Well, I think there are two things to think of here, the physical truth and emotional truth.
Physically, it's not a "way back" machine. Yes, your androgen levels eventually either drop or are suppressed to insignificant amounts, but you're also exposed to significantly-increased amounts of estrogens. Ask any biological female going through puberty (or her parents). I think most would agree that increased levels of estrogens have a pretty pronounced effect on behavior. Moreover, the brain continues to mature not only in early puberty but into your early 20's. Gender and sex hormones aside, your brain has changed purely because of age. Honestly, for the better.
But I'd ask you to slow down and question some of the physical connections you're making. Let me talk about physical sex and behavior for a second.
Yes, there are plenty of studies which talk about the relationship between aggression and testosterone. I just recently read an interesting one that looked at testosterone plus one other non-sex hormone. In this study, some of the participants showed significantly elevated levels of testosterone when they engaged in aggressive competition. This effect has been demonstrated in athletes too. When combined with elevated levels of another hormone, cortisol, high levels seem to correlate strongly with measures of reactive aggression. One small detail: all of the subjects in this study and the related ones I just mentioned were women. So yes, testosterone is tied to aggression, but it's not only in men. It's observed in people who go through puberty as either sex.
Or we could look at partner violence in relationships. Yes, men cause almost all serious injury when we examine partner violence. But if we include all violent acts as commonly measured by some studies, including slapping, throwing objects at a person, scratching or digging with nails, etc., many studies show that in terms of raw numbers, incidents in which women are physically aggressive with men are more common. I understand that you can't directly compare male-on-female to female-on-male violence, but this demonstrates a point you should understand. People who go through puberty as men do not have a monopoly on aggression, physical or otherwise.
In human sexuality, there's a certain component of anthropology too. The field likes to examine small, isolated cultures which evolved independent of global cultural influence and look at their gender roles. There have been a few found where gender roles are essentially the reverse of 1950's gender stereotypes, where women are expected to be gruff, patriarchal, and dominant, and men typically sit around and gossip. There are others where women are expected to be the sexually adventurous conquerors and choose several partners in their adolescence, while the men wait for their advances. It's not forced or "against their nature" for the people in these cultures. They find their lifestyle natural. They find _us_ weird.
All of this just highlights a fact. All cultures have an intrinsic level of arrogance regarding their norms. We tell ourselves that our gender roles are biologically determined, that sexual maturation in a certain gender forces you into a specific set of behaviors. That's what you're telling yourself now. Science and cultural observation tells us the opposite, that most of these are gender norms we've invented that only seem inevitable because the effect of socialization is so strong.
I'm telling you this to make you understand something. You have not been permanently molded into anything. Even from a raw physical perspective, from the most skeptical viewpoint of determinism through physical influence, you have enormous ability to determine who you are, how you feel about aggression, about sex, about life. HRT helps with a lot of things. But in terms of determining _who_ you are, you have that power within you right now, without even needing a drop of additional female sex hormones or antiandrogens. I'm not saying this as a pointless, feel-good message or because I read something on some funny online source. I'm saying this because I objectively feel it's true based on the things I have studied academically from qualified professors and proper textbooks (I'm not educated enough to consider myself an expert, mind you). This is my very honest and very real opinion.
That said, I don't think a physical truth is what you're looking for. You're trying to talk about hormones and chemical effects. I don't think it's that at all. You used the words sweet, nice, open, emotionally connected. These are traits which you desire, traits which you think have been taken from you. You talk about yourself being transformed for the worse. You use the word Ogre to describe this new self, a very strong and very negative term.
It sounds to me like you know how your true self looks. You want to feel sweet, nice, open, and emotionally connected. I don't think that door is closed to you. Don't tell yourself that you've been harmed or damaged, that you've been turned into something lesser, that you must be turned back into something "better" before you're worthwhile. None of that is true.
You can be the person you want to be emotionally. You don't need HRT to begin that particular journey. Trust me. HRT will change how you feel to a certain extent, but it's neither necessary or the primary determinant of your emotional landscape.
Self-doubt is honestly your biggest enemy here. Many of us suffer with it. I'm sure you've seen all the threads where gorgeous women with sultry voices talk about how self-conscious and doubtful they are of whether they pass. I'm not saying you shouldn't feel the doubt. I'm not saying you shouldn't feel bad sometimes. I'm not saying you should magically be satisfied with your body and appearance. A lot of us aren't. We grapple with those feelings. It's natural to feel those things, and we're here to talk with you about them. Just don't build that construct in your mind where you're somehow "wrong" without HRT or something else. Even if you still need to work on yourself, feel good about yourself anyway, try to _be_ yourself anyway. It look a lot of openness and emotional awareness to even come here and ask your question.
