age v knowledge?

[Al James]

Realised at 17 there was a word for what i was. In my twenties thought there was nothing i could do about it so just deciced to be as true to myself as i could be. At 37 realised i couldnt live with this body anymore so went to see my doctor then found this site and couldnt believe how much the world had opened up

[Vancha]

Hmm, it seems that there is a lot of discussion about the discovery of the term "transsexual"... When I was about ten years old, I told my best friend that one day I would grow up and get a sex change.  I'd never seen it depicted in the media whatsoever, I was just a dreamer and assumed that one day, it would be possible for doctors -- or magic -- to make me a boy.  As I grew up, I knew vaguely that real transsexuals who transitioned existed, and my interest and intrigue grew.  I learned about hormones and various surgeries increasingly in depth and I think what made me keep putting it off was fear of transitioning with people who knew my past still in my life.  I wanted to run away from my parents, from family, and from friends.  I decided I couldn't go on living that way.  I'm sure that's how a lot of us feel when we finally decide to take action.

[Cairus]

I decided I 'wished I was male' around age 13, but continued living as a girl primarily and doing little more than angst about it until around 15 or 16. At that point I started wearing men's clothing/underwear, binding and packing, going by my 'new' name and introducing myself as a boy. I did this up until around 18.5, where I had about a year where I went through a degenerative phase(crazy denial psychosis mental hospital ->-bleeped-<-) before I came back out of it and started going after T at age 20. I got on it at the beginning of this year. On my 20th birthday I'd told myself I had to be on it by the time I turned 21. I just had my 21st birthday a couple weeks ago; huzzah. <3 So for 'actively helping myself' that'd be five or six years outta 21.

Edited when I decided to dig around in the memory box to figure just which year it was I went ape->-bleeped-<-.

[Farm Boy]

I liked being mistaken for a boy when I was younger, and I realized I wasn't comfortable being a girl when I went through puberty.  After that I just used to wish I was a boy, and that there was some surgery that could be done to get rid of my chest.  I had no idea there actually was until I was 19 and I stumbled across some top surgery videos on youtube.  That was about a year ago and I've been actively researching since then.

I agree though about being allowed more freedom of expression, since I was allowed to wear the clothes I wanted and participate in the activities that interested me.  In a way that made it more difficult for me to realize that I wasn't actually a tomboy, but something else.

[Lewis]

MtFs are well known for blocking all possibility of seeking help for being TS for many years until we reach crisis point and during the block years we deliberately refuse to look for info on how to transition as we look in the mirror and see a guy and think that no way will anyone believe us if we say we believe we really are female inside.
So how does this work with FtMs?

I'm the same. I'm 43 and I've only just started the journey, I'm not even on T yet.

I always knew I should have been a boy, even as a kid, but assumed it was impossible. I didn't find out that there was such thing as FTM transition until I was about 30. At that point, being married with a kid, I decided it was a route that was impossible to pursue. But it got harder to deal with year by year and eventually something had to give. I went to see my doctor about it when I got to the point that I couldn't forsee going another year without either doing something about it, or killing myself.

[Clay]

i just remembered a situation which made something a little clearer for me. i was like 13 and my best buddy at that time just said: "It'd be much cooler if you were a guy, because then my parents wouldn't be so suspicious when you stay at my place." 
i was like "ooookay. maybe you got a point there."

[gilligan]

Hmmm lessee I pretty much cross dressed from the age of 5 or 6. Somewhere around 8 or 9 I learned about the possibility of surgeries.. and though I didn't have much resources to research it.. it was on the news/tv from time to time and I learned all I could from there. This continued on til I was 18. At that point social pressures caused me to go into denial mode.. and I lived that way for.. 4ish years, deep in denial. I guess just this past year I've really done the hard research, going to trans groups and talking to people and such.. 22 now.

I have always had male-ish characteristics to my personality and have had the desire to live as one. but i get this. I was in denial, even after i had heard of transsexualism (maybe it was because of an certain abnormal psychology textbook). i had always forced myself to think of transsexuals as some sort of freakishness. but after spending time at my college's LGBT center, i realized that this is who i am, and i am not a freak for being born into a wrong-sexed body.  I still have my days. but i guess you could say the first time i admitted this to myself was when i was in my second year of college (i was a transfer student) at nineteen years (last September or October) and now i'm twenty.