Death or renewal?

[Ayaname]

Do you ever feel like you've killed you're past self instead of just becoming an improved you? For some reason I sometimes imagine my old male persona and I think of how sad and damaged I was. It makes me want to hold that person and cry for them, but that person not being around anymore makes me feel like they've died which only makes it more sad. Here's someone who spent their whole life miserable and depressed and now is no more. I sometimes feel like the new me has robbed someone else of their life; like I didn't give them a real chance to be happy for themselves. It's like I've copped out or something, and I worry that this feeling comes from having that part of me still inside somewhere. Like I've only disassociated that part of my life instead of actually dealing with the issue. I worry that somewhere inside I don't want to be a female. It really scares me a lot. 

[Aegir]

You're still you; you're just happier now. Not being sad doesn't mean you're not you anymore.

[Fencesitter]

I didn't ever really develop a "female persona", I was just read as a girl behaving a lot like a guy. So I don't have to mourn a persona being gone, it's just that people react differently to me now.

Everybody has some male and female parts in them, whether you're trans or not. Maybe you suppress the male parts as much as you used to suppress the female parts before?

[Ayaname]

I didn't ever really develop a "female persona", I was just read as a girl behaving a lot like a guy. So I don't have to mourn a persona being gone, it's just that people react differently to me now.

Everybody has some male and female parts in them, whether you're trans or not. Maybe you suppress the male parts as much as you used to suppress the female parts before?

I've never really acted male though, so I guess "male persona" is probably the wrong way of describing it. I never feel like any part of me ever wants to be male, but I still worry that part of me might not want to be female. I was pretty genderless for the most part as a "male". I know I feel more like myself now, but I'd hate to find out that I'm hiding something that will come back to haunt me later. Like maybe I'm really just without a specific gender but at some point there was a split down the middle. I've always hated my male anatomy though so it's confusing.

[Fencesitter]

I think it's good if you try not to suppress anything on purpose (unless it brings you into dangerous situations).

Maybe you're genderless in terms of identity and/or role, but female in terms of your inner body map or the way you relate to your body?

[pebbles]

I do get that feeling sometimes its not because Ive changed that much but because some people treat me differently and things around me have changed. My mother also once told me that I killed her son which made me feel bad.

while i'm sorting out new ID I feel it too... new photograph, new name, new address, new voice... the only constant is my date of birth and sometimes I feel like I was supposed to change that too.

[Ayaname]

I do get that feeling sometimes its not because Ive changed that much but because some people treat me differently and things around me have changed. My mother also once told me that I killed her son which made me feel bad.

while i'm sorting out new ID I feel it too... new photograph, new name, new address, new voice... the only constant is my date of birth and sometimes I feel like I was supposed to change that too.

Ouch! That's really tough hearing stuff like that from a parent.
Like this isn't hard enough as is...

I've noticed being treated quite a bit differently as well since transition. Before I couldn't make a friend for the life of me. I only had my current best friend for the last 15 years. There were maybe 2 or 3 different friendships here and there that would last maybe a few months, but for the most part I was an outcast. Now I've just started making new friends and I already have more than I think I've ever had. Apparently a personality that a lot of people find fitting for a female they find annoying in a male. 
However, it sometimes just seem like one more reason to feel sorry for my past self. I think maybe I've externalized that part of me too much since it's so different than how I feel now. I've always been one to give personalities to inanimate objects. Even now I'd be crushed if anything bad happened to any of the stuffed animals I had as a kid. Maybe what I'm experiencing now is similar to that kind of thing. Like a baby bird that grows emotionally attached to it's egg shell and then feels bad after hatching out of it.

[Gia]

Do you ever feel like you've killed you're past self instead of just becoming an improved you?

Yes, and it happened without any drugs.

Couldn't take the pains anymore. Decade and some years ago. The tears wouldn't stop for days no matter what I tried. Eventually they did stop... after a sudden numbness set in... and blackedout/passed-out.

I died that day.

[justmeinoz]

After a major breakdown about a year ago led me to discard the disguise I had been trying to wear for the previous 40+ years I see it more as a metamorphasis. 

Aftera pause to reconfigure myself I have ceased to be a hairy caterpillar, and  emerged as something else.  Hopefully a  beautiful butterfly ( but I will settle for a Bogong moth if that is the only option).

[Colleen Ireland]

A good friend and mentor has advised me that one very important thing to do as part of transition is to write the biography of my former self.  Note that is "biography", and not autobiography.  Because that person never was me.  But it is necessary and appropriate that he be honored for who and what he was, and properly laid to rest.  Maybe if you do that, Ayaname, you might not get these feelings any more.  Just a suggestion...

