I Named Myself

_{Photo by Amador Loureiro}

Back in high-school, having a nickname wasn't exactly something to be happy about because there was a bigger chance that you were given that nickname to mock you. So let's say you're really dark in complexion, back then someone would just randomly call you blackie or charcoal and before you know it, every one in class is calling you the same thing and you have no choice but to answer because you get used to it. I remember there was this lady that we used to call "Plenty" because of how fat she was. One would think that that would piss her off but it didn't, she answered that nicknamed till the end of high school.

So nicknames weren't exactly something to be proud of and almost everyone had a nick name, there were only few of us who didn't and I believe that the only reason why no one thought to give me one was because of how under the radar I can be when I want to, so no one really thought that far about me to think of a name to mock me with and trust me when I say I was glad it didn't happen.

But then the social media app known as 2go came out and it turned out we all needed a username to access the app. Everyone at the time were using their nicknames as their username and I had none, so I decided to go with the username Praise. I had no idea why I had gone with that name but at the time, it just kinda made sense so I continued using it.

But it didn't take long for the app to go under and this was where I was suppose to ditch the nickname and go back to using my real name for everything else but I didn't, instead I started to look for ways to make the nick name be my own by modifying it. So I went from Praise to Praiz, to Praizzz until I finally settled on Prayzz.

I remember one time I was on a voice show on discord and I introduced myself as Prayzz, my mom had come to my room later that evening with a smile on her face, telling me how she loved the name while also teasing about me about it. If I was thinking of changing the name back then, all of that left my mind after my mom told me how much she liked the name that evening, it felt so good.

So I got used to the nickname because like I said, it was here to stay. And so did my friends both offline and online because I also used it as my username on all of my socials. The nick name was mine now and I was going to use it everywhere and on everything that demanded a nickname or a username.

And up till this day, my friends all call me Prayzz and I love it because it always reminds me of how my mom reacted when she first found out I had named myself Prayzz.