Grieving your old self

[Amoré]

I normally come to Susans if I am in emotional turmoil. As my daughter is sitting and watching paw patrol I am sitting and thinking about my male self and that I miss being him in a way. It all came about after collecting some photos of him this morning because I want to save them for her for when she want to see what her dad looked like before transition one day.

I then started feeling a deep loss. I started crying and feeling guilty. I feel like I was selfish for taking this person out of everyone's life as they clearly liked him more than they liked me. He was always the nice guy the perfect husband that would wash the dishes instead of his wife. I sometimes still feel him creeping up. I sometimes catch glimpses of him in the mirror and feel sad.

Transition for me was survival and also a mechanism of coping with my divorce. I feel that it wasn't a choice but a strong strong drive that pushed me into something I did not want but needed to do. I guess that is where the mixed feelings comes in with him. 

I don't get how people got all excited to transition when for me it was the hardest choice I had to make of my entire life. I can still remember taking my hrt for the first month how many times I had to force them down and cried saying it is for the best. My transition was really hard on me it was not a liberating experience but rather something that I only knew I have to do to survive and too make the noise go away.

How many of you also grief the loss of your old self?

[Megan.]

As I rapidly approach going full-time,  it's one thing that is weighing heavily on me. I think I've always been seen by others as a really nice guy,  and it does feel that person is having their life ended early (by me).  But I'm happy their spirit,  soul and memories will live on,  hopefully for many years.

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[Rebecca]

I've come to realise what people saw as the good in him was actually what was left of me.

As I died he got well "less good" then eventually became just an empty shell. He was lost and mourned by many long ago.

Can never explain this part properly but when I woke up/got back and started my hormones the situation was reversed. I got better and he went away.

Now I'm all me and luckily everyone loves me even those that hated him in the past.

So here I am today celebrating my first mother's day with my wife and 3 kids who love their 2 Mums with no hole in their life where their dad used to be as I am so much more to them.

I do not mourn him and I do not hate him any more but I do now understand who he was and why. He was the part of me that survived T poisoning and he did the best he could to give me everything I ever wanted but neither of us could ever have worked out what was wrong with us until we got lucky.

The rest as they say is history.

Like the Avicci song the no looking back at the fading silhouettes.

TLDR - Never

[LizK]

I view him with great love and respect and wish him nothing but piece...he had a very hard life and had one job and that was to protect Liz, he still looks out for me but I call on him less and less these days. He was a good guy and the thing everyone loved about him was me.

Liz

[SadieBlake]

Having taken 40 years to get to realization and an additional 20 to transition, I completely wore through the male persona, decade upon decade has eroded all but the last bits. I'll never be completely divorced from my socialization and I also have never seen that as a different person.

So I have sympathy for those who miss the masculine person they perceived however that's not me now.

[Amoré]

I think it is hard when so many people still long for my male persona and not me they keep triggering reminders also of him my dad absolutely refuses to call me Amore and calls me on my dead name when I speak to him on the phone.He absolutely dismiss the existence of me. They want him expect him to come and visit and have no interest in getting to know me, he was their friend son and brother. He was my daughters father.

[KathyLauren]

I view him with great love and respect and wish him nothing but piece...he had a very hard life and had one job and that was to protect Liz, he still looks out for me but I call on him less and less these days. He was a good guy and the thing everyone loved about him was me.

Liz

I was going to post in this thread, but Liz said exactly what I wanted to say!

[Jessie007]

I don't get how people got all excited to transition when for me it was the hardest choice I had to make of my entire life. I can still remember taking my hrt for the first month how many times I had to force them down and cried saying it is for the best. My transition was really hard on me it was not a liberating experience but rather something that I only knew I have to do to survive and too make the noise go away.

How many of you also grief the loss of your old self?

I haven't transitioned. I have only just started electrolysis on my face last week and will start HRT (probably a low dose) in the next couple of months. It has been a very difficult choice for me to go down this road. The only reason I have decided to pursue HRT is because I feel I have no choice left. It is a last resort for me in an attempt to quiet the noise. I have not transitioned like you, but I am already starting to feel grief. I really hope that HRT can make the noise in my head less tormenting, so I know that I am making the right choice.

Jessie


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[Amoré]

I haven't transitioned. I have only just started electrolysis on my face last week and will start HRT (probably a low dose) in the next couple of months. It has been a very difficult choice for me to go down this road. The only reason I have decided to pursue HRT is because I feel I have no choice left. It is a last resort for me in an attempt to quiet the noise. I have not transitioned like you, but I am already starting to feel grief. I really hope that HRT can make the noise in my head less tormenting, so I know that I am making the right choice.

Jessie


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Well I started hrt for the first time when my ex gave me consent to go on it I was on them for 2 months. After she changed her mind I went of it and it was hell being off them because while I was on them I had relief. I was off them for 4 months but could not stop thinking how they made me feel. The day I signed my divorce paper on the 4th of jan last year I went back on them and did not stop yet. I can't live without them tbh they are a lifeline. So they do give relief and for me even though it was hard was worth it.

[SailorMars1994]

Its strange. I do miss and feel for that little boy that I once lived as. Its odd, the more I transition the more i feel bad for losing him (8 years old and under). But the person I was rcently, the masculine everyday man I have nothing but joy that he is died/dying. Those are years I wish I could take back but I cant.