[FairyGirl]

I think a lot of us experience those feelings about leaving the old life behind. I wrote something about that just before my surgery in my blog here at Susans https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,77719.0.html

The thing that helps me through it is to remember that was always me back then, I was never "him". Sort of a different perspective I guess, turning it upside down and looking at it differently.  I like Colleen's idea of writing a biography, except that I know there is no way I could go back through reliving those memories which would be required to do something like that. Best for me to just to leave the past in the past and look ever forward to the bright shiny future.

[spacial]

Do you ever feel like you've killed you're past self instead of just becoming an improved you? For some reason I sometimes imagine my old male persona and I think of how sad and damaged I was. It makes me want to hold that person and cry for them, but that person not being around anymore makes me feel like they've died which only makes it more sad. Here's someone who spent their whole life miserable and depressed and now is no more. I sometimes feel like the new me has robbed someone else of their life; like I didn't give them a real chance to be happy for themselves. It's like I've copped out or something, and I worry that this feeling comes from having that part of me still inside somewhere. Like I've only disassociated that part of my life instead of actually dealing with the issue. I worry that somewhere inside I don't want to be a female. It really scares me a lot. 

This has made me think. If I could be myself from tomorrow morning, how would I feel about the person I left behind.

I have to be honest, for me, I wouldn't be leaving a person behind, just an experience.

[Astarielle]

The person I am today is a creation of the person I was yesterday and the person I want to be tomorrow.

I am "Male" and "Female" both, and the "male" I was born as is just as much a part of the "Female" I want to be as the "female" would be a part of me if I was "male" for the rest of my life. No part of you dies because you change. Rather, that part simply fits in in a new place.

Or, to put it another way, what happens to a lego house when you take it apart and make something new, like a spaceship? It becomes a part of the spaceship. We don't conceptualize that, but it's very true.

[Colleen Ireland]

Or, to put it another way, what happens to a lego house when you take it apart and make something new, like a spaceship? It becomes a part of the spaceship. We don't conceptualize that, but it's very true.

Not to mention, depending on the surgery you have, what was outside is now inside... (still part of you)

[Rock_chick]

At the moment I seem to think of it as renewal, though I imagine as time passes I imagine that my past life will seem more and more unreal as if it belonged to someone else.

[K8]

In some ways I'm the same, but in some ways I'm a new person.  I will often refer to my past self as "gone" – not necessarily dead but no longer here.  I talk to my friends about the old me in the third person, as someone departed for parts unknown.  (I also do that with unsolicited phone calls, trying to get off their lists.)  My sister mourned the loss of her little brother but is over that now.  There have been times when I found all this a bit disorienting.

I've gone through several stages in my life, where it is still me but my life is very different.  I see it as growth, similar to a reincarnation but not as disjointed as that would be.  The other times I've moved from one stage to another, the transition was imposed on me or was a byproduct.  This is the first one I've undertaken intentionally.

I think that I'm very different than I was – I certainly feel different – but I've had friends say that I'm the same.  I'm not sure what they mean, since I'm happier and livelier and much more talkative, but I think they mean they still see the same qualities in me that they liked in the old me.

- Kate (the new, improved version of *what's-his-name*)

[Summerfall]

I think it's understandable to feel like we didn't give a chance to the other gender, no matter how untrue that might actually be. After all, it was that sort of guilt that kept us from wanting to live as ourselves for so long.

That said, I don't feel like the important parts of who I really am have changed. I still have, for the most part, the same beliefs and values, same likes and dislikes. The only thing that's changed is that I don't have to keep up a facade in certain situations. In fact, it's frustrating that family would "mourn" a gender role.

[SusanBrei]

It's too bad that we think of males and females as being so totally different that we are essentially 'killing" our old selves in order to become our "new" selves. The fact is, you (and I) did things during those years. We had friends. We ate, we talked, we learned, we slept and we laughed and cried. The male physical attributes, the male label (in every level of society), the male social environment... all those things were hard for me (and I'm assuming you) to bear, but when I transitioned, I brought a LOT of who I was with me. I left the dishonesty and the self-loathing behind. I think it's wrong to believe that I KILLED that person, because I AM that person! I just have a different name, different clothes, different friends and a different way of doing things... that old person is me, only allowed to LIVE!

[K8]

I changed my clothes and my name during transition.  I also changed my mannerisms, speech patterns, and attitudes.  But unlike the change in clothes, I didn't change to new behaviors but merely shed the layers of socialization that I had built up through the years in order to pass as a man.  I didn't exchange one mask for another but just removed the mask (which can be scary ).

In my mind I think of those male socialization layers as having my old, male name.  They – and he – are gone.  I think of what is left – the person who was always hidden underneath – as Katherine.  I am still the same person – just a more authentic me.

- Kate

[Kendall]

How does a butterfly feel about the caterpillar?