I was aware a age 4 how did it happen for those later

[jussmoi4nao]

I've always known I wanted to be a girl. Its the one most important thing I've always associated with myself and ever since my earliest memory it's made me feel really invisible. The worst is it's never stopped, all these years I've probably thought about it everyday.

[ana]

JustMoi wrote:
The worst is it's never stopped, all these years I've probably thought about it everyday.

Every single day for me too !!!!  umm let's see I am turning 40 so that is 365 days x 36 years (4 years old earliest time I can recall) = 13,140 (approx.) days of thinking about it.

[TessaMarie]

I knew I wanted to be a girl when I was 5.  I remember the day quite vividly.

I'm not too sure how I knew I had to hide that desire very, very well; but somehow I did.  While the thoughts & desires would resurface often over the years, I was always able to push them back down out of my conscious mind up until January of last year.  That was when I realised that all the "fantasies" were not just idle dreams, but something real that was not about to go away.

[stephaniec]

I knew I wanted to be a girl when I was 5.  I remember the day quite vividly.

I'm not too sure how I knew I had to hide that desire very, very well; but somehow I did.  While the thoughts & desires would resurface often over the years, I was always able to push them back down out of my conscious mind up until January of last year.  That was when I realised that all the "fantasies" were not just idle dreams, but something real that was not about to go away.

I always tried to push it away and it never failed to come back stronger then before. I finally gave up trying to push it away.

[TessaMarie]

I always tried to push it away and it never failed to come back stronger then before. I finally gave up trying to push it away.

I was a little bit more stubborn than that.  I kept trying to ignore the 'push' until it snuck up on me & got me into an ER. 
My wake-up call was realising, while lying on a gurney in an ER hallway, that I had just caused my own visit to the ER. 
That was the point when I knew I had to face what had been hidden deep inside my head for 38 years.