Reflecting on your past existence "I lost so much"

[genderhell]

Hi,

I have a simple question. I have my own answer to the question, however, I wanted to hear someone else.

Do you reflect on your past existence i.e., "past personality", e.g., a fake male person if a trans woman as ...

A) Being Male (if trans woman) or Being Female (if trans man)
B) Being a non-person
C) Transgender experience is a fluid experience from one gender to another
D) Other

Thinking about my past causes me so much suicidal ideation. I think, "I lost so much". I know from years of having suicidal thoughts that they come and go, and are usually in my case at least, because my brain is not happy somehow, and not rational reasons for suicide (assuming there are rationale reasons). The belief of "I lost so much", however, sticks in my head, there is at least what appears to be a rationale for suicide.

I am not suicidal. I know to never act on suicidal thoughts cause they do go away. Nevertheless, they come back. I cannot prevent that.

I guess I was hoping to hear why "I lost so much" is not rationale, or is it? It depends on how one answers the above question.

Thanks.

[Cindy]

Joules has hit my nail on the head!

I think we have to be aware thst gender issues and other life issues are different, curing one doesn't cure the other, we need therapy for ALL of our issues.

[Eva Marie]

I've just recently been pondering the question of "my past self".  He wasn't real.  I view him as a facade, a false construct, I put up as a defense.  I constructed him from bits and pieces, odds and ends, of what I could find in order to satisfy a world that expected certain behaviors from me.  He was more of a mask that I wore.

What you wrote is what I would have written word-for-word about my male self.

I was exposed to a certain trauma around 5 years old and I had to build him and prop him out in front of me for protection. His assignment was to protect the female self. He was emotionless and just went through the motions each day. He sprang into action any time I was feeling vulnerable and exposed.

Unfortunately over the years playing the male role became second nature to me, something that I'm having to learn to break away from now.

To answer the OP's question - he was a construct, a fake, a non-person.

When I begin seeing my therapist she told me pretty quickly that she believed that Eva was the real me and she was right on the money about that. My male persona was a sad, hollow shell.

[Northern Jane]

Actually I am going through a lot of that right now, some 40 years post-op.

As a very young child, I wanted to grow up, get married, and become a mommy - that's all I ever wanted - but life didn't go in that direction. Dealing with infertility from the start of puberty through to my 30s was incredibly difficult!

I was very secure in my identity from the beginning through to age 8 but it got more and more difficult as life became more 'gendered' and I didn't fit where I was supposed to. I was referred to as "it" for SO many years! 

I never had ANY support anywhere along the line, not until my late teens, and it was incredibly difficult to keep pushing, to keep  pursuing my freedom with nobody in my corner and no hope for the future.

For me, there was no "him" and there was nothing "fluid"  about the experience - I passed easily as a girl but 'he' never got beyond "it" and in my late teens life was passing me by - there was nothing there. SRS/transition was my escape from Auschwitz, my liberation.

I lost what I lost and there is nothing I could do about it except try to make up for it in my new life.

Now, so many years down the road, I am finally grieving for that little child who went through hell.

[Taka]

the fake, the one who tried too hard to be something else, lost me a lot already. they lost me a little too much happiness and freedom, limited my imagination, made me some bad choices. they never managed to get me friends, or better parents, or a better education. work prospects would be equally bleak whether i'm trans of just depressed and pretend cis.

the me who was then, already lost my parents despite trying so hard to be perfect for them. already ruined a relationship by trying to hard to do it right. already lost too many fights.

i'm tired of losing despite trying so hard. i'll stop trying to be too much, and instead do what i want to do, be who i really am, within some limits of course, and instead of expecting, i'll just be glad if i gain anything at all. there is nothing left for me to lose. all that was before was worth nothing, for i didn't have happiness, i lost sight of any reason to live. today i feel happy despite having to fight off an annoying anxiety, despite feeling sad or angry about things that happen. because at least i am me, and i have gained so much that i couldn't see before i stopped walking in the wrong direction.

sure, i might have to walk a narrow and steep path in the woods. but the asphalt on the cis highway would damage my legs more, despite it feeling easier because it's kinda wide and flat. and in the woods i don't have to worry about getting there, because i am already somewhere. on the highway i'd always be in the middle of nowhere, apart from a few stops here and there.


but this was a question of how i feel about that person who was before... they did their best. and i am thankful for that. they protected me and kept me going while i was too afraid to reveal myself to the world. a hero, really. but now i'll take over that role, and let them rest in peace. they're so tired, much more tired than me, so i think i owe them that.

