Do you keep them, destroy/delete them, lock them away? What are you doing with your photos of your old self?
Personally I’m a bit torn. On one hand I want to keep them because they are still memories, on the other hand I never want to see them again. So I will probably lock them away/archive them somewhere.
But what about you?
I’ve been trying to decide that myself. Even though my first thought is, “That’s not me,” when I see my old photos, I feel I should leave them out there for people/world to see. Part of it is not wanting to feel like I’m hiding my past and the other part is to maybe help others realize they can do this, too. And/or show my less open-minded friends and family that transitioning isn’t a bad thing.
Idk how successful I’ll be with that last one, but I feel I should at least try.
Occasionally I get jump scared by them when Google Photos is like “remember when you were an ugly boy?” and feel dysphoric over it. But when I control when/who sees the photos, I’m pretty fine with it at this point. He doesn’t even really look like me, to quote an ex I awkwardly ran into and hadn’t yet come out to, I “look like a woman that sort of resembles [boy me]”.
Use them for transition timelines to make girls envy me
They stop stinging after a while. I mean, you might never feel great about them, but for me at least, the urge to burn them in a fire went away after a few years. Now, I don’t bring them up for no reason, but if it’s relevant, I’m happy to bring out an old photo of me pre transition
Which is to say, keep them. You can’t unthrow them away later. But you can simply never look at them again, even if you keep them
I was recently home and I put a sharpie censor bar across my chest in an old photo that was on my parents fridge. Other than that I try not to interact much with them.
