Pictures of the past

Now that I get acquainted with people whom don’t know and whom I haven’t told that I am transsexual I have to find a balance between openness about it and the wish to be perceived as the person I am. Finding this balance isn’t easy, I actually don’t mind being open about my transsexuality. My goal when starting transition wasn’t being a transsexual, but being truly myself. The fact that I describe my condition as being transsexual isn’t the same as entirely being myself. At this stage I can’t yet fully be myself but already the perception of others has gigantically improved. And honestly I treasure that perception more than being open about my transsexuality. Don’t come tell me that with this position I deny a part of myself, because it is not that simple. I desire to be myself, not to be transsexual, so if people perceive me as the woman I am why would I want to breach that perception by telling that I didn’t show myself (fully) as a girl for almost 25 years.
I’m writing about this because for the first time since starting hormone therapy and living as a woman someone will come over to my place for dinner, and I haven’t told her about my situation. So I presume she doesn’t know and that inviting her shouldn’t be a reason for me to feel forced to tell her just because there’s still certain things in my appartment which could give away my situation. So I came to decide that the pictures in my room of me before hormone treatment will go behind some neutral postcards. Four of the five pictures are only from summer last year, while one is from 2006.  The difference between how I looked then and how I look now is in my opinion quite significant. I presented myself more androginously feminine than male/masculine, but still certain features of how I look now were quite different back then.
It’s not that I want to hide the memory of those events shown in the picture, but I simply do not want my situation to be an issue in new relationships with people whom don’t now about it. At a point I could still decide to tell them, but for this person coming over for dinner that point isn’t there yet. Still, those pictures are from the past, they represent my recent past, but they don’t represent me as I am now and for that reason I will probably take them away and put more recent and representative pictures up on the wall.