[KabitTarah]

I may not really understand the question either... I haven't started HRT, so my perspective is mainly on the 20+ years I could have had and didn't.

I often think back, which is a huge dysphoria inducer right now, and think of how different things would be... if I'd come out earlier, if I'd been born a girl, etc. Most of the time this is in anger or deep lamentation; cue the dysphoria. When I look back in a better state of mind, I recall all the signs and suppression of self. I begin to realize that I just woke up a couple months ago and will never be going back. I'm me now... and wasn't before. This also carries some dysphoria, but it's lighter and easy to deal with because I'm (sloooowly) making progress in transition.

If I think back on happy times I've had, I also think of how different they'd be. I can't stop myself from thinking that way. I am thankful for what brought me here with three wonderful children, but I hate what they'll have to go through because of me. I also lament what I've done to my wife. It's difficult to wish that I'd never come down this path knowing I'd also be wishing away the kids I love and who love me despite what I wear and who I become. I would never wish they'd go away, but it really does hurt that I couldn't accept myself or feel accepted when I was younger.

I fully blame bullying in schools and in the neighborhood. I don't know how different they realized I was, 1st grade on up, but I was different. I was smarter than them, not interested in the things they did, my name was a bit unusual, and maybe they saw that I was girly... I've tried and cannot remember anything from those years.

It will be difficult for me, but I will be supporting Spirit Day on Thursday.

[Lesley_Roberta]

Oh I have lost some things.

When I was in my 30s I was a self absorbed ->-bleeped-<- that likely would have cheated if it had been offered.

I'm glad that swine didn't live through the 90s and my sort of death that fybromyalgia inflicted on me (I have basically come to regard my life as having ended around 97 I died inside thanks to the outside failing).

Fate simply never gave that other person the chance. I dodged a bullet.

Recently, my evolution into my awareness of being female has made some of my preferences shift. Not sexual preferences, I am talking about my hobbies. My wargames, they just don't have the same aspect any more. I've chatted a lot about it. There is a reason why there are not a lot of female wargamers. There's no point trying to make girls like wargames. There's also no point trying to have equal numbers of male and female English and Math teachers in a region.

I have lost some of the fear of the things I like, I just thought were wrong. I spent a lot of years resisting liking baking. I'm old fashioned deal with it, a woman belongs in the kitchen Well, now, I can look at my kitchen from my hobby room which is basically the same spot, and laugh knowing I have belonged here all along

I used to think I was such a 'cool clever guy' for being able to iron and sew and enjoy so many things so many guys wouldn't be got dead liking openly. And now I find, I am merely ok with it for the obvious reason I just feel like I belong.

I don't want to drink beer and belch with the guys while watching 'the game' on TV. I'd rather go to a Tupperware party.
Hey I am not saying girls can't like sports, but sports does nothing for me at all, and now it doesn't really bother me.
I didn't want to be like my brother and be on the football team. I suppose I'd have been happier being a cheerleader

I was just today laughing with a friend over my increasingly lousy gaming performance, I told him in reply to a comment of his, I'd warn him if he started looking cute

I have lost my worry about playing me in a role game.

I've lost my need to explain why I am crying while watching anime romances.

I haven't lost anything valuable. I've lost a lot of junk from my life though.

[anjaq]

I think that I can say that I really feel loss for the female body I could have had if I did transition just a few years earlier. I did that at 23, 8 years or 9 would have sufficed to save me a lot of trouble. I lived these years with a facade in front of me, a shiled that protected me and tried to function. It was bland though and had not much of a real personality, quite boring. It also almost got me into the military which I could avert though by finally transitioning. I did a failed attempt to get a degree at that time as well. Basically it was not a very functional personality. So I hardly feel loss at that way to behave and certainly not at anything like male privilege or a male body. So I dont really get the questions in the OP but maybe this answers some of it from my perspective?

[Edge]

A mixture of B and D I guess?

I've just recently been pondering the question of "my past self".  He wasn't real.  I view him as a facade, a false construct, I put up as a defense.  I constructed him from bits and pieces, odds and ends, of what I could find in order to satisfy a world that expected certain behaviors from me.  He was more of a mask that I wore.

In many ways, it is this.
In others it is a little more ambiguous, but does not make me any less a guy.

[suzifrommd]

I was a male. Reluctantly, unhappily so, but male.

I still am, in a lot of ways, even though I'm living 100% as a female and love it and will never, ever, ever go back.

