Well, several years ago I was active one the roleplay board of a different TG forum, and went by Jaime. Jaime was the first name to really fit when my first name, Natalia, stopped feeling right after a decade of use. Once roleplaying turning myself into my real, female self got old and tiresome, I fell back into my loving of creating and fleshing out new, original characters.
One game asked us to relinquish full control of the after character and let the game master set some of the parameters of who your character becomes. This pushed me outside my comfort zone and the result was a character that came to life in a way none other had before, both in the game and in my mind. She was so far outside my comfort zone the only way I could write her was throw myself totally into her head space and essentially give her control. She unearthed parts of me that had been bury, aspects of my full self that had long since been suppressed. When it came time to name this character in game, Callie was the first one to jump into my head, and it felt right so I used that.
The game ended, and life went on, but Callie stayed, rooting herself into my psyche as an almost second identity, taking for herself the parts and aspects of myself that were used to create her. We are one and the same, and yet two distinctly different and separate personas. Like yin and yang in a way. My two sides. It is hard to really explain.
A few years after this game, I finally learned what I would have been named had I been born female, Colleen Marie. I liked the name, a lot, but it took a while to embed itself and replace Jaime as how I thought of myself. It fit better as well. Colleen turned out to mean "girl" and Marie, "Wished for child", which together sort of translates to "Wished for girl." Which was fitting, even if I wasn't sure whether to take as the universe mocking me, or as a sign I really was born the wrong gender.
There have been a lot of serendipitous coincidences, but the biggest by far was discovering that Callie, in place of Collie, is a widely used and common short form for Colleen. The two names that are me, unconnected in choice and circumstance just happened to go hand in hand already. Kinda felt like fate we I discovered this actually.
So people can call me Colleen or Callie, either is perfectly fine, and it's fun to see who gravitates to which name as both names really do fit the side of me they represent, kinda says a bit about how they see me.
Fyi, my current avatar is Callie, the character.
