I am still in the early stages of this process, so I can't say whether I'll feel differently later on, but my thoughts on this are, why would I want to erase or forget all the memories of who I was and how I lived for a large part of my life?
I think instead I will try to remember the person I was--that I had to be--with love and gratitude, for all the struggles she went through getting me to this point in my life, for all the pain she endured, for surviving and hanging in and doing her very best with some difficult things in life and bringing me to now, which feels to me like finally getting a chance to be who I truly am.
I can't wait to be rid of my breasts now, but on the other hand, somewhere in the boxes of photographs there is one of me nursing my two (now grown) children simultaneously when they were an infant and a toddler. It is priceless to me, and I couldn't possibly have regrets about either the photo or the experience. As uncomfortable as I've always been as a woman, still, not all the experiences I had in my life as a woman have been horrible, and even the painful memories from a life are useful in that they make you appreciate the good things all the more.
Perhaps it would be different if I was starting this at the age of eighteen instead of fifty, but wherever I go from this point, I'll bring all the baggage from my past with me, in the sense of not trying to erase it or destroy or hide it. As others here have said, too, if you destroy things, they can't be gotten back, and you may find you'll regret it later. Pack them away if they make you uncomfortable, but don't get rid of them. Who you were will always be a part of who you are.
