i've seen a lot of trans narratives in terms of killing their old self, murdering the self that was constructed for the world, killing the False so that the Truth may live. and i've seen many trans narratives lean back towards the Old once they carved the space to explore, approaching cautiously the gender they once ran from to scavenge the pieces they liked from the shell.
i've also seen many plural systems express this in a different way: you killed the AGAB, and the AGAB came back. turns out they weren't entirely fake, just contextually limiting.
the AGAB self often ends up cast aside, or worse, a corpse, abandoned for a flashier New that leaves what Was in the dust behind. and they're often angry that they had to be killed so that someone else might live, now that they have had the space carved to truly Feel.
to exist pre-transition, to exist in that identity haze, is oppressive to both sides of that coin. neither side has the space to explore, but one side makes it easier to fawn for others into reducing your needs, and that fawning is what holds us back.
but at the same time, it's not their fault, is it? your sense of self was traumatized into a mould more convenient for those Outside instead of being allowed to form and develop naturally. it's not the fault of the one shoved tightly into the mould that the mould restrained you.
i've often described my pre-transition self as being "more mirror than person" by the time i broke out of that. i describe it as breaking the mirror, flowery language that, while symbolic, disguises what it truly was:
i murdered him so that i could grow beyond him.