Susan's Place Transgender Resources

just a curious question , everyone has a different tale to tell and we seem all to become aware of some dysphoria at all different ages . Mine started a 4 and was relentless through out my life. I wasn't able to deal with it medically until a year ago.

5 are my earliest memories of it but it wasn't until puberty that it started to cause serious issues.

I became aware of the issue at 12. However, hindsight would suggest that it was making itself known well before then.

I only became aware of it at 4 because I developed a severe cross  dressing situation with my sisters clothes. It was something that hit me pretty hard and lasted my entire life

It became most notable around 12 but I think were signs earlier. I think it was easier to tell when Boys and girls really started looking different.

Between 4-5 years old.  I began slow by mostly playing with my female cousin with her dolls and dress up, around 7 I started taking her clothes and wearing them in secret, that's the basis of it all.

I knew something was up at age 4, but I kept that part of me well hidden until I could no longer do it without extreme anguish and pain.  The dysphoria really blew up in mah face at age 43, and I finally started to present female. Two months later I went on low dose HRT, and four months later I was full time.

4-5 is when it started. Puberty it kicked up to a whole new level. 36 is when it crushed me.

It was at the age of 4. I gave as many signs as possible between ages 4 and 12 in the hopes that someone would get the hint. After a ton of crap, I gave up at age 13. Finally, at age 29, the walls came tumbling down and I knew that I had to do something about the gender dysphoria or my days were certainly going to be numbered.

I had never been attracted to girls, only boys. Since like 4,5,6,?? Yeah. However, at eleven, when I started puberty, I felt really wrong. I was a girl, but gay? Didn't fit.. At the age of fourteen, I was talking to my psychiatrist about my "gayness", but my feeling about being a girl slipped out, Thank God!, and she diagnosed me with GID, and within like a month, I was on hormones! Thank God again! And always!

My dysphoria has been around my entire life (that I remember) but I had 4 major points in my life were my need to be female really flew off the handle . The earliest was after preschool at age 4 when I almost removed my least favourite body part. That is my earliest memory. My older brother has mentioned other things before then though.

Yeah I should of been more honest with my parents else I would of started hrt at the ideal time. I had teachers in elementary school telling me as early as kindergarten that I wasn't allowed to do this or that cause it wasn't what "lil boys" are supposed to be doing, its only for girls. That young and being forced into gender roles is so damaging..

Around puberty. My mom ran a thrift store...you can image the fun I had with free clothes.

I never really used to identify by genders and i never really saw genders until around 12-13 years old when a female friend started going through puberty and i was uber jealous because i couldn't have that. so i stupidly kept it hidden until i was 24 and the rest is history :)

I have dysphoria over my male genitalia sorta. I feel like it's out of place. I have felt that way since I started puberty like about 2 years ago. But other than that ever since I started puberty I look more feminine and am happy with this. I started getting wider hips longer legs and in general I have a build similar to a really skinny model. I like becoming a woman I smjust feel my makes genitalia is what holds me back from being exactly who I smwant to be.

I was 5 or so when I first began to want to be a girl and not a boy.  Might have been 4.  Before that I had girl mannerisms that I was taught not to do such as cross my legs when sitting and fixing my walk. 

I was four.  It was a time that gender roles were starting to be enforced.    Before then I could be myself, but there came a point where "boys don't do that" was being told to me.  Not just by my parents, but my peers as well.  It especially hit home, when I started kindergarten.  I ended up avoiding everyone at school.

Age 13ish for me. And it basically hit me like a brick wall completely out of nowhere, after basically never even thinking about my gender as a kid. I guess puberty, along with the rapidly more gender-segregated social treatment that comes with it, does that to a lot of people.

I can't remember the age exactly... 5-ish? I was at the beach with my family and after we went for a swim had to have a shower before catching the ferry home. I was totally confused as to why I had to go with my father and my sister got to go with my mother. In the shower change area there was shower stall after shower stall of naked guys, their dongles all wobbling about. I never felt more like I didn't belong somewhere than then.

Somewhere between 4 & 6.
By 6 I wanted to lose my boyhood! At 5 was playing girl roles in games. Always felt more comfortable with girls chatting and being a confidant etc...

