Other trans people, give me your weird gender thoughts:
How do you conceptualize your pre-transition self?
Did you "kill" [deadname] so the real You could live?
Did You just become different?
Do you hate or love [deadname]? Or something in between? Has that feeling changed with time?
How do you conceptualize your pre-transition self?
Did you "kill" [deadname] so the real You could live?
Did You just become different?
Do you hate or love [deadname]? Or something in between? Has that feeling changed with time?
Comments
I feel more pity than hate for "him" as "he" fades out of existence more. That life feels so divorced and distinct from Julia it's like looking at a stranger now, rotting away into nothing slowly
I met “him” on an inward Journey (mushrooms were involved)
I didn’t hate him, I held no rage for him , and he laughed and cried when he saw who I had become.
It was then he showed me that without my obelisk around which to build himself, 1/
He existed to protect me, and he had finished that task
It struck me then, as I held him, sang to him, that he was TIRED… so tired
And as everything he had been crumbled to motes of light in my lap, i knew he could finally rest
he was someone i created because the world refused me but would welcome him with open arms. and eventually he became all there was.
the best analogy is probably method acting. you know how method actors sometimes immerse themselves so deeply in roles that it becomes hard to get out? that was me.
accepting myself, and later defining myself, was intrinsically tied to realizing this and dismantling the script i wrote for him.
for a while i’d occasionally imagine dialogs with him. it felt silly, but i had a lot of resentment for that me. it helped me come to terms with myself and develop a healthier relationship with my past.
i’m just myself now, i can look at old photos and see someone i almost don’t believe ever existed, and maybe he didn’t
he was so apathetic and empty, it was like masking a cavern, i’m not sure anymore that he was a person
the two feel so tied together for me i don’t know what it would be to separate them
I don't hate my past self at all! the firmware I got just didn't match with the hardware.
and hey, i like making this chassis better! i wanna get glowy tattoos and bigger boobs and all... not for gender, but because i like it!
In recency I have begun to see Deadname as a stubborn obstacle. A parasite I invited into my home.
Deadname felt no joy and did not allow joy in others. Deadname constantly made it clear to others that he was drowning and he’d do nothing but pull them down too.
I can’t view him as someone who isn’t me, because I came from him.
I’m grateful that his experiences brought me to the person I am now. I’m grateful I get to be.
I used to hate them for leaving us like this, but now I realize that's unfair. They did their best with what they had to work with.
more and more i’m realizing that deadname never existed, it was a mask i wore for the sake of other people, that i’ve shattered. these days i just get to be the girl i’ve always been
For me it feels like that was a time in my life where I was simply existing, but not really living yet.
It's one of the reasons I try to make up for it now
do that for fifty years
it's more like I let him go, and he slowly faded away. I look back mostly with pity and empathy
I also jive with what others have said about being more connected to childhood than later life, that's so real
i hold no love for that role self but i appreciate that he helped me survive long enough to escape the environment that made him necessary.
I hate that I was so terrified I hid & wasted years of my life but I love the things that I have from that time that wouldn't have existed.
I'm grateful for the protection but wish it hadn't been needed. I'm glad he's gone.
we miss him bc he could've made it, and we didn't know how to seal one away yet
She was me, I am her.
And then I see myself in pre-transition photos, and that continuity dissappears. I'm still trying to figure out how to reconcile this contradiction.
I was living a liminally gendered life for a long time, where I fully pushed the limits of masculine expectations.
I've been told, leading up to my transition, I looked more like a butch woman than a cis man.
I was a ghost person, a seed, a collection of possibilities trying simultaneously to burst forth and break sidewalk holding me down and pilot my pre-transition displacement in spacetime without hurting anyone
Everything was through glass. The mask was not me. I was dying
i’m very pissed at past me though because there’s a LOT of things in the first 26 years of my life that would’ve meant a lot more to me had i not been so disconnected
Escapism now feels so different and the old rules don’t apply.
Basically there was always a girl in me. Nothing changed internally. My body just didn't match my self. So I fixed it.
Even pre transition, people perceived my psyche as a woman. My internet besties were women who hated men.
They worked so so hard to achieve the safety they needed to transition.
i want to go back and help her
she had no idea how alone she really was
when you think your problem is feeling like you don't fit in
then realizing you fucking don't never did
he was a tyrant who locked me in a cage as punishment for how i tainted and weakened him
i was never him. he existed only in the minds of others, and i was just the girl forced to play him
I’ll think about it!
