Eliza sat down to type a story.

At first she changed her name several times in the title. I mean, who isn’t carrying a multitudes of nicknames inside of their head based on interactions with others? Her family, neighbours, and relatives refer to her as Betty. She signs her emails and online social network handles as Eliza. Her student loans, bank statements, and government identity shows her full name as *Elizabeth. Old high school classmates and friends from her early-Flickr days still call her Liz. Friends who moved to other countries and cities call her on the phone as Eliz. Even now, she’s still not really sure what people see in her besides a name.

Her mother said Elizabeth’s first name was a namesake after the nicest, kindest woman she ever met in Chicago. It was the 1970s and her mom was working as a supervisor slash training manager for one of the major banks at the time. The woman herself was called Betty. Elizabeth in this story was not born in the 1970s. People have told her they think she’s 21 years old because she orders Shirley Temples at restaurants, pubs, and bars. Elizabeth’s middle name is based on a Bodhisattva from the Theravada branch of Buddhism that uses the teaching of the Pāli Canon. All of this history makes her sleepy because she’s still reconciling her Christianity and Buddhist name roots in her daily re-understanding of how to navigate through life.

Eliza was so tired from writing down the history of her nicknames that she decided to wait to write a story for another day.