I remember cross dressing at 4 and then around 5 and 6 I had a boy friend from down our street . I guess my parents didn't understand what they saw so there were small hints at aversion . Things got repressed until puberty then the flood gates broke open

Its been extremely inconsistent, but I've known something was wrong with me since a very early age. I had no idea what it was. I didn't even notice that any TV show involving body switching with a male and a female I always thought the person getting the female body was lucky. The male body? eww gross. After puberty I started to realize how gross it was every time I got aroused. About 4 years ago I started dreaming almost every night about getting to be a cis-female for a day (the idea was that my body would be remade as if the only change in my DNA was the Y to X), then it changed about a year ago to when I wanted, but I would mostly stay in female form. About 6 months ago I started asking if the dream meant something. I started exploring my gender identity and everything suddenly made sense.

very hard to say an exact date, all my life I knew I was not like other boys, growing up on a remote island in the north pacific with a retire marine corp father I cant say that I knew what gender identity was unril much later in my life. I do know that after my daughter left home that my dysphoria / anxiety /drug abuse took over my life. it took a decade of therapy for me to understand and accept me, so for me really I pushed later in button, because I just thought I was gay for most of my life. I never tried to understand any of this until I choose to not live any longer as the other person I was.. anyway long story maybe another post..tehe..for now I am post 40 when I knew "times they are a changing"

It's just such a revelation now that I've been on HRT for 14 months . I'm being hit with the realization that wow this is exactly what I've been searching for and been in denial about all these years.  There is an article in the news section about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's child that fits me perfectly except that I lived in the dark ages of transgender kids and I lived in shame and denial instead of being able to be me. thank goodness things are changing.

I got into an argument with my parents about what gender I was at the age of 5. Other than that my gender dysphoria went pretty much dormant till I was 18 (besides certain ocassions) and so I have been dealing with constant dysphoria since then.

 Around 5 when I asked my mother to buy me two pair of little pierced hooped earrings and throughout my life. Instead pf praying the gay away. I was praying for my abomination to go away.

Age eight or nine was the earliest I can remember thinking "I wish I was a girl."

Quote from: stephaniec on December 22, 2014, 07:27:58 PM
just a curious question , everyone has a different tale to tell and we seem all to become aware of some dysphoria at all different ages . Mine started a 4 and was relentless through out my life. I wasn't able to deal with it medically until a year ago.

Not quite the question I thought from the subject....
Awaken, Or.... Falling out of bed in a cold sweat with your heart racing.  But I am of that era raised under the rule of "Life sucks and then you die".

I was fairly aware by the age of 5 or 6, but it wasn't until about 9 or 10 years old that I was fully conscious of the issue and regularly crying myself to sleep, begging to wake up in a girl's body.

By the age of 11 I was bold enough to start swiping my mom's clothes and secretly crossdressing. Sadly, it took me another 26 years after that to admit it to anyone but myself. And it's taken another 10 to seriously begin transitioning.

it can be a hard thing to come to terms with

I've wanted to be a girl from some of my earliest memories, however I don't think I experienced any dysphoria about my body seriously until I was about 12. I wanted so badly to grow breasts and felt like I should be. (phantom breasts? lol)

Took me 8 years, but I'm finally getting them. :)

 I don't recall when I became aware, but I do remember getting caught shaving my legs when I was nine or ten by my sister. 

Quote from: Peebles on December 23, 2014, 06:00:12 PM
I've wanted to be a girl from some of my earliest memories, however I don't think I experienced any dysphoria about my body seriously until I was about 12. I wanted so badly to grow breasts and felt like I should be. (phantom breasts? lol)

Took me 8 years, but I'm finally getting them. :)

It is such a great feeling to get the real ones. Going through puberty was hell because my brain was telling me I should have breasts , but my body wouldn't comply .

Quote from: Valerie Rose on December 22, 2014, 10:14:28 PM
Around puberty. My mom ran a thrift store...you can image the fun I had with free clothes.

That would be nice.


For me it was also around puberty when It became clear. It also started with cross dressing, but for me it was my friend's sisters clothes.

like being locked in a department store over night

Quote from: stephaniec on December 23, 2014, 08:43:41 PM
It is such a great feeling to get the real ones. Going through puberty was hell because my brain was telling me I should have breasts , but my body wouldn't comply .

