Talk about serendipity. . .I've been browsing around for the last few hours trying to learn more of the experiences of the very group you're seeking.
Despite common characteristics, everyone's story is different. I understand some people attempt to find the stories of others similar to their own, seemingly in an effort to validate their feelings. But while others' stories can provide much needed insight, don't doubt yourself simply because your own experiences are not exact.
Simply keep doing what you're doing now: read around and ask questions (of others and yourself).
The timing of my realization combined with a lack of "token" symptoms earlier in life mirror's yours. As a child, I never considered myself as anything other than male, because well, what else would I be? All the other kids and grown-ups called me a boy, so that's what I was. Except, I never seemed to. . .mesh well with boys. I dug some typically male things, like Ninja Turtles and video games, but I never got into anything really masculine, like G.I. Joe or He-Man. I enjoyed playing outdoors doing whatever for a time, but not too long after getting my first NES at age 7 I came to not only fall-out of sports but outright hate them. The older I got, the more boys would tease me, too. I honestly don't even remember what half of the teasing and bullying was for anymore. (I did get teased by girls, too, but was never. . .tormented by them.)
Boys inevitably became my playmates and such, but I always felt on the outside. I never did try to be too friendly with girls. Tried to talk them here and there for whatever reason, but they only thought of me as weird. I did feel some draws to "girly" things, but only in the vaguest senses. Lisa Frank, slap bracelets, play kitchen sets, etc. all appealed to me, but only looking back at my memories now can I interpret anything from it. Whereas then, I'd only stare for a few seconds longer than I probably should have at certain things and that was that.
This continued on to puberty. I remember not wanting to be hairy, but thinking I had no choice but to accept it. I remember being disappointed in seeing chest hair and hoping I wouldn't wind up with a forest. By the next time I paid attention to my chest, a forest was what I got. Also, I had recently started the school choir and found I had a nice contralto singing voice. My voice started changing right around a solo competition. I could perform the piece when I first started practicing for it, but come competition time, I broke down in front of the judges as I suddenly found myself unable to sing as had not too long ago. That devastated me on many levels.
Despite all this though, I never questioned my gender until I was 17. I did dress a few times before that age, first with my (very young) stepmother's clothes, then later after moving in with my grandmother hers. (To this day I still don't know what provoked me to put on women's clothing. While the result was arousal, it certainly wasn't the motivation. Especially when I'd wish I could just not take any of it off afterward.) But it wasn't until I met/dated a very fetching gal did I question who I really was.
She was strong, beautiful, intelligent, compassionate, inspiring, and indisputably female despite coming off as far more masculine than me. She joked about how she wore boxers and I wore briefs. She would sooner knock someone out who'd accost her herself than have someone else leap to her aid. She was so perfect. . .Which confounded me considering we had very similar childhoods. She would even tell me I reminded her a lot of herself when she was younger, which was funny considering I was a year older. Funnier still, I couldn't imagine how someone like her could have ever been shy, scared, and self-defeating like I was back then.
Somewhere in my trying to figure out how we each wound up the way we did, I considered what if I'd been born with a female body. What if I had grown-up as a girl, just as she did? I mean, considering the similarity of our households growing up, really the only factor differentiating our development was gender. At least, this is what I told myself. . .The seed of wonder was planted. Coincidentally, I'd continue to find myself incredibly drawn to strong women.
Over the course of the next 10 years, questions would pop up in my mind, with either little, no, or no recognized catalyst: "Would I have been better off born a girl?" "Should I have been born a girl?" "Why couldn't I have just been born a girl?" "Am I female?" "Why do I feel this way?" "Is there something wrong with me?" And when they did, I'd look back at my life, my memories, my experiences. I'd think about how I felt about myself, how people treated me, just. . .everything. Somewhere in this time I found my way to fantasy sites centering around transformation, and quickly found myself drawn to the MtF-based stories and images. And these things made me even more confused. . .
Was this all something I have romanticized in my mind? Or was this just some fetish? Why was any of this even affecting me at all? Why was I finding myself wishing I could wake up switched into another woman's body, permanently, living her life as mine from that point onward? Why did those desires then give way to wanting to wake up in my own female body and not caring that I would have to explain what happened to everyone I know? Why would the sight of a female face in the mirror every time I rinsed after a shave make me briefly happy before then feeling sad that I have such soft features but have to live as a guy? Why am I feeling like I may have been cheated somehow?
I then met another woman, this time online. After knowing each other for about 8 months, we engaged in a very intimate conversation, telling each other experiences, wants, and feelings we'd never shared with anyone else. Guess what I told her?
To my surprise, she found it all fascinating, asking me more questions. And I. . .just let everything flow, for the first time ever, with some things even coming out that I never knew were there. I think she could hear the happy release in my voice and gave me her support, encouraging me to explore all of this. Two weeks of introspection later, I felt there was at least enough going on to warrant seeing a counselor. (While experienced with transgender individuals, she is actually not a gender therapist herself.)
This was a little over two months ago. In this time, I've come to understand who I am and what I need to do. I still have no logical explanation or even the words to express why I feel the way I do, which used to bother me a lot since I didn't have any of the tell-tale signs growing up. But when I think about how as all this is going on I'm starting to actually love myself as a person for the first time in my life, I feel it's all the "why" I need.
I'm starting to finally love myself because I'm finally learning who I really am.
Yikes. . .I feel like I hijacked your thread, even though you were "looking for people who were in the same situation as [you were]."