I'm still molded and shaped by who I was, how I was socialized, the relationships I had as a guy & don't want to lose that.
I'm still the same person, but I'm letting myself show more versus acting to fit the role given.
So i was always there, but at a distance from the world
Observing from afar and interacting lightly as my true self, like a ghost struggling to communicate
The real me as haunting from the future
i never hated them, just that they happened to be stuck in egg phase and would've been a major risk to wider system health due to that
i don't dislike my deadname, i think he was doing the best with
I am them, they are me. There is no hate there, only the frustration of wasted years.
i don't currently resonate with the "i was always a girl" feelings others have
when the husk could no longer protect, it shattered open & sent shrapnels of itself through the 4 of us
we carry parts of him
💜💜💜
to me, he sacrificed himself so we could truly live. I carry what I can of his in memoriam
self sacrifice
🫂
🐈⬛ it wasn't until the great loss that [jheya] was made aware of him
we carry the memory of him, we knew him most
♥
I’m glad our framing helps ✨🫶🏼
my transition has been an exercise of increasing self expression, more than anything else, so rather than killing my former self, I'm simply becoming more completely myself
she covered herself in what she thought others wanted her to be, only peeking though the blinds when she thought it was safe, and never stepping though the door until the pain of staying outweighed the fear of leaving
she feels the sun on her own skin now, but the fear is still there sometimes, if she's honest
glad we found a way to be ourselves
I can’t even look at past photos, or see and hear my deadname without experiencing a trauma response.
I was a scared little girl, trapped inside a body, screaming to be set free.
To the outside world, I’m vastly different than I appeared before.
I was a garden, mostly fallow and relentlessly pruned and shaped to fit someone else's design.
Transition was me letting it flourish, mine at last.
My past self-lives within it, finally free and unhindered and part of a flourishing, complete whole.
Name, though, that's still a problem. The one i have i don't really like, but none of the others i've tried on have felt any better, and most fit like a stranger's underwear ><
(I did a thread on this actually)
https://bsky.app/profile/lexys.wtf/post/3kvug36q2an2p
As to how I feel about myself then vs now....
I've been w/ my spouse for 20+ years
We have a kid together who is 6 (I'm Mom now by Kiddo's request!)
We live where we grew up together
I've worked at the same job for 12 years
I don't exactly feel like a wholly different person.
I've built this new me from the rubble.
Transitioning didn't do that on its own. The work between May-July helped and the work since on myself outside of transitioning has done wonders too.
And more than it being a different person than I ever was, I'm more so becoming the version of me that my child self yearned for an didn't have the words for
Now? I can lean into it, I get dopamine from it. I love it.
To answer the question more directly I suppose. I view the past me as something that I didn't kill outright but that I rebuilt w/ purpose. It has been beautiful.
Brian was a fucking hero. Like, he fought for so long and had to fight so long against both outer pressures and inner demons - including *daily* intrusive suicidal thoughts - but he never gave up fighting.
I do think there's something to the "killing him" idea. Because Brian wasn't happy. Brian was in a lot of pain, and it was clear that he could not exist in the world. It had gotten to much for him.
I do think of Brian as dead. But he died saving my life. So he's a hero.
I was always a woman, but I have so many heuristics that come from masking as a guy that I feel authentic yet non-binary.
My brain has changed. But that’s how brains are, they are dynamic and they don’t only calcify.
All personalities are constructions, but there was an insidious limitation to mine, I could not exist
Funnily enough, I had a reputation for being "comfortable in my masculinity and sexuality" in the ways that I could deviate from the norm, but these too,
Like I said, all personalities in part are constructs, so deconstructing my gender, and removing that armor
i have nothing but love for him, and he's truly my biggest fan, but there's still a huge disconnect between me and a lot of aspects of his life
"pilot the body, jessie, or deadname will have to do it again"
I had to take off the armor in order to move and feel the air, but he got me to the starting point
The first time he came across a trans woman, he was a dumb teenager who didn't understand that new yearning.
That suppressed realization clawed at his psyche, coming out in art as a "twin sibling" who he idolized.
If he had, I don't think we would've hurt so many people while struggling.
I may still be dealing with the fallout, but I no longer feel like I'm constantly at war with myself.
