constant debate over what my name should be?? [vent-ish]

this might sound non-sensical but i genuinely don't know what to think atm 

OK SO. i've always hated my birth name, right? it's unisex but primarily used for guys. i think my first ever nightmare / dream that i remember was me in pre-school sobbing with a long sleeved, striped green white shirt, since everyone thought i was a boy bc of my name. 

i've always hated my birth name. always. 

the first time i ever had an account online was around 2016 when i started my first youtube channel, specifically in december. it was an animal jam channel. my first video was recorded on my ipad and it was about a mystery of a thief and christmas presents. basic, but i was 9. what more can you want? i went by sebastian / seb at that time since my animal  jam username had the name in it, after my late kitten in 2015.

at that time, i was in the 4th grade and at my table in my english/history class we started talking about names. i mentioned that sebastian could be a girl's name but i was quickly shot down. now that i think about it, it's so weird to realize that i never considered names to be in a binary format of male/female. weird.

anyways, during my animal jam times i primarily went by sebastian/seb but it would change with whatever i decided to make my channel name at the time. i went through so many it's wild, especially "main looks" which was a specific decorated animal from animal jam that would mainly feature in videos. 

continuing to my gacha phase, i still had a youtube channel but i also went by several different names, i think all of them were: 

1. zas
2. mag
3. minuette
4. aliyah 

like the animal jam era, i also changed my channel name and main look with the name, yadda yadda whatever. i remember my minuette era was the most successful which this white/dull purple character. honestly? design still goes hard. i might play around with that name, actually, since i adore that name. 

now. oh god. so. after my gacha era, i stopped doing youtubbe and i posted art on instagram. what kind of art you wonder? COUNTRYHUMANS. freaking COUNTRY. HUMANS. if you don't know what that is, it's personified countries. i dread thinking of this era since it sucked, being overall disrespectful towards history and constant sexualization. of countries. yeah. 

anyways, during my countryhumans era i went by a LOT of names. the ones off the top of my head are lydia, athena, and alyssa. when i went by athena, i remember my friend getting angry with me that i went by that since "i wanted to be treated like a god." though now that i think about it, back then i was very self centered and i think that's where the friend was coming from. i ended up finding a name that i loved in january of 2020 and i've stuck with it ever since. in fact, this name is the longest i've ever stayed with one. i'm not gonna say what this name is since it's very rare and lowkey identifying. so it's just going to be referred to as "that name" lol.

but i'm tired of it. sure, i think we all get tired of our name at some point, but this feels a little different. i first started feeling like this in november of last year and i've been going back and forth with it since trying to find something that i liked and i didn't cringe at after a little while. a few weeks ago, this "OH GOD WHAT IS MY NAME WHO AM I" feeling came back and i decided search for how to find a new name and from wikihow: use an obituary website.

so i did. that's where i found the name "lenora" from, actually. from a woman who was in florida, passing at the age of 100. 

i like the name, hence why my spacehey/tumblr are associated with "lenora" now. but in my real life, i feel like it doesn't fit me 100%. maybe it's because i'm so used to be called by my birth name/THAT name yk. i might ask my friend group to call me lenora to see how it feels but ajhfkjsd i'm so scared to. 

i also *really* like larissa as a name, too, so i might play around with that too as a heads up :3 uhh ty for reading <3 i might most another vent since i have another, weirder?, thing to talk about. 

thank you, lenora.