I am one of those to whom the revelation came very late in life. Currently I believe I'm getting closer to identifying the approximate age questioning may have started but I may never know. Quite possibly it is buried under too much other stuff, and I am in many ways happy to have just finally understood! I grew up in a logging town on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, a place of very rigid lifestyles, beliefs, and roles. This was also in the 1950's which was a time period ripe for any idea of stepping outside the normal as being 'unthinkable'. Family dysfunction contributed its own toxic nature to the mix, so I escaped in the only way I knew which was drug use. I carried it to the extreme and hid within that insane and fractured world of meth, and this in its own sinister way acted like vultures, eating up any crumbs that led back towards sanity.
Move the clock forward another 33 years and I was finally able to dig down and find the strength to rid myself of this way of finding cover. At about the 19 year mark, after uncovering who knows how much junk and doing my best to correct them, I discovered the gender situation. I will not go into that scenario in this thread, but I began my mtf journey 9 months ago at age 62.
For the first time I'm happy. I still have small bouts with those deep seated pangs of guilt and shame, but now within less than a minute I realize this is not the way I feel, it is because others placed it in me. Dani
