Who was that other person?

Hmm, that's interesting that you saw your old self as a different person. It sounds like you still feel some attachment to your male image, but completely separate from who you are inside.

I can't say I see my old self like that, but it's probably because I haven't transitioned so I just look like a female crossdresser right now. When I look in the mirror, the person isn't unfamiliar, but I'd definitely like to change her appearance.

 

(*hug*)
You're not unique in this.

To me its like a merging... some parts will remain, but overall its just a different feeling... but somehow familiar...

 

I'd describe my case with three sentences : I let the world know what's been inside of me all my life. I stop trying to play a role (which by the way I played good to get some things I needed like being accepted and loved, but I hated it and I despised myself).
To express who I am it's a liberation, so it's only natural I feel free and happy. I stop being a scared man trying to pretend he is a woman. The amount of energy I get back from this is... Huge! The more I experiment and allow myself to express the real me, the better I feel inside.

When I look at the pictures of the past, I still recognize myself behind what I know it was a mask of feminity. It's shocking how a haircut and clothes can change radically your appearance, but when I look at my eyes at the pictures, I recognize myself perfectly.

Try a little experiment : Make the picture bigger with a program like photoshop, then cut only the eyes and look at them.
Sometimes I feel disturbed when I look at the pictures of my past self. And there is people who have told me "oh, what a waste... You were so cute!" (as a female)

 

It's similar to me, my old self was/is a facade and I used/use it on occasion out of convenience.

I look in the mirror and notice the beautiful blend of my old self and new self, but the old self still haunts me a bit.

I think it's the kind of thing that takes time, you spend so much of your life nurturing this identity, that trying to kill it is hard. Like a classic villain it seems to reemerge later to cause mischief until it is beaten back.

That and even for myself there are parts I like or will miss. I've always been me, but I was able to, and had to merge my personality with the building blocks I had at the time. So it gets confusing when your essence stayed the same but the experience or effort built on it after needs to switch.

It's kinda like you almost have to go back to your own foundation and build over again, even if the end result is similar. It's really taxing on the mind, and I still struggle and I've barely started my journey.

If you get to the point where you are always female in your dreams, think of that as a good time indicator. If you are fully female through and through, then it might be time to give your old self a hug and say goodbye. It'll be bittersweet, but it's a mental barrier a person has to accept.

Accept your old self for what it was, so it can pass and your new self can shine.

 

This is a fascinating thread! My other self, before I realized that I wasn't cisgender, was… kinda lost. I've always felt out-of-my-depth when talking to girls; I'm more comfortable with guys (save for the damn height difference :dry. I was self-conscious about how my voice was much deeper than my female friends' voices until my sophomore year of high school (that's when I discovered that I, as a tenor, am able to sing the Phantom of the Opera's parts in the eponymous musical )

Well, here goes:

She was the extremely polite, quiet young girl in the frilly dress, who religiously watched Disney Princess movies and begged for Barbies, Polly Pockets, and more frilly dresses. (But who was also deeply fascinated with sharks, snakes, and spiders, and was determined to out-man the boys.)

She was the awkward preteen who dressed in boyish clothes but really wanted to wear more skirts and dresses just so that the girls wouldn't laugh behind her back, and the boys wouldn't call her a "lesbian".

She was the "clearly-a-closet-case" lesbian/bisexual who dressed in oversized red hunting jackets, boots, and baggy jeans, and who - when her friends gushed about hot actors - was quick to point out every one of their physical flaws.

They were the newly realized genderqueer who liked frilly dresses and lip gloss as WELL as khakis and button-downs.

He was the flamboyant gay guy who wore three-piece-suits and intriguing hats to conferences, gave sarcastic life advice to his friends, and generally failed at being a Sassy Gay Friend (I am not sassy. I think I just came off as the Clueless Socially Awkward Nerdy Gay Friend).