I think it is kinda normal to miss some aspects as that identity, the male identity was a very long part of who you were on the outside. Sure it may have sucked at times, but not everything is bad and living as male seems you had good times too. But always remeber, you transitioned for a reason

Hugs-Ashley!

[JoanneB]

I live in TOTAL FEAR of returning back to the "Thing" I was before I saw I needed to take the Trans-Beast on for real. By about any metric I am a far better person today after my "transition" then the lifeless, soulless, and Angry Thing I was before. A main metric being my wife's opinion, a not so thrilled observer.

Life has not been rosy either. As to be expected my wife is far from thrilled about loosing her man. We both have a totally uncertain future compared to one that was a basic given. I am fairly certain if I do a full social transition other aspects of my life will be be at risk just as our future is.

Would I "Miss" or regret doing a full-transition if/when I Need to? I mostly doubt it. I have learned so much after taking those first very scary steps to have faith in such a not so easily undertaken path. I know it would be necessary for both my physical and emotional survival. I also know there will be difficulties in undertaking it for myself and especially for those around me. More especially with those "Uncomfortable" around One of Those......

[Thessa]

I don't think that I grieve for him as a person. My daughter also says that she likes me much more now than before.

The only think I grieve (maybe there is a better word for it) is the easiness of getting what I wanted because of being always the nice hard working guy and the privileges I will definitely loose.

So my main concern is how easy or hard it will be to take care of my family and myself. But I definitely don't want to go back to my old self of two years ago and before.

[Kylo]

I wasn't excited about transition. It's an ordeal and I saw it as nothing but a hassle and an embarrassment. But I suppose they are excited for the hope that someday they might be content. Someday I might be, possibly, but I see a long stretch of uncertainty, discomfort, probably pain, and new issues materializing before that.

I don't grieve for my old self. There is no old self. It's just me, and every day is the same, and there's no getting away from who I am. I can't retreat back into some old persona because there's no dichotomy between now and yesterday or five years ago. I don't really understand how so many MTFs have this other persona or more apparent dichotomy - I guess it could be because those AMAB are forced into greater repression by those around them of any feminine traits than those AFAB so there is this female 'other side' they possess. I never possessed a male other or persona. There was just me, and how I could not fit gracefully into the female role, but looking female is enough for that to be tolerated by our lopsided society... so went about my life constantly being considered weird.

It's possible to grieve if there's a sense of loss involved. I didn't have anything to lose, apparently.

[big kim]

Kind of, he was a bad man & a hooligan & a criminal but he protected Kim for many years

[Deborah]

I don't feel like my old self died.  Rather he just stopped acting and became herself.  So instead of the death of the self I feel as if the self grew into itself instead.   All of this may just be mental games but I think conceiving of it as gain rather than loss helps keep my outlook on life positive.


Conform and be dull. —James Frank Dobie, The Voice of the Coyote

[Maybebaby56]

I don't really understand how so many MTFs have this other persona or more apparent dichotomy - I guess it could be because those AMAB are forced into greater repression by those around them of any feminine traits than those AFAB so there is this female 'other side' they possess.

I think that's very insightful and thought-provoking, Kylo.

I am not one of those MTFs that feels a detachment or loss from a male self. I am very much still here, because the only thing that changed was my external persona.  In another thread, I called it my "female user interface".  The thread was generally about whether a transperson "feels" like the opposite sex. I said I had no idea what it feels like to be a woman; I only know what it is like to be me, and I wanted simply to be treated like, and be perceived as, a female. 

Like any good UI, my female user interface is independent of the operating system underneath. My operating system hasn't changed, but it's a lot happier

With kindness,

Terri

[Alanna1990]

that's a very interesting question.

I don't think I grieve my old self, as it was fading away by itself anyways, my female side was always there, giving advice, taking control when my old self wasn't strong enough to deal with life, then, when I started HRT my old self just "dissapeared" with my female side taking control.

But it's weird, when I see pictures of my past or remember things of old it seems to me like that's an entirely different person, I can't relate to that guy who went to the school, to all those friends that guy used to have, to all those experiences, it's as if I've been reborn and only my recent experiences are me, is it grieving or something else though? good food for thought indeed.

[Daniellekai]

I still am my old self, nothing worth grieving though, the new me will be way more interesting, and good looking :p

[HappyMoni]

One of the things that results from waiting so long to transition is you get a chance to do everything that the previous gender could do in this life. There were no mountains left for my old self to climb. Nothing left undone! I am now hopefully facing GCS. It is quite possible I may never climax again. It certainly will never be the same. Do I have any thoughts of regret? No, no, no! Do I miss being male in any way? That is a resounding "No!"
As to being someone different from my male self. Absolutely, I am a different person. I am undeniably not the person I was. It is not exaggerating to say this. People who know me tell me this quite often, and I know it myself.
Monica

[Sophia Sentiment]

I despise any reminder of the life I had to live. There are no good memories before transition because event the good moments were never experience by me, they were experienced by the lie I was living. So when I look back on my pre-transition self I don't see a person I miss or have fond recollections about times gone. Seeing a photo, hearing my deadname (even not in reference to me) or seeing other reminders is triggering and upsetting. My life began when I transitioned.