable, because it felt so forced. A few years later I read a book whose protagonist's name was Nikki and I fell in love. I loved the spelling, I still do. I tried to get my family to call me that for a while, it didn't work out.
Recently I've been struggling with my name. It's felt wrong to me, like it's representing an ingenuine version of myself. I think it was partially a dysphoria thing. But now, seeing it typed out in his book, in one of his chapters, made everything change. He typed my name. When I first saw it I felt happy. Rereading the chapter again I felt even happier. The third time through his chapter, I stared at it for a long time. The happiness began to make sense. I stared and stared at the sounds by which I'm identified, and that specific sequence of sounds holds connotations with so many people, pointedly, him. It's those letters and those sounds by which he thinks of me, and for some reason, that makes me love my name.
1:58 am
