I wonder if I'm the only one who simultaneously wants to erase who they used to be from exsistence and doesn't want to let them go..... when I hear my chosen name it always snaps me out of my dsyphoric/depressed mode , but I feel like my birth name is my last reminder of the girl I no longer am so I'm hesitant to get rid of it. I only misgender myself now when I'm being really mean to myself unless I'm talking about myself in the past.....but it really isn't misgendering because I can see how I'm a guy and not a girl now but I can't see how my past self wasn't a girl. when I see pictures from the past it feels like it's a picture of someone else. sometimes I want to get rid of those pictures sometimes I feel the need to keep them.
Something I've been thinking about doing is putting together a couple of photo albums for my family and possibly a couple of close trusted friends, something they can keep (and if I want to look back I'll know where they are) - that way I'd still have access, but also they get to keep those memories that I might want to let go.
I don't like looking at old pictures because all I see is a girl even though I know I was boy (albeit a weird one), but I also don't want to let go of who I was. My history is important to me and will always be a part of me. I'm lucky that my former first name (now middle name) is unisex. I don't like it when people refer to who I was as female because I was a boy even though I didn't know it, but I also don't want to ignore the fact that I acted like, was treated like, and thought I was a girl (albeit a weird one).
KittyLover, I feel something of the same thing. There were a lot of happy times in my previous life, so I don't want all vestiges of it to go away. OTOH, it's very important to me to be treated as an ordinary member of my new gender, so I find myself downplaying my past.
Yeah, that is not me. I hated that fake persona that paraded around society. That "thing" was not me nor was it helpful thus, I murdered that persona with "great" pleasure; I hate it and am thankful it is dead forever!