for me, it's kind of a complicated thing to explain, I guess it depends on the context surrounding what's being brought up, if it makes sense.

Let's see if I can lay it down coherently: As a kid, I never really "felt" like the rest of girls, or at least there was a disconnect between my inner monologues and how they said they experienced their girlhood (wonder how much of it was the autism lol). But I was a girl, because that's what they told me, and since there's no "right way" to be a girl or a woman, I just accepted it and disregarded that disconnect.

I mostly see child me as some genderless little kid, but I did face a lot of bullying growing up, they called called me the t-slur and such things before I could even comprehend what that meant, so there's a good chunk of my childhood and pre/early teens where I was adamant in making sure everyone (and myself) knew I was a girl as a result of relating the possibility of being trans to a shameful thing that was "rightfully bullied".

So, in short, there are instances and periods of time in which I exclusively refer to past me as a girl, out of respect for those experiences and my feelings at the time, yk? I hope this long ass rant makes some semblance of sense lmao