In short!

It’s official. I’m turning into one of those porch hag old bitter ladies. You know the type, sitting in their rocker, looking out over their tiny front yard and angrily shaking their fist at the youngsters passing by al raucously, skirting too close to her gardenias.

Now, with my talent for killing flowers I obviously won’t have gardenias, but I’m starting to really get the hang of the excessively angry bitterness for no apparent reason. I should get to work on a quilt to put over my old rickety legs. But I can’t sow either. Dammit.

Him: ‘Hey Z.!’

Right there. Right then. Instantly done. Two words. Or well. One word or a letter was all it took for him to instantly get discarded to the bin of ‘nopes!’

I mean, I gettit. I really do. We all stem from the era of Madonna being shortened to Madge. Rihanna turning into Ri-ri. J-Lo. X-tina. And JB really turned us around. We’ve lived in the worlds of Brangelina, Tomkat, Kimye and the likes. Messing with names just for convenience and parlor tricks is a thing. Apparently. And though I’ve definitely been guilty of using shorts every now and then – you don’t know what it’s like to see my name reduced to one single letter.

My entire life has been lived in a world who conveniently slash out most of my name already. Which is fine, seeing as being called ‘Zoë-Amber’ takes me straight back to a childhood where full-name-use instantly indicated ‘I’m in TROUBLE!’. People calling me Zoë is my preferred tag (although I respond equally well to my gamertag Linqy, or Amber, or any other variation of the two).

But in the end -> my name is Zoë-Amber. And even though I spent a large part of my childhood cursing the ‘specialness’, these days I appreciate it all the more. It’s much easier to be remembered if you’re not one of the three (or four) letterclub. Suck it Anna. Max. Kim. Tara. Suck it!

So when you have the audacity to swipe me right on Tinder and then butcher my name to a single Z. without even knowing anything about me? You’re out. I’ll mourn the loss with a glass of extra bitter lemonade on my porch, an old and very single young lady, shaking my fist at the single-letter-couples out there.

Rant over.