And finally…

He IS a somewhat eccentric, highly awkward, extremely dramatic straight guy who has a taste for jeans, boots, T-shirts, button-downs, strawberry lip gloss, and the occasional frilly dress. He's crazy about many historical periods: has a near-encyclopedic knowledge of the Tudor dynasty, and can tell you exactly why soldiers' wounds glowed at Shiloh/how many horses General Forrest had shot out from under him. He can walk ten miles a day fueled only by yogurt and energy bars. He doesn't get what the big deal about romance is, BUT he always cries when Rhett leaves Scarlett at the end of Gone With the Wind. He has a penchant for opening conversations with things like "Oatmeal is the work of the DEVIL!" and "Do you know what scaphism is?!" He appears quite confident and bombastic to most of his friends, but the really close ones know that he's actually kind of insecure about his appearance (DAMN HEIGHT).

Now, you tell me which one seems the most three-dimensional

*Don't ask. Like, seriously don't ask me. Or you will start me off on my 'intriguing execution methods throughout history' lecture. And trust me, you don't want that to happen.

 

I really don't know. I could go on about all the nice things I could say about what I thought of myself back then, but I would be lying since I always hated myself and thought of myself as my worst enemy and bully.

Honestly, not much has changed. I sometimes have a short fuse when it comes to stupidity, but I need to remember to button my mouth because it gets me in trouble any time I try to muster something. I'm still the same depressive person I was then, the same old introvert and the same self-loather. Nothing has changed except my depression has another root to it that I need to battle.

 

I wasn't a different person back then. I can still identify many of the parts of my personality, and driving forces, in the person I am today, and the person I was at fifteen, before any of this began. I'm different, of course, but only in the way anyone would have changed in those five years of life. What I do feel, though, is that I am what I'm meant to be, and I never felt that before.

I can understand how you might view it differently, though. I expect many feel the same way.

 

I used to look in the mirror and not recognize my reflection. It was very disorienting and weird. In some ways I feel like the same person, but in other ways I feel different. My personality/interests are exactly the same, but I sort of view the past me as the "girl" me, even though I know now I've always been a guy. I have this sort of weird idea of who I should've been if I hadn't been trans, even though realistically I know I'm nothing like that. It almost feels like being in mourning for some reason. I don't know why I feel like this either, because even though my appearance is different I feel exactly the same inside as I always have.

 

I sort of have the opposite experience right now. I still think of myself, for the most part, as the female with masculine traits that I always was, who I was born as. But I have this alter ego, a potential future self, I suppose, the man I could be someday if I ever realize that yes, I would like to come out all the way and transition further. His name is Charles Bell and he has a fantastic moustache.

 

wow that's mesmerising really. Kinda how I feel about my old self in a way. It's strange though, I hated myself before I knew I was a boy my whole life, but as I accepted it, I hated myself even more. I think it's because, taking on a male identity made me feel like a different person, and as well as coming to terms with being trans, I've been working my butt off to get as far away from my old self as I can cos i hate her and I want to be a new person. At first it was incredibly hard to cope as I started that transition. I had to really look at myself, like what kind of guy was i? What am I like? What do I want to do? But at the same time I was avoiding accepting my old personalities and traits and interests. I knew what I doing was unhealthy, but it felt so refreshing and good to escape my old self. I began to hate her even more, and the idea of going back to her felt like a punch in the gut. So I kept going. I realised the only way I could escape her was to forget about her. Just let her drift away. And as time went on it became less of a big deal. I was forgetting her, and it was feeling less like an unnatural jump from girl to boy, and I found myself hating the things from my old self less, and accepting them as a part of my new self. Now, I don't feel like a new person. I don't know I'd I could say I feel 'more like myself' byt I do know I am so much more comftable and happy in myself than i was before and it feels good, so that transition was worth it.
I don't really feel like I have an old self anymore, more like I'm just evolving in a better direction. I never realky think about her anymore, cos it makes me feel kind of low inside, but I don't feel like she's really myself anyway, so it all fine.
Argh, sry for long rant, but great thread though

 

Whenever I looked in the mirror, it never felt like me who was looking back. It was a 'wow, so this is the ugly bastard who's body I inhabit'. I hated my appearance, I still do. I felt like there should be someone else looking back.
I still do.

 

I am struggling with this actually....I feel mixed feelings about letting go of who I used to be. I feel like the girl I was is my sister and she's dead now....when I look at pictures of my younger self I feel like she's a different person . I would very much like to go by my chosen name but sometimes I don't want to let go of my birth name because it feels like the only thing I have left of her.....