2) I am but in some ways. No. Still a massive and opinionated Geek who loves the Arts... I just don't hate myself as much.
I disassociated, hated my name/pictures & anyone who got to close to me. I did what I was told to do, but I didn't try to do anything with any passion. I would disassociate and laugh and make jokes as if I was on a script. Occasionally making very egg like jokes or comments.
Ever since then I feel like I have been slowly waking up, with brain fog being lifted. My dead name & old pictures, they are like a old friend, not me.
My current pictures still are not me, but they are closer.
i used to be angry and resentful at her for not doing better sooner. but it's wild that she figured out anything at all. she shouldn't have had to do it alone
That's basically where I started to transition. Shortly after I came out.
It feels like getting "complete" & unhealthy coping from the past falls of. Don't hate old me I'm sry for it.
and then, one day, the mask slipped enough that it saw there wasn’t a void. there’d been a girl buried there. and by letting her out, it became me
Mostly I marvel at how scared past-me was to be feminine, like I was trespassing 😕 It feels so natural now 😁
I couldn't hate that kid even if I tried. He arguably safed my life. But his time is over. He can rest now. And I'll finally live.
Never knowing why or where we were going...
This was before we knew about "us". We tried to frame it as some sort of imaginary argument,
it never worked.
They doesnt go by deadname these days, but is still with us nonetheless. Observing just as I once did, and taking the wheel when the world around get´s too dangerous again...
It doesnt make me like them very much for what they portray to the outside, but I was grateful they brought us far enough so I could exist as more than an observer...
There's definitely no separation & I've retconned myself into girlhood in my memories anyway. But it's more [s]he sheltered me & kept me safely hidden until I could do something about existing in the world.
But also, fuck, so dense.
Like fucking granite.
No you're not trans at all.
Not at all.
Oh honey.
I have to finish my essay on gender performance and EVA from a transgender perspective 🤓
Because of this, there is current me and old me. They feel like different people, only with some similarities.
I pity “him.” He tried so hard and he was stronger than he thought. He got me here.
Honestly, I think it would make my life easier at this point to make the switch. I just love being a woman with my name.
because i also love being a woman with my name but all the things i previously said lol
I don't think about him much
Whoever occupied it before me is dead and gone; for all intents and purposes, my body is stolen, and [deadname] is somebody I killed to take it. I just reshaped it into what I want.
I am frustrated by internal thoughts of myself that identify myself in some way with him.
I hate his name. I want to never hear it again.
I'm still gonna be connected to [deadname] for a bit through paperwork and family/friends getting used to Sierra.
But I didn't really have much of a life before...
Living authentically has made me wanna live.
little me didn't believe he existed and you what he was kind of right about that. but i've also always kind of felt like me but going through boy puberty fucked so many things up and i couldn't even conceptualize what i was experiencing and this dissociatio
When I came out I just stopped pretending.
I didn’t know who I was. I realized I never knew who I was.
The mask I had wore took over and this was the first time without it.
It was genuine curiously.
I was never comfortable, I know that, but everything I know about myself now was too vague to even grant that version of myself a cohesive identity.
Personally I also like to conceptualize [DEADNAME] as like, an alternate universe me who was okay with being a guy. Kinda funny to talk about it that way anyway.
"Now that I'm a girl,"
etc. are often how I talk about gender in terms of time. But maybe that's just right now, while people still easily clock me...
Talking about a trait I dont have anymore but used to before transition?
"Oh yeah, [DEADNAME] did that."
IF, and only if, it makes sense to say. Don't say it for no reason.
Childhood [Deadname], I have no idea what they were like. I feel so disconnected, but I guess that is CTPSD.
I have mixed feelings about him. I'm in a pretty good spot rn thanks to him. but I wish he had committed to it back when he first realized I was trans.
previously I've said i killed him. I've said he was a different person. I don't hate my pre-transition self but I was making decisions then that I regret, that were tied to denying myself.
I didn't kill that person, I mostly pity them having to live life not being me.
He was busy getting stuff done until I was ready to take the masc mask off and be my true self.
I don't hate or love him, some memories are better than others, but overall he carried me to the point I was able to be me.
