Grieving your old self

[Michelle_P]

Grieving is for someone else to do, someone who doesn't understand that I am still me, just no longer hiding parts of myself, and faking other aspects slightly to try and pass.

I don't fake things any more, and I'm not repressing parts of myself.  Only two people who knew me before I came out have objected to the new me.  My son just said, after we talked, "Yeah, you are still you."

I'm more relaxed, and more open now.  I think I'm a better human being now.

Only my ex-wife and the youngest daughter, age 26, who lives with her have disagreed, and shown anger with me for 'killing him.'  They'll eventually get past this, I hope, but right now they are effectively estranged.

[Amoré]

So many people have so many opinions on this. I see him as a different person because he had a different identity. Sure it was me all along but the person that was projected to the world was a different person than what I am projecting now. He acted different was different and so on. My dad and them still mourn the loss of him and wish he could walk into the door. So who I projected to the world I killed and no one will ever see him again he is gone. I destroyed him and no one will ever meet him again have dinner with him nothing because his persona is gone. People will never see him walk on the beach again with his family (he lost his family because he transitioned) or play with his daughter they would see me Amore. My daughter will never know what it is to have a dad dad because dad is gone. My ex wife will never see him pick up his daughter because I don't look act smell like him anymore. A person is dead to the world and a new person took his place. 

He would have made different friends than what Amore would make date a different partner. He would maybe had more kids and not be sterile. All this is a person ripped out of the fabric of reality of existence because I could not cope with gender dysphoria anymore.

People don't just fall in love with a personality but with a person as a whole they fall in love with how their hands look, they smell how they sound and act. They fall in love with their gender that they are and how they project themselves too the world. They fall in love with a package.

Age changes that package for sure but it doesn't change gender. It doesn't change the person that they perceive or fell in love with. hrt on the other hand changes a lot. It changes who they know how you act it changes everything. Some partners will stay some just don't know and like this new person and is not compatible with this new person. For them it is like experiencing the death of their partner. They take the only road they know because this new person is not what they signed up for. They don't look deeper and go inside you are still the same they want their husband or wife. They want that complete package.

[RobynD]

Somewhat Like Michelle, i see my old self and new self to be changed versions of the same person. Just like i will never have my 19 yr old male body again, i have made choices to present myself as my true gender and there is no going back. Change has consequences for sure but i did it like you, to survive and to develop new strategies to thrive. I don't really see "him" as having disappeared.

I don't see the death analogy very well personally. Body changes, clothes, smell and yes even my name or simply part of the changes i have gone through, the me is still there. I was never a persona to myself and whatever personas i projected to others were always subject to change anyways brought on by age, changing values, maturity and more.

What others love and perceive about you also changes over time. Relationships adapt or end. Even if my spouse did not stay, i knew there was other love out there. There basically always is if you are open to it. As to kids they adapt and can love a feminine 2nd parent as much as a dad, certainly as much as a dad that had the issues i did. They will have better lives because i am a more whole person.

[Kylo]

If people fall in love with a package of a person, their looks, their gender, etc. that is understandable. But what they don't fall in love with is what that person is inside because they can never see it. So are they really in love with a person or just an image of a person? Or maybe they fall in love with how a person makes them feel about themselves.

I agree with you - people fall in love with visual/sensory projections and an abridged idea of what a person is because we never know someone else's true feelings and thoughts and real "self" anyway.

Even if trans was not in the equation that same thing happens and eventually people say things like "I never expected you were really like this" or their original image of a person is broken down over time when they learn more about them or when that person changes. It's inevitable when we fall in love with our own ideas and approximations of people, more so than the person itself.

[Angela Drakken]

I cant grieve for someone who never existed. I imagine the inside of my head like that movie inside out where all the different feelings and emotions are all different colors personalities and even genders. I spent a lot of time living under only a small fraction of those that I saw as masculine, more for self defense than identity. As for the person I am and my old self, theyve always been one and the same to me. Im only interested in a new shell. One more fitting than I had before.

Everyone else seems to grieve over it though and it hurts like hell because I just want to scream 'I'm still here!!' and often do.