I also, had this. I used to read alot of (female) puberty book and felt a deep sense of emptyness as if I was missing out on something I felt like I should have been going through.

I also started cross dressing in secret around that that time, stealing all my sister's bigger clothes.  :laugh:

I use to stuff them with the half-hemispheres from a planetary set I had.

Quote from: stephaniec on December 23, 2014, 08:43:41 PM
It is such a great feeling to get the real ones. Going through puberty was hell because my brain was telling me I should have breasts , but my body wouldn't comply .

If I allow myself to I can just cry about every day looking and feeling mine.... It is so GREAT having a body that is mostly OK

I had it pretty good , I shared a bedroom with my two sisters

I actually was locked in Target at pacific fair once when I was 12. Back when I ran away for 3 days. I went to my favourite shopping centre and went from shop to shop. On the second day after playing games in toyworld I went to Target and sayed a little too long. I was busy putting on several sets of girls clothes in the try on area ( with the intent of not paying for them ) when the lights started turning off. Once figured out what was going on I went to the makeup area to continue taking things. Half an hour later  a sweet shop assistant lady found me and directed to the exit. Stealing is wrong but I felt so good afterwards. It was dark when I reached my hiding spot were I was sleeping then took everything off, washed myself under the public shower and put on my new pajamas for a good nights sleep.

it's kind of weird , but I use to have dreams  about bring locked in large department store and having all the clothes I could dream of. this was late grade school. they were intense dreams .

Like 85+% of the respondents, age 4-5 is when I first recall something was different about me and by age 12-13 the dark cloud of depression/dysphoria stayed like an unwelcome guest for the next 31-32 years. 

When I was 4-5, I remember vividly, putting on mom's black winter leater boots with the rabbit (?) fur lining...they felt sooooo good! Even better with her panythose on my legs!    I wore many of her garments and tried on her makeup many many many times when I was young.  She says she doesnt remember any of this.

Then puberty hit.  Da** T!  While I excelled in sports, I became an introvert into my music and a handful of friends.   My story is so very undifferent from many of your lives!

I guess I put on a good facade when I was younger.  Don't we all put up the false-fronts at any cost to keep anyone from finding out about who we really are on the inside?

Quote from: michelle1 on December 24, 2014, 02:05:17 PM
Like 85+% of the respondents, age 4-5 is when I first recall something was different about me and by age 12-13 the dark cloud of depression/dysphoria stayed like an unwelcome guest for the next 31-32 years. 

When I was 4-5, I remember vividly, putting on mom's black winter leater boots with the rabbit (?) fur lining...they felt sooooo good! Even better with her panythose on my legs!    I wore many of her garments and tried on her makeup many many many times when I was young.  She says she doesnt remember any of this.

Then puberty hit.  Da** T!  While I excelled in sports, I became an introvert into my music and a handful of friends.   My story is so very undifferent from many of your lives!

I guess I put on a good facade when I was younger.  Don't we all put up the false-fronts at any cost to keep anyone from finding out about who we really are on the inside?

yes, the imaginary male

I guess now that I sit down and think about it. I would have to say about 6 or 7.  I knew some girls on the local dance team and wish I could be with them dressed up all pretty.  But did not think much of it. Then in my teen years I can remember trying on clothes whenever I could whenever I was alone.  In my 20's I tried to push the feeling and thoughts deep back as I can remember saying this is not right I am a a guy I need to act like a man. The Mid 30's to early 30's they came back stronger then ever.  This was after I had married needed less to say I have been fighting it since then and here it is two months before I turn 40 I have come to the conclusions that these thought are ok.  I am normal just in the wrong body and that can be fixed.


Vicky

I always knew that i was different but never figured it out until I was about 43 and then it all began. By 50 it had gotten unbearable and I was transitioning.