Pre transition me was wrong, awful, something I should never have been.
what i think i am and what i actually am are two different things that don't overlap much
what i think i am doesn't have a ton of stability, shifting reflections of context and mood
what i "feel" is nonbinary, but what i feel doesn't matter to anyone but me, but it sort of doesn't matter to me that much either.
i felt not depressed for the first time basically ever for the first few months, but then that passed and i didn't stop. all of this is genuinely mysterious to me.
Others said what they expected, the shell tried to fulfill those expectations.
The shell avoided any actual thinking about itself and instead distracted itself with social media and video games whenever it could.
And my parents dont like it and are telling me to become the shell again cuz I never expressed any desire to be something else as a child.
My dead name never fit right anyway... It looks good on other people, just not my style.
Reminds me of this poem: https://ourkwest.github.io/non-games/poetry/poetry.html
It does seem like a separate lifetime ago that my pre-transition self existed. Almost like watching one of those videos of life 100 yrs ago
sadly, that shell of a person got pretty toxic over time.
1/2
a lot of people in my life have good memories of that person, but i can't see it.
now i oscillate between feeling sorry for that person & wishing they had been better.
I can laugh at some of the goofy ways deadname tried to fill time until I showed up properly
being that loud punk has already removed most of any toxic family- and since my spawn point was an abuser i found it easy to avoid toxicity in my life.
she died a teenager, I rose from her remains like a phoenix along with my sisters/headmates
I was them and they were me. Or really, they were *us*, but we didn't realize it for awhile, a splintered crystal held together by weakening strands that occasionally rattled off one another before being pulled back
Even when I knew I didn't want to be wearing him, I stayed in the shell and it slowly suffocated me.
Then I finally passed through fire, and I burned him away.
[deadname] burned so that I could live.
Now there's just Me - Angela Alice.
It felt like I existed, very much so, until I was 13. I didn't spit in the face of reality, more...let out a little snort as I made a joke for only myself. However the world treated it all the same and levied a relentless wave of pain until I finally gave in.
Deep into the depths of the sea of expectation.
My body slowly succumbed to the pressure, more and more of who I was lapped away with each eddy of the deep like an unending corrosion. Parts of myself gone forever.
My soul however...
...was a little more waterproof than anticipated
And there it would stay for years, desperately calling through the void, begging for someone, anyone, to notice that something was horribly wrong.
But they never did.
That nothing was wrong.
They could feel something was...diffrent, that's for sure, but it was never questioned as to why.
And they slowly accepted a blood red sea as normal
Very few looked below the surface, less still tried to reach the glimmer of flame at the bottom
So I tried to resurface myself.
I tried to return to the surface.
Slowly.
Painfully slowly.
I was effectively trying to scoop at the water with bones that were all but eaten by the depths after all.
And despite all odds, I swam up.
I could try hard enough, I could make it back.
And as I swam, I felt the pressure easing on what remained of myself.
It got easier and easier to move
The water around me got lighter and lighter
Just keep the good parts and get rid of the bad ones.
🌸🌸🌸
He was a good person you know what I mean.
He was strong he endured lots of abuse in his life he got up and pushed forward.
He loved animals. He was faithful like no other person I've ever met.
My therapist opened my eyes to a lot.
I had some really bad therapy in the 90s really bad.
Set me back 20 years.
But we can't give up you just can't give up.
When this mess is over that we're in things will be much better for you and I.
I truly believe that the pendulum will swing back.
the kicker is that i'm able to give him gentleness & grace in a way that i struggle to do for my current self
every chapter comes to an end
but that just means a new beginning
Now she has to go so that I can be free, but that doesn’t stop us from writing each other love songs.
The feelings can be complicated, for sure. There was a lot of misery in repression. But I can’t bring myself to hate someone who existed out of necessity and for my protection.
Either we create ourselves, or we get created by others.
*similar for actual old friends.
pre-transition me (<19) was a scared kid, but still me
repression me (20-36) was a cruel masquerade of masculinity
the scared kid is still a core part of who i am, though, and a lot of my life now is fulfilling her dreams
i underwent (and am still undergoing) massive shifts in who i am since finally getting HRT access, primarily in healing & letting go of additional repression/guilt/shame complexes
Trouble is, that's not really the case. That sad and terrified little girl was me, and I owe it to us to reconcile what I was like then with what I am now
He was a thing we had to conjure up to keep our life going beyond the teen years, a hard but brittle being that ultimately didn't stand up to scrutiny.
I feel bad for him, despite his many, many mistakes which are now mine.
He didn't know better.