No.
Only times (pre 7) that I thought it was normal. My friends were mainly girls, but some boys too - and I could always climb higher up a tree than anyone else, or kick a football into the goal on my way to chat with my girlfriends - so that probably saved me from a lot. And what it didn't save me from - well, the odd person who ever picked a fight with me certainly never ever tried it again.
Not even the teacher, who at the age of 7, dragged me up to her desk to denounce me for being abnormal and having 'something wrong', and that she'd be watching me at play times to make sure I played with no girls. Such a wicked thing to do to a child. She knew she'd gone too far, and she apologized to me after a couple of my apartheid style play times and lunch times. Then started complementing my handwriting and giving me money to buy sweets. By then I just wanted the year to be over so I could get a new teacher.
So then it faded out until 11, when two things happened - the girls were taken to a separate class to learn about periods, and the boys got an extended lunchtime break in the playground. That was quite traumatic and reinforced it. Then a new kid arrived in my class and I had my first crush on this beautiful Italian boy with his elegant footballers build and a little bit developed for an 11 year old, cute accent, dark and tanned. Found him on Facebook about a year ago actually - bald and fat. So we would've been divorced now anyway haha.
And night after night before sleep, I would fantasize about him and what it would've been like - if only. They were the least homosexual fantasies in the world, so it was kind of obvious.
And then on and on in the same style, with an outwardly and completely deliberately androgynous presentation, a relatively good if dysfunctional outer life, and a rich inner life. Both sometimes overwhelmed (every three or four years) by a sort of rising, hysterical, but totally silent panic that would build into breakdown and depression.
The real trauma was facial hair.
And then I had other things to deal with, various losses and dramas and things, and PTSD from a sexual attack by someone trying to infect people with HIV. That was probably worse than being trans, because it was a threat to life, and while everyone's rape is their own to feel how they feel, it was worse to me than standard, because it basically had attempted murder attached to it.
Thank god for a negative result. And with that, I can move on. It ruined the vast majority of my twenties. It robbed me of all that time. But I just don't care much as long as I don't have that, thank god.
So no, I never thought I wasn't trans. I always knew it applied to me, and I just wished and still wish it didn't. Bit if there was a pill to take to cure it, I wouldn't, because I like relating to the world with the female perspective I've always had.
Some may find the reasons and research interesting. I do to an extent. But it doesn't help - you either are or aren't, and if you're the one, then it's you. It's me. The available research about it perhaps being connected to prenatal stress and the mothers hormones in utero have really left my mother more distraught than she needed to be, thinking it was all her fault and something she did of didn't do during pregnancy. I wish she had never read it. I wish there was no need for her to go looking in the first place.
