what’s in a name? specifically, my name. this is a subject that is most likely interesting to precisely 1 person in the entire world. that person being me. but if it does sound interesting to you, here are entirely too many words dedicated to just that: why mae molly bubsy?¹

choosing my new first name was a task that i did not take lightly. i spent time poring over lists of girls’ names. i paid special attention to any names i saw in the wild. i asked other trans folx how they decided on their names, hoping for inspiration.

the first name i ever considered was the feminine equivalent of my deadname. i quickly discarded that idea for being too similar. the second was bubsy (not joking), but we’ll circle back around to that later. the next was willow. a very beautiful name for sure! there are plenty of others that i pondered briefly as well. but then i thought of

there’s a video game called night in the woods. you might have heard of it?

anyway, the main character is mae borowski. a college dropout living with her parents? who struggles with depression and poor self-image? doesn’t know what to do with her life? feels like a failure? is a cat? wow, that’s me!

in fact, she’s so me that i’ve never completed the game. it was all so close to home. it brought up a lot of unpleasant feelings and memories, and i had to stop. someday i will complete it. once i’m in a better place mentally, that is. and hey, as long as i don’t complete it, i don’t know how the story ends. and maybe it’s easier to imagine that things will be okay than it is to actually march forward and face my mae’s fears.

i relate soooo much to mae that, once i thought of it, the search for a name was over. i remember it feeling like an “aha” moment. it felt so natural. all along, i was mae.² i just had to find it.

it just feels perfect, and i am so happy every time i remember that it’s now my legal name.

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right now, legally speaking, my middle name is bubsy³ (i promise we will get to it!). that was my chosen middle name until very recently.

however, that changed during my second stay at the psych ward. if you didn’t know, the psych ward, in addition to being traumatic, is also really fucking boring. would it kill them to let us use the watercolors for more than 30 minutes? once a week? god.

ahem. anyway. they also had a very small selection of books that we could borrow. in an effort to stave off the boredom, i borrowed an unassuming little paperback. i really didn’t expect it to make me want to change my middle name to

the upside of unrequited by becky albertalli; a ya romance novel about a seventeen year-old girl named molly peskin-suso. she’s had 26 crushes, all of which she’s never acted on. after all, fat girls can’t be too hasty. but will things turn out differently this time? will molly get her first kiss at long last? or will she die of loneliness?

so yes. i thought this would just be some silly love story to help pass the time. and for most people, that’s what it is! there is no big surprise hidden in this book waiting to shake your world.⁴ so why did i end up in tears while reading it?

the first part of the equation is that i see some of myself in molly. the loneliness, the fear of rejection, the obsessive desire for love and intimacy,⁵ the self-consciousness about her looks, the constant comparisons between herself and her sister and her peers… i resonate deeply with those struggles.

however, this second component is much more important, and much more personal. painful, even.

i never got to be a teen. i mean, i was a teen. but i never got to be a teen. i was diagnosed with depression when i was 13 maybe? i don’t remember. i spent my entire teen years⁶ either too depressed to get out of bed or going in and out of hospitals trying medication after medication, treatment after treatment. i have been on almost every drug there is for depression and tried almost every treatment. they didn’t update the diagnosis to treatment-resistant depression for nothing.

because of this, i have long held a deep sadness for the teen years that i never got to live. a formative time for most, and it certainly was for me… just not in the way i wanted.

and then i discovered that i’m a trans girl.

i found that this longstanding grief had now gained an entirely new dimension. it wasn’t just that i never got to be a teen. now, it was that i never got to be a teen girl.

never got to gossip. never got to hang out at the mall. never got to get my ears pierced. never got to try on outfits with friends. never got to have a makeover. never got to decorate my locker. never got to have a goth phase. never got to go to prom. never got to have a summer job. never got to have a bright future ahead of me. the list goes on…

so i was reading this book. about a girl similar to me. living a life i wish i could live. while already very vulnerable due to being in the psych ward! it was a moving experience, and i cried. a lot.

so yeah. maybe it’s hard to explain why the upside of unrequited had such a profound effect on me, but it did. perhaps it’s because molly peskin-suso is this kind of bittersweet combination of being who i am but also who i wish i could’ve been? i don’t know. but now molly is my middle name, and i do know that it feels right.

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initially, i had no intention of changing my last name. i was perfectly content with keeping the family name. but as time went on, i began to reconsider. the names mae and molly were chosen by me because they had meaning to me. but [lastname]? it was simply… assigned to me. and as a trans girl, i’m not a big fan of things being assigned to me!

don’t get me wrong; i have no issues with my family⁷ or the family name. i just thought it’d feel better to have my entire name chosen by me. really reflecting who i am.

so we’re finally here. the last name. this is probably the most eye-catching part of my name. and i’m sure many will ask: why the hell would you choose

i. love. bubsy the bobcat. completely unironically.⁸ i think he’s funny and cute. i own a copy of his shirt. and i even enjoy the games!⁹

as i mentioned previously, bubsy was the second name i seriously considered when i realized i was trans. well, it started as a joke but became serious. eventually i found mae, but i still wanted to incorporate bubsy. so bubsy became my middle name.

over time, i started to refer to myself as just “mae bubsy,” chopping off my last name. i began thinking of bubsy as my last name, but when i filed for my name change i wasn’t yet ready to commit to that. so, i made it my middle name. i quickly regretted it though, and i plan to file for another name change at some point to make bubsy my last name proper.

okay, but why bubsy? i really enjoy the levity that it brings to my name. mae and molly are both tied to deeply personal (and sometimes quite difficult) thoughts, feelings, and events. but bubsy? it’s just fun. it’s a reminder that i do like to smile every now and then!^{[citation needed]} and i love that.

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and there you have it. the origin of my name. every part of it is precious to me. carefully chosen (never assigned!)¹⁰ in order to truly represent me.

mae, for who i am and yet could be, someday.

molly, for my lost youth and who i wish i could’ve been.

bubsy, for a sense of joy and lightheartedness.

put it all together and you’ve got