Do you feel like your old self died?

[suzifrommd]

I sometimes hear the narrative from people who transitioned that their old self "died". Others say, no, they're experience is more "I'm still just me" and what has changed is the way they present to the world.

How did you experience transition?

[Jessica Merriman]

My old self and all the accomplishment made in this world are still here. All I am doing now is being honest with the world about who I really am. I did not die, I became a genuine person who is tied to my former life forever. I don't regret my former life as it gave me the tools to successfully transition and will always be a part of me. However instead of an internal fight every day within myself it is now a truce where all parties are happy and content. 

[Emily1996]

yay me 1 vote for not transitioning

[kelly_aus]

Transition for me was a change in lable and packaging. Who I am hasn't really changed at all.

[Jill F]

Same monkeys, different barrel.

I do feel a bit like I failed to live once upon a time, but I'm working on that.

[Tessa James]

I am happy to be transitioning but don't really know about an endpoint where I say it's complete.  Still I feel very different now from that person i was two years ago and think of myself as more alive, new and fresh and of "him" as old, tired and mostly gone.  Our life experience remains but for me with a deeper and more complete understanding of my denial, repression and pain.  Some close friends and family do feel the loss of him more acutely and i get that too but still cannot live a lie of that magnitude ever again.  There is much more living ahead and now it feels like the future holds colorful promise vs the grey resignation of the past.  I carry his weight like he once carried mine.

[Umiko]

my old self and my new self are one so neither my old self nor my new self existed as separate entities. basically, there has never been another me so i cant say my old self died or is still living

[FalseHybridPrincess]

my old self hasnt died, he is just burried in the darkness.

[CynthiaAnn]

my old self is long gone, he exists only as a ghost of the past, sometimes others try and reach him from out of the past, it's weird when that happens. I do keep his old email around, ya never know. I left that world for a reason, it was too stressful and unhealthy to continue to emulate something essentially designed by others.

The lie died !!

[Ryuichi13]

Like many of my pokemon, I've "evolved" into my true self.  The person I was before, the egg I was has hatched, grown and become something real, something living, something honest to show to the world.

So no, my old self isn't dead.  Like a butterfly, I've come out of my cocoon and become something handsome.

Ryuichi

[Ann W]

Good Goddess, no!

I am the fulfillment of what I was. Everything I was before was only half-alive; when I realized I was a woman, they had a place to become fulfilled. All those experiences now have a real place to bloom.

We are Cinderella. Cinderella's slaving away under her hellish stepmother shaped her character, made her a better person. When she was elevated to her proper place, these experiences informed her future life, made her a better princess and queen. 

Incidentally, if you run into Prince Charming, let me know. I think he's lost my phone number.

[SadieBlake]

I'm me and only ever have been that. I never saw my femme self as distinct from what / who I was before.

I'm glad that parts of who I was are relatively distant memories, however I also prefer to remember the path to where I am.

So I don't see it as either death or rebirth, rather transition or becoming.

[Bea1968]

I am the same ME that I always was and always will be.  What died was the pretense that I need to fake being someone that I am not.

[Linde]

Which part of my old person died?  My personality has not really changed, neither did my interests.  What has gone away is the male shell of me.  In fact, I had a hard time to remember how I looked like a few year ago.  I had to pull out a picture the other day to see how the guy looked!
I have to agree with the lady at the drivers license place who issued my new license.  The woman who occupies this body now, looks way better than the guy did, who used to live in it!

[JamesG]

For me there was a clear delineation between my life before and after the epiphany of, "Oh... well, that explains a lot."

Nothing so dramatic as declaring my old self "dead",  I think for that to really be the case, I'd have to literally run off, break contact with everyone and everything I knew, and assume a new identity. That an't gonna happen. So. Naw.

[GingerVicki]

No I do not feel that my 'old' self died. I've always been me and the only thing that has changed is my body.

[Kylo]

Nah, I'm 100% still me and always was. There's no escaping that, only making friends with it. There was no split self or different aspect. As such transition isn't the exciting/revitalizing miracle cure for me that it is for some. Still, it's also not that big a deal or worth being daunted by.

[SeptagonScars]

Nah, I didn't kill my old self, but since I detransitioned I've felt a lot like I had stuffed away my old self, like into a storage room somewhere far back in my mind, and I've dug around a lot in there to try to find her again now that I miss her. But I can't. The problem isn't that my old self is gone, it's that I'm still her but I've grown up and changed with the years and experiences I had while transitioning and whatnot for the past decade. 30 year old me simply cannot ever be the same as 20 year old me was, transition or not.

However, back when I thought I was a trans man, I saw everything through a lens of "myself as a guy," often unwittingly. Now I know I basically tried to "re-write" myself into what was a male persona, while I thought that persona was the real me that I was trying to liberate. Confusing times! Because I had just before my transition created a female persona that I was trying to force myself to become in order to escape being trans. I really wasted so many years on trying to force myself into either box of the gender binary, when both chafed against my soul.

Now I mostly just think of myself as a human being with an androgynous mind that just so happens to have been born female, and that's what I've always been regardless of how I've identified my gender or how I've changed my body. I see myself as a woman now only cause I made peace with my body being female, I don't really think I have a gender per se. I'm not a tiny teen with perky breasts and a high voice anymore, but that I'm now a hairy, flat-chested woman with a deep voice... is still my body and changing it never changed who I am inside.

Although of course it did change how I interact with society, and how society interacts with me, cause passing as male is obviously different from passing as female, and I never got the luxuary of being able to choose which of the sexes to pass as from day to day. And transitioning changed how I relate to my body. I went from very dysphoric to loving myself, but also from feeling whole to feeling amputated. I've grieved and felt liberated, comforted and torn apart. I've felt lots of confusion, frustration and many other emotions. So of course I've changed, going through all that.

[Linde]

@SeptagonScars,  your feelings are sometimes very similar to the feelings some of us intersex people have (including myself).  Torn between two sexes, and no real gender identity.  I was forced to live as a male, you choose it, but both of us did not really make it, as much as we tried and wanted to make it.  Now you are back to be a woman, and missing your boobs that were cut away., but you still have your vagina.  I am back to be a woman, I have my own boobs, but I am missing my vagina that was removed!

[Julia1996]

No. I'm still me, just me as I should have been to start with.