How do you hold on to your old self?

[Ryno]

I'm not sure if this is weird or not, but I've started replacing my old meories and self-image as memories of like, an imaginary cousin or sister who passed away. I guess it's really just a cover up in case new friends see old photos or read my old name somewhere, I can lie and say she was my cousin.

But it somehow feels better to almost convince myself of that. I liked the girl I was, but only if I see her as someone else. I don't want to pretend she never existed, I don't want to forget my childhood. She is a part of me, but because I remember my whole childhood through the eyes of a boy I feel better remembering "her" as though she was a close cousin or sister or friend. Sometimes when I reflect on "Amanda" I do feel like I've lost someone through my transition but it feels like I've lost a friend, not myself.

Anyone else ever kind of feel this way? Or do you tend to imagine your whole childhood as a boyhood and forget there was ever any female aspect to your life?

[Devyn]

To be honest, I just don't think about it.

[Sharky]

My self-image hasn't changed, just gotten older with me. I never viewed myself as a girl. In my memories my self-image replaces what I probably looked like. I wouldn't keep old photos and what not unless I thought I passed in them. I doubt I will have much contact with anyone who has any other photos of me. If I do have contact they will know better than to show them to anyone. I don't view transitioning as becoming another person. For me it's just aligning my body with my self-image. I was never feminine I was always outside playing with the other boys dragging some girl along with me so my mom wouldn't freak out that I was the only female bodied person.  There wasn't any willingly female aspect to my life. I just don't think about any of my mothers attempts to make me a girl. Those memories are foggy anyway.

[Anon]

I agree with everything Sharky said - I've always been myself, I was just invisible to everyone else because they could only see what was on the outside. Now that I'm starting to transition medically, my body is simply more in sync with my inner world.

Sometimes though, I like to imagine that in some distant alternate dimension there's the MTF version of myself, and that our bodies got crossed over when we were conceived..which why we ended up trans. It's maybe sorta out there, but I used to feel guilty sometimes about being trans towards my past 'girl persona' (who only lasted for about 3-5 years in all), so I like to think she's happy for me.

[JohnAlex]

I'm the one who tends to imagine my whole childhood as a boyhood and forget there was ever any female aspect to my life. 
Even when I was a child, I knew I was a girl, but in my head I referred to myself as a male.  So in my memories, I see myself a male.

[Liam K]

I see my transition as just kind of a natural progression in the course of my life.  As a child, I don't remember ever really thinking of myself in gendered terms.  I was a kid, and I did kid things.  Yeah, some of them were related to my status as a girl, but if I had been raised as a boy I don't think my childhood would have been substantially different.  I don't think I ever viewed myself fundamentally as a girl or as a boy, just as me, whoever I was.  And as I have transitioned, I don't think that I have changed much at all.  I've gotten older and more mature, as young adults tend to do, and I've become more confident and self-aware, but what makes me me has not really changed.  As such, I don't really miss who I used to be, because I still am that person.  I used to feel uncomfortable with pictures of myself when I was younger and other reminders of the girlhood I lived, but now I see them as just part of my history.  I was a girl who grew up to be a man, and I don't really feel much dissonance around that fact.

[Wraith]

I don't try to deny that I have been living as a girl, and I actually find value in the way I've grown up, because if I hadn't been trans and I hadn't experienced living as a girl, I wouldn't be the person I am today, and I like who I am.
Deep inside I was always myself, and always thought of myself as a guy, just under a huge pile of camouflage.

I don't feel like I'm a caterpillar "becoming" something, I'm just "shedding some old skin" like a snake.

I do feel really weird sometimes when people bring up things from my past though, because they can have such a different interpretation of who I am/was, they're just way off, and then it really is like they are talking about a different person.
My mother also tends to actually treat me as if I have split in two, so she can give me a really creepy feeling when she talks about "my old name" as a different person... Reeeeally freaks me out.

[Arch]

I'm pretty mortified by my previous life. I don't distance myself from it the way you're describing, though.

However, I do still get mixed up about fantasy and reality sometimes. As in, "When I was living on Planet Q, I..." or "When I was living with Y, I..." or "So-and-so [imaginary person] used to..."