Quote from: Vicky Mitchell on December 24, 2014, 03:04:02 PM
I guess now that I sit down and think about it. I would have to say about 6 or 7.  I knew some girls on the local dance team and wish I could be with them dressed up all pretty.  But did not think much of it. Then in my teen years I can remember trying on clothes whenever I could whenever I was alone.  In my 20's I tried to push the feeling and thoughts deep back as I can remember saying this is not right I am a a guy I need to act like a man. The Mid 30's to early 30's they came back stronger then ever.  This was after I had married needed less to say I have been fighting it since then and here it is two months before I turn 40 I have come to the conclusions that these thought are ok.  I am normal just in the wrong body and that can be fixed.


Vicky

yea, it never seems to want to go away

I remember being 3 or 4 and playing only with the girls. I knew I felt different. By age 6 my main friends were girls and I remember crushing on a boy for the first time and I knew I would grow up to like guys. I was 9 or 10 when I told my sister I felt like a girl whose body had been swapped...I knew nothing about transsexualism back then. When puberty hit, I told my brother penises were gross and that vaginas looked so much better and were less ugly. I pretended I was mommy in plays and even pregnant by stuffing my shirts when I was younger. By age 14 had major depressive disorder over my parents divorce, dysphoria, bullying because of my effeminacy both physically and emotionally. It has been really hard on me, it takes a toll. But out of all things, invalidation and neglect from my parents hurt the most. It destroyed me.

Quote from: michelle1 on December 24, 2014, 02:05:17 PM
Don't we all put up the false-fronts at any cost to keep anyone from finding out about who we really are on the inside?

Not necessarily. I basically deliberately feminized my behavior for years because being treated like a giant manly stoic dudebro bothered me so much. Even if I couldn't dress how I wanted, I flaunted my love of cute things, social "niceness," Disney, and boy bands / other cheesy teen girl pop for years, almost deliberately so that people would realize that I was not "normal." Being raised in a more gender-neutral environment where I was allowed to be friends with girls, and without either parent forcing masculinity on me, made a big difference. As social progress is made, I expect fewer and fewer people will have to go through that "acting" phase.

yeah going through and being forced to be in that acting phase is part of the reason why I almost took my own life a few times...

So I'm incredibly happy that one day future generations won't have to endure such pain, which is sort of happening now with this new generation  :)

I was still 3 almost 4 when my mom brought my new sister home... That was the first time I realized there was a difference at all... By the time I had to start school I knew I was different but I never really felt like I should have been with the girls yet I felt the same about the boys... I remember feeling extreme depression and confusion over it all very young... 

At 8-10 I realized I was "gay" I thought but not completely, I felt like I was attracted to both....

I also just had extreme envy and jealousy of the girls that never got better... I liked my cars and erector sets and mechanical things but I also had a secret envy of the way that the girls got along, lived and were treated... It got even worse around puberty when I began to really realize I was gonna have to be a man and I wasnt very happy about it... The girls just kept getting prettier and prettier and I just got more and more uncomfortable with my body... I matured very late and I was never very masculine until well into my 20's... That was a fraud though, despite an honest effort to try to be a man...

I was dressed up all the way by a girl friend of mine and her older sister at 13... They even did my longer hair... It was the best two hours of my life up till then... After that though the shame and guilt were so bad I never saw those girls again...  I was subjected to forced masculinity by the "normal" world...

It was around the early 80's in my early teens at the beginning of puberty that I first heard the word "Transsexual" and "sex change"... I knew then that this was something I wanted to do but it all just seemed so weird and impossible... The negative media coverage and just the way it was referred to at home and on the street was enough and it was even WORSE than the very bad "gayness" I knew I had...

No matter how I tried and I tried very hard I never felt right in the male role... Friends who were just A OK with it all picked up on this and the humiliation was so bad it drove me to totally overcompensate...

I tried the gay thing and I liked it but by then I knew what TS TG TV CD was all about and I never really thought I was "gay" as in a man that likes men.... I knew I wanted to be a woman but it just seemed impossible...

By 35 I had become VERY successful as a male financially anyway.... It was all a fraud though and I began to seriously CD for the first time ever... THAT was eye opening and I felt so much more real and comfortable in the feminine role... I was living a double life though and she wasnt compatible with my job that paid insanely well and also required insane effort mentally and physically... So I killed her for 9 more years and when she came back this time at 44 there was gonna be no stopping it this time even though it was so damn scary and unknown I had to do it or die... 

Eva,  "I had to do it or die..." 

