Hey, man. I wasn't someone who always knew either, and like you, my sense of gender came about through a lot of 'what ifs' and emotional prodding.
For what it's worth, it's true that most cis people don't question their gender, but it's also true that you don't need to feel locked in to a trans identity. It's totally okay to dip your toes into the water and then back out. That was something I really struggled with when I first started questioning -- I couldn't shake the feeling that if I ever admitted to myself that I may not be cis, I'd forever committed. I was so scared I'd make a permanent mistake (even in just describing my gender on a forum); I was paralysed by it.
These days, I feel pretty comfortable in my identity as a transmasculine person. But it definitely took a while. My body discomfort and dysphoria wasn't obviously gendered -- I wasn't the four year old who tells their parents ''no, I'm a boy!'' Instead, I just had this pervasive disconnect from myself. I was physically reckless because I had no attachment to my body, and to be honest, I couldn't care less if something happened to it.
I'd find myself staring in the mirror for ages, wondering how it was that I looked so strange in girl's clothing, almost as if I was in drag. I was self-conscious. I couldn't shake the feeling that people knew I didn't 'look right.' Later, after I began identifying as a not-girl (how I saw myself before I could come out to myself as trans) sometimes I would look in the mirror and I would see a pretty boy and it would make me feel so good about myself, but then I'd be crushed when, seconds later, I would remember that I was 'really' a girl and that everyone was seeing an awkward ugly woman instead of the handsome, albeit small and soft-face, guy I had pictured. I imagined situations where I would, through some magical circumstance or another, be turned into a boy, and they made me feel warm, then angry, disillusioned, and sad.
Have you doing social experiments like registering as male on forums and playing as a male player character in video games? Or maybe physical ones like binding? That kind of thing helped me feel out my comfort zones a lot.
Welcome and take care!
Cameron
