One thing I need to remember is that me being a woman doesn't mean I need to become this radically different girl that I have literally never been in my life.

Like... I will never be happy if I keep trying to "become" a woman by chasing some personality that isn't mine. I will always be me, that will chase me no matter what becomes of me.

This whole thing, my transition, my new name, me finding myself as that which I am... this was begotten out of getting closer to myself. Of starting to make sense out of the gaping hole that was in the middle of my personality. I am a woman already, I don't need to become someone else to be myself.

I am still me

I am still the very same person I was 3 years ago, before I started asking myself any of these questions as clearly as I do today

That person and I are the same. I am only more honest with myself. I have begun to patch up the damage within my sense of self

But... those patches change nothing about the existing structure

All the memories are still there, all the same things. I have not lost myself, I have not forgotten myself. I am still the very same person I always have been, there is continuity. They have never died

They simply have become me

We remain linked

I do not need to mourn my younger self, as they... she has never left me

It is hard for me to reckon who I am today with who I was before. To connect to the fact that I put on such a different mask from the one I wear today

That I look back at my memories, all the while aware of the fact I was just... wrong

That I was never quite... me. Not earnestly, not fully. Gaps around the edges, this gaping hole within myself.

Something was wrong. I always knew it was wrong. And it's hard to fight for that which is right when I had ceaselessly told myself throughout my childhood and teen years to never pursue this.

That I was convinced that no matter what, I couldn't break. I had to wear the mask. That there was nothing for me but the void if the mask ever broke. That I could never be seen as the woman I wanted so desperately to be

Yet, nonetheless, I was a woman, as I am today. She had the same desires, the same wishes, the same silent wish every night that she'd escape her body and be anyone else

She lived in fear of that which she was. But she was still me. She was still a woman. No matter what she said against this, it was always said out of fear. Out of this desire to run away from it all. To flee into what she thought was safe.

I have been here the whole time. I am all that I was. I have simply given myself the space to grow into that which I've always desired.

Me being a woman doesn't mean I have to be anyone other than who I am. Because who I am is a woman

I can change parts of who I am to better be recognized as that, but the person I am inside will always remain the same

I am that which is produced out of the chemical soup that is my mind

I am myself, I've always been myself

That which I am at my core will never change, because the way my mind is laid out will never have every component change without some connection to every other

Life is that continuity, and the continuity of my life has never been broken

My self is retained as long as that continuity is never broken

And that continuity will flow ever forwards, even past my death. Even if I am not to perceive, even if I am not to exist in the patterns and structures I do, I will persist

I am a part of the universe. That which I was existed before, and it shall exist afterwards

I am a moment in this universe of it collecting itself into that which can behold itself to be that which it is

And that is me

I am a liminal self, but that does not mean that I am a dying self.

I am transforming, but I am not dying

This is not death, it is just another form of life for myself

Another phase of my existence

I'm still me

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What I am, I do not know. But all that I am is that which I am

I am everything that I am, everything I perceive, everything I do with that, every thought

I am that moment between the last and next that is here

I am alive