Happened to me just before I turned 44. Money somehow fades in the distance while surviving takes center stage. 

What is dysphoria to a child who cannot clearly articulate what is so troubling about getting a haircut or any number of little triggers?  I simply "knew" i was going to be a mom with babies.  Socialization for many of us includes an endless supply of rules, dictums, and targeted remarks about gender.  Considered a boy, I heard plenty about how poorly we then viewed girls.  After that early misogynistic training things got worse.   My puberty featured even greater segregation but it is impossible for me to isolate what was related to gender and what was generalized teenage angst.  Other people often seem to have seen me more clearly than I saw myself and I began a long period of active repression and denial.  As an adult our lesbian friends considered me a wannabe.  What a colossal waste of time and energy to deny, sigh.   My shadow "she" won in the end!

As an adult I focused on being an activist with a family and a career.   I was an anesthetist so my sarcastic response to myself about the posted question:  When my dysphoria awakened I knew how to gently put it back to sleep. 

What happened for me was that each reawakening period seemed to be harder to handle until I finally came clean and gave up on the man act.

Stuff had been going on for me since I was 6, but it was verbally beaten out of me by my father. I had it all buried away for a long time.

Come age 32 though - look out. Cross-dressing is what brought it on. I had gone out dressed up with my ex, purely for a laugh.

But then the weather changed. It was like a tidal wave smashing through the stone carvings of who I was 'supposed to be' ... Now I am a babe among the rubble :~D

I think I always felt different as a child but had no idea why. I can't really remember if I experienced dysphoria as such.  I moved to London in the 80's and was part of the club scene there, wearing anything I wanted, including a wedding dress, lol. That certainly helped me figure a few things out :) Unfortunately my first attempt at transitioning aged 19 went horribly wrong and I buried it all with the mantra 'Yes, I wish I'd been born female, but I wasn't so get over it'

One thing is for sure, now aged 46, the dysphoria is terrible and undeniable.  You know what the really weird bit is though?  I know this will sound sooo dumb, but, although I have wished I was born female for as long as I can remember, I only recently figured out I actually AM female. I didn't even realize that was possible, does that make sense?

yes

I don't remember anything at all from when I was four years old... I really became aware of the incongruity when I was 12-13 -- which fueled an anti-religion crusade (being that I was raised extremely fundamentalist, literalist Christian), which lasted until I was about nineteen, when hate turned into guilt when my father began to have health issues, and I spent the next few years trying desperately to "fix" myself. I started studying and practicing Buddhism, in hopes of learning how to destroy my ego... even when I was told numerous times that I was misinterpreting it... I needed it to be about that. Through Hegel and Kierkegaard I found a new appreciation for Christianity -- and although I've given up on my attempts to cure the "evil within", and have come to accept myself and transition, I no longer hate religion like I did in my teens. 

Kierkegaard has been my mentor all my life

I don't know the exact age when it first cropped up, but I'd say probably about 9 years old. For me it has never been a strong negative feeling, but a persistent almost wistfulness about being stuck in the male body I'm in. It always seemed like everything would be better without the parts. From my present perspective, looking back, I think that it actually was a more negative feeling than I recognized, but since it had always been there, discomfort felt like "normal." It makes me a bit sad to think about that, but it's been a good life so far nonetheless. For various reasons (i.e., wife and 3 kids), I don't have even the slightest wish that I could change how anything played out.

It's been all the more confusing because I've never been felt even the slightest sexual attraction to a male. If one is not critically thinking about the range of gender/sexuality combinations, that makes it hard to understand the feelings I was having.

Looking back, though, I have had lots of anxieties about mannerisms that I thought might be too feminine to be "ok." I.e., I have always crossed my legs and held my hands in ways that I feel are somewhat feminine. I was never quite what sure what else to do with my hands. I don't think there's anything telling about the leg-crossing or hand positions, but I think my hypersensitivity about trying to maintain masculine appearances probably meant something.

Anyway, here I am about 28 years later finally realizing that I can be me, even if it's not going to be easy.

