Will the real me please stand up.
Jude Law repeats this in "I Heart Huckabees" as he slowly slips into existential crisis.
I suppose it would make sense in that particular moment in time, and in that particular context, but it's not an image of Chewbacca is it? Not really. It's just a conveniet way of refering to phenomena... happening and being perceived a certain way.
In a similar way, I'd say yes, we are the "real us" at any point in time, but only in the sense that it makes convient sense in that particular moment, and only as a device to point at a set of particular processes/things happening.
It stands to reason that the "real you" never gets fully realized until you die.