When teachers would get to my name on the roll, they would scrunch up their face and you’d hear girls laughing quietly and I’d literally feel my face flood with embarrassment.. embarrassment over my own name...? God it hurts to think about it. So dehumanising.

I usually go by the shortened version of my first name and even now whenever I meet people my first instinct is to say “it’s okay! You can call me Tobi, most people find my full name hard to pronounce”. Internalised trauma response

And even at that people would still love to tell me “oh! I have a cat named tobi, my dog is called tobi” as if it all of a sudden made me relatable and I would either stand there in silence or laugh awkwardly but it literally made me feel like shit.