But when I gender myself I still use "he" a lot of the time and I still look at myself as the same reluctant male I've been all my life.

My gender therapists encourages me not to worry about it. It's whether I'm more comfortable in my current presentation (I SO am) that matters. She thinks trying to figure out my gender identity is a waste of time.

We all experience our transgender in different ways.

And no, I wasn't "fake". I never hid from myself that I wanted to be a woman, never pretended to be macho or manly, never disowned my interest in women's concerns or feigned an interest in men's concerns.

[Adam (birkin)]

I do refer to the times "when I was female" or "as a girl..." but that's mostly just an external observation of my condition at the time, if that makes sense. It's a lot easier to say "as a girl I could wear a dress if I wanted to" than "when I was perceived to be female because of my primary and secondary sex characteristics, it was more socially acceptable to wear a dress...." Lol I never even wore dresses, but you get the point. As far as society was concerned I was a girl, as far as my entire biology was concerned I was a girl, so I just use "female."

Internally though I think, when I feel aware of the fact that I wasn't born cisgender, I think I lost a lot as well. And I did feel non-human in a sense because I didn't feel whole in the way I am beginning to now.

[Megumi]

I guess I was a D. A façade of a man that was never real. 

[JoanneB]

Hi,

I have a simple question. I have my own answer to the question, however, I wanted to hear someone else.

Do you reflect on your past existence i.e., "past personality", e.g., a fake male person if a trans woman as ...

A) Being Male (if trans woman) or Being Female (if trans man)
B) Being a non-person
C) Transgender experience is a fluid experience from one gender to another
D) Other

A) I speak the language that was around me as a child and that is "being male". That is what I was taught and had to use to get by. Get by pretty much sums it up. A chemeleon able to blend in around Da Guys

B) Non-Person for sure having to bury deeper and deeper a major part of me each and every year. I got to the point of totally discounting all the really amazing things I accomplished in life for the simple reason of it really wasn't me that did it. Even if it was I still "Got one over" on everyone since it was all a lie, I was a faker

C) Fluid for sure after having spent almost 2 years living part-time transiting between my two worlds, Engineer John and Joyful Joanne. However as the months passed switching to male became harder and harder to do, painful even. So it's really uni-viscous, fluid in one direction, glacial in the other.

D) Other.... Sort of fluid related. When I first began to seriously confront my life and out of necessity the trans beast I realized just how much creating this "facade" of some warped idealized, almost comical male had led to many of the great disasters of my life. That I needed to meld these two great aspects of myself back together into one whole healthy and hopefully happy person. I am as much A as I am B. It is difficult at best, more impossible, for me to declare one over the other.

[Sephirah]

Hmm, interesting question.

I don't think I ever thought of my past self as male. Always female. And that alone is probably what caused most of the issues in the past. Not how I saw myself, but how that self faced the issues in my life. The juxtaposition of what was, and what was expected.

The only thing which changed, with regard to who I am, was me taking ownership of myself. So I guess within that framework, my answer would be D.

Losing things was, in my view, not a result of a different personality, it was a result of me not being strong enough to express the one which was always there.

[genderhell]

Hello,

Thank you all. I read every response.

I apologize for perhaps being unclear. I have autism, and I naturally structure my writing, and possibly lose the natural, excepted flow of language. Autism in my case means a high degree of order in all things I do. (Though, "order" is subjective). So, it is "my ordering".

I have been transitioning for 11 years. I was mostly female looking at one point (many people staring though), but "de-transitioned" because I could not effect my personality to emerge. It took 9 years for me to get my original personality to emerge.

I see my GID experience is not like other people's experience here. I never had a "male personality" per se. I lived as a confused, mentally-ill, gender-dysphoric guy, with the hormones smashing into the right-side of my brain, and causing me TMJ disorder. I was a person that effected a personality but it was not me. There is a vessel that runs inside the body on the right-side of the head that sends hormones to the brain. I started life with the hormones smashing into my brain along that vessel and my right jaw dislodged.

The dislocated jaw along with the smashing hormones prevented the development of a personality and caused me to be a fake male. I know all this in retrospect as a healthy person.

So, when I corrected the surge, and reset my jaw. I found out that I have an original personality completely intact. For me , it is like going from a non-person to person. Thus, the belief of "I lost so much" is perhaps truer in my case.

I read everyone's response, and I think I can say that my experience of having a complete inability to form a personality because of the hormone surge is different than most others.

This will help me when I go back to a doctor.

Thank you.