My fantasy life was pretty vivid. I was a boy in my head.

[Nikolai_S]

I don't feel like I've lost someone, because that girl image was never me or anyone real. I have few positive memories anyway, and when I'm remembering a good day or something my gender isn't relevant to the details. I automatically replace pronouns in my head, and I just don't remember what I looked like. I never felt like my life was my own, it was like a bizarre nightmare.

Nothing can change the fact that I was raised a girl, and I'm proud of the path I've taken... but if those memories fade away, I won't try to stop them. At least once a week for my entire adolescence I wanted to die, usually it was more often. So it's honouring that person in a way to let them die by pretending they never existed.

[angiejuly]

I really went overboard trying to be "straight testosterone man" for social acceptance. I look at my testosterone driven passions as mistakes because they all where and some are still making me miserable today. And the things I like about the past is because it was the real me all along. This has given me memories of a lost , confused woman.

  I love who I am but despise who I tried to be for others to accept me. I was not wrong to be myself as a child , they where wrong for telling me that is not me.

So , today I remember me only as female and dump the male. It is not wroth the thought, time , or memories. Love,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

[asher]

Truthfully, I never feel like I was female either way. I can't see my old self as a female either, it doesn't matter that I wore a dress or had girl parts, I literally can't see the 'girl' in the 'old me'.
I agree with Liam, in seeing my past and childhood and eventually my transition, as just a part of the natural progression of my life.

The fact that I had female parts never meant I was female, even then. Everything I am and have been has always been me, just at various stages of understanding myself. I've always seen through my own eyes, putting me in a dress and trying to present female may have been a mask, but we all have them at points in our lives. And so far as I have experienced you don't reach the point of knowing yourself so thoroughly instantly in life. Everyone takes a while, and everyone has a multitude of faces they put on throughout it. And in a way this helps us to know ourselves better I think. You try something on you to see if it's right if you're not sure what you're looking for, eventually you may realize it's not, and then you move on.

It seems this is different for everyone though, I hear about some people moving and cutting ties and starting over again, and for other people they embrace the journey they've made and still feel connected to their past. I guess it just depends what makes you happiest as your current self.

[EliNewGuy]

I see my transition as just kind of a natural progression in the course of my life.  As a child, I don't remember ever really thinking of myself in gendered terms.  I was a kid, and I did kid things.  Yeah, some of them were related to my status as a girl, but if I had been raised as a boy I don't think my childhood would have been substantially different.  I don't think I ever viewed myself fundamentally as a girl or as a boy, just as me, whoever I was.  And as I have transitioned, I don't think that I have changed much at all.  I've gotten older and more mature, as young adults tend to do, and I've become more confident and self-aware, but what makes me me has not really changed.  As such, I don't really miss who I used to be, because I still am that person.  I used to feel uncomfortable with pictures of myself when I was younger and other reminders of the girlhood I lived, but now I see them as just part of my history.  I was a girl who grew up to be a man, and I don't really feel much dissonance around that fact.

This is how I feel, for the most part.  I feel like I was a girl in my childhood (not that I was "girly," but that there was no dysphoria as long as I was allowed to behave as I wished, which I largely was through prepubescence), an adolescent male, and transgendered as an adult (thus far). 

[Elijah3291]

when I think of my past self, i usually just think of her as a girl who didn't know she was a boy yet, or just as a gender neutral being.

[some ftm guy]

hhmm that's a pretty good question Ryan D. I'm still remembering random moments from my childhood. i usually don't like seeing images of my old me. especially high school. so since i plan to hold on to photo albums of me as a kid. well I'll use that and I'll probably just say "me" whether before realizing I'm trans or not. "oh that was the old me. not the me i am now" i guess would work waaaay more than using my female name since i have the hardest time saying it. seriously when i went to my physical it took me a minute to say my female name, and some stuttering and I'm pretty sure the secretary thought there was something wrong with me.

[zombiesarepeaceful]

I just deny that my childhood ever happened.

[Liam-XXI]

I see myself as two different people, mostly. I mean, I'm still the same person, and all of my life flows together and makes sense up until now, but I refer to myself as different people.

