I'm cleaning my room, and it brings up so many sad memories.

The fact that I have so many things my parents bought for me which I had silently put away, when I feel like I should have thrown them out sooner. Keeping them almost feels like keeping my old identity, keeping silent, keeping trapped. I feel like so much time was lost, so much time that I could have spent being myself, so much time I could have spent with some semblance of a happy childhood. I keep having dreams were I'm a little girl, and I always end up crying when I wake up. I don't really know why it gets to me so much, maybe all those feelings of anger and feeling lost and alone just come back to me.

I feel like I'm not crying for myself, but for someone else for some reason. Maybe the reason these things make me feel the way they do is because they look like they should have had a happy child playing with them, but they've just sat there, I don't know.

/end rant

Anyone get what I'm saying?

I kind of do. Since my name was just legally changed I started to cry for my old self as if someone had actually died. It is a mourning period, so its okay.

Although it isn't discussed here often, I don't think I'm the only one who has times when it is hard to reconcile the old me with the new me.  I am the same only different.  My friends say I am the same only happier. 

It can be a hard adjustment, but I've run into the same thing with people who were raised Roman Catholic and then start going to another church.  There were things about being Catholic that they liked - the pomp or lighting of candles perhaps - but they couldn't handle the whole package.  How do you throw out most of it but keep the good parts?

But no regrets.  Yes, it would be nice if things had been different.  But they weren't.  You have to live your life from where you are now.

My basement has a bunch of stuff from my old life.  I've discarded some things, but the rest is just there, waiting until I feel like I know what to do with it.

This is a big adjustment - going from who you thought you had to be to who you really are.  Be gentle with yourself.

*hugs*
Kate

  Now I am crying! I guess when the feeling of life lost comes about there is nothing left to do but cry. And I know, it wasn't lost entirely but what hurts the most was inability to be my self. In fact realization at the moment of transition that we were living a lie is a burden we carry with our selves, and release of such is the hardest to accomplish maybe harder that the transition itself.

yes hon I think I know how you feel. I wrote a little thing about some similar feelings here https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,77719.0.html

But remember you are who you are now, and really you were always that little girl down inside. Celebrate now that she is free. The old person may be gone and it's normal to grieve over them. But in reality it's like the caterpillar and the butterfly, and the part of you that was important hasn't gone anywhere.

*hugs*
Chloe

Yes! I do understand. I often wish I could have grown up the right way. And I also remember changing my name...there was a certain sadness....it's been my name for 28 years.

And of course that all rolled up into the fact that my parents loved me back then and no longer want anything to do with me now.

Just know who you are now...it's good to reminisce, it's healthy to mourn. Just don't get caught up in regrets or things out of your control.*hugs*

I'm in my mid 40's ...i think about all the folks that loved me and took care of me...and how no matter how i hard i tried , i couldnt be what i appeared...it makes me sad and i especially get sad when i think about how lonely I was, how I never ever told anybody anything "real" about me...

so i get it...all we can do is move forward, and know that we are in a better place

I had times when I felt this way one thing that I am glad about is I have always been a day dreamer. Day dreaming let me escape from time to time, but something would always bring me back reality.

the shrinks call our day dreaming Snow White Syndrome

Quote from: kaitlynm999 on June 16, 2010, 04:27:53 PM
I'm in my mid 40's

....omg really? lol. you look like you are in your late 20's judging by your photo.

When you said you feel like you're crying for somebody else, it could be that you are feeling or empathizing with the grief your family and friends from your past life might be feeling.

I had a weird vivid daydream experience that I believe was my subconscious trying to help me understand why people might be grieving the loss of the old me when I really feel like the old me hasn't gone anywhere.  I feel the old me is just covered with more appropriate wrapping paper.  I think it really did help me kind of get their grief, and even experience it for a bit.  Maybe that's what you have been feeling?

https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php/topic,71857.msg489695.html#msg489695
..was the thread.

Anyway you do get through it.  For me it didn't last very long.