So I know when you first start going by a new name there is an adjustment period where your sense of self remains attached to your dead name and you have to adjust to your chosen name. But has anyone else experienced the space between names where your sense of self has fully detached from your dead name but has not quite fully attached to your chosen name?

I've been going by Alexis, Lexi for short, for 10.5 months now. I'm at the point where my dead name feels alien to me, which is nice, but my chosen name doesn't fully feel like mine yet either. There's still a sense of disconnection, particularly with the short version. It feels like my old existence is fully dissolved but my new existence hasn't finished forming yet so I just don't currently fully exist. It's a bizarre place to be. And I feel more connected to Alexis from an internal perspective but more connected to Lexi from an external one.

I think part of the reason is because I do have two forms of my chosen name. I also think that the reason Alexis feels more internally connected then Lexi is because Alexis is what I use in most situations of self identification. Like if I'm giving my name for a coffee order or to pick up pizza or when I sign something I refer to myself as Alexis, so that form of my name is sticking faster as a self identifier. On the opposite side of this, it feels like other people are referring to me when they call my Lexi, but there is a greater disconnect when other people call me Alexis.

Lexi is what the majority of people in my life call me and I only refer to myself as Lexi in specific circumstances, usually when I'm being cute with a romantic partner. Like I was cuddling with my boyfriend earlier and he said he had to get up and I told him that's gonna be hard with a lump of Lexi stuck to his shoulder. And the only people who call me Alexis are my sister, her boyfriend, and my coworkers.

It's like Lexi is who I am to other people but Alexis is who I am to myself. They're both me but because I am still in the process of fully connecting to my chosen name there is a gap between the two that is proving very slow to close. My dead name didn't have a short form and I never went by a nickname before so I wonder if this maybe has nothing to do with it being a chosen name and is just a normal thing that people who a short version of their full first name experience?

Anyways, thank you for coming to my Ted Talks.