Me as I am now, is Liam, back then it was her, Val. I'm really comfortable with this, though if someone asks me about my life, I just think of it as 'my life', but if I'm quoting a memory, I always 'she/val' myself. Haha! Even sometimes if I'm quoting my parents (and they do call me Liam), but when it comes out of my lips, I'll say Val, just because my brain skips a beat.

But now that I've done a full social transition, by coming out to family, professors, friends, and that I have a boyfriend (who is very gay, haha), I find it's hard to think of myself as being female bodied. I actually almost forgot the name I had to give the pharmacy the other day, because I've been going by Liam so consistently. Even my boyfriend is like "Wait, who's this Val girl you mention?" and it's really comforting.

Sometimes, I even check myself here on susans that I'm in the right forum, because I just think of myself as male, so if I'm in the female-to-male forum, often times I panic and think I'm in the wrong place!

[malinkibear]

I don't associate myself with my younger self, really. If I look back, it's a different person entirely. I know that as a kid, I was never a 'girl' as such - I was just a person. I think my disassociation with my younger years are more to do with how unhappy I was growing up and in my teens, for several reasons - gender wasn't really one of them. For now, I'm fully able to just not think about it. In the future, I don't know, but I think I'll always view 'it' as a different person.

[N.Chaos]

Truthfully, I never feel like I was female either way. I can't see my old self as a female either, it doesn't matter that I wore a dress or had girl parts, I literally can't see the 'girl' in the 'old me'.

This. I look at old pictures when I was forcing myself to wear dresses and I always look so miserable. Miserable or wasted. I still keep some old pictures because there's a lot of good times that go with them, but those are personal. It's not like random strangers will ever page through my photo album (need that clarification: photo album. Like a tangible, physical one. Not some BS on Photobucket. I actually went through and deleted all of those earlier today, it was a surprisingly great feeling). Another reason I keep them, especially those old fake-me ones, is because it inspires me. It gives me visible proof that in just a few years I changed so much, finally let myself be myself. I realize now in current pictures, I usually look happy. Even if I'm not outright smiling (which I don't often, at least not when I'm taking them myself-no reason for it I just can't fake smile at all) I look at myself and realize there's finally some kind of confidence in there. It's a helluva change.

As for my childhood, there's a lot of it I just don't remember in general. I basically lived through a 6 years of trauma, and I apparently blocked a LOT of it out. That and getting cracked in the head with a pipe probably didn't help. I look back and realize, I've always been me, I've always been this. Sometimes it just showed more than others. There's pictures from 7-8 years ago where I looked more like a guy, and I realize that those have always been my favorite pictures without really knowing why. I think that's why even when I was gung-ho for makeup, it was never really "feminine" makeup. I was heavy into all that gothy crap, and I liked that with enough black lipstick and eyeshadow I looked genderless. Made me happy, and it still does sometimes. When I've found a way to flatten my chest better, and lost some more weight, you bet your ass that I'll be slapping that crap on at least once in a while again.

[Ryno]

Thanks for all the replies. It's interesting to see how others deal with thier childhoods.

When I think of my childhood, I do see it as a boyhood, but before coming out I found I hardly thought of my childhood at all. I'm not sure why exactly, but I've been remembering a lot more after coming out.

In high school I went through a very sad and desperate girly phase (I use the term "girly" lightly - I was still a raging bulldyke) but I'd often cake make-up on and wear bright and tight clothes just to play the part. I'd go through phases too, where I'd be uber femme for a few weeks straight, and then I'd bring out the boy clothes and be butch for a while. It bothered me so much, never knowing how I wanted to look and not understanding why I'd have these shifts in gender identity, but I guess it makes sense now

But, even though I was just a big fake when I wore make up, I still feel so attached to those memories. I mean, my last years of high school were ->-bleeped-<-ing awesome. I guess it does make me sad in a way to kill off such a good looking, cool girl, but I don't like identifying that girl as -me-. So it just feels better if I imagine she was just a good friend or cousin of mine who died.

It also makes it a hell of a lot easier to explain if someone who only knows me as Ryan comes across a picture or document of "Amanda". :/

[NathanW]

My fantasy life was pretty vivid. I was a boy in my head.

This describes me so well.