That varies with people. Some do genuinely feel that they have (and in many cases they genuinely have) hidden away part of themselves that they used to express in the past and want to express again, and in extreme cases this can be quite significant parts of their personality. For others all those past bits were things they only did to "fit in" and they are happy that they are not part of their current life. Most of us are somewhere between those two poles.

For myself, I feel I have changed, mostly for the better, over the decades but that neither "current me" or the "past me(s)" are any more or less real.