I've always been female in my mannerisms and social preferences.  I guess that I was first aware of this around age 5 or 6.  But it's always had to be squashed down due to a very conservative Christian family.  Only when I was 17 did I first begin to crossdress.  The feelings of calm and being right from those experiences led me to know that I was different from every other guy that I ever knew.

I knew when I started middle school and I noticed how different I was from the other boys. I would only talk to girls/women and still prefer that. (all my friends and doctors are female) When I was 16 I hit a breaking point with my depression, sexuality, and cross dressing that i told my mom that how I was born a woman.

It's such a weird phenomena , I was hit hard by cross dressing at 4 , then my parents intervened then came the boy friend at 6 or7 then parents intervened then my mother passed and things quieted down for a short time then picked up again then hit  puberty and hell broke loose . then stopped for awhile late high school while dating then drugs , therapy. school again quiet then a relentless attack for 10 years then denial and quiet then suicidal then transition. It's been an experience

As the oldest of four brothers, I have early memories of leading all of us to raid our mothers intimates, then hiding them under the mattress.  Then there was one winter morning when I was 10, I put on a wool turtle neck sweater and I looked in the mirror and saw a girl looking back at me.  From then on I always felt like I was maybe intersexed.  I told my mother who was a nurse/RN and she would reply to me that no I was a boy. 

One Halloween, when I was 13 I borrowed a full outfit from her, and it fit.  She had a private talk with me about the locals were not so accepting of this type thing.  So, I took it off.  That's one aspect I miss about living in an urban metro area, no one knows who you are and they don't care what you do.  Instead I live in highly conservative, isolated (~70 miles to the next) town of ~30k people where this sort of thing would spread like wild-fire.  Well, when I'm ready I'll let it spread as I will be spreading it. 

I was 14, an older boy at school rode past on his BSA motorcycle with his girlfriend on the back.My friend wished he was the boy,I wished I was the girl.There were other clues looking back.6 and a half years later I read a news paper story on a TS and realised I was and it wasn't going away and I would have to deal with it.It took another 11 years of failing to blot it out with drink and dope to realise it wasn't going away on it's own and I will have to deal with it

Yeah, I also had addiction problems... not to mention that I thought I was a lesbian, and was obsessed with lesbian culture in my teens, and in complete denial that I had anything at all in common with transsexuals until I was like 27... all of the stigma, and aversion people have, it was hard to admit that I was one.

Interesting how 85% or so of all transgender people  knew by the age of 13 that they were indeed different and something was very different about them the rest of society.

I must have been around....11-12 late bloomer I guess, a lot went on in my childhood never had time to settle to even think about it my mother wasent really enforcing gender roles on me either but I tended to be much more girly, wanted to wear girls clothes wanted to play with my female cousins toys and all that jazz.

I always knew there was something different about me by then, but I didn't know what it was until about 6 months ago. You would think hating everything about being a man would be an indication that I wanted to be a woman, but nope.

Quote from: michelle1 on January 04, 2015, 12:15:21 PM
Interesting how 85% or so of all transgender people  knew by the age of 13 that they were indeed different and something was very different about them the rest of society.

well, to be honest , I think I've always been afraid to admit it . I've know since 4 years old , nothing changed about that all my life . I kept trying so hard to accept the part of being male even though I knew deep down I really wasn't . I was so afraid to mention it in therapy until I came to the end 14 moths ago. For some reason I needed to try be male. I failed miserably .

From the earliest moment that I can remember (roughly about 3 or 4, I believe), I was pretty sure that I was a girl. Hell, everyone else was, as well. In fact, strangers casually considered me to be female up until the age of 8 or 9, when my parents (in tremendous distress that their "son" was not as labelled) started shaving my head bald and filling my wardrobe with the most masculine children's clothes available. When that happened, I didn't stop thinking that I was female, I just assumed that something weird was going on and I would be acknowledged appropriately eventually.

That moment never came, sadly. I spent my teenage years waiting for the magic of "puberty" to turn me into the girl that I knew I was. Hah! That didn't happen either - beginning my continuous, unrelenting depression and increasing anxiety. At the current moment, I'm trying to fix this before I end up losing my job and my everything else due to the inability to focus and the constant mental agony that I find myself in.

I think I realized there was something different about me when I was 5 or so. As puberty approached I'd look at things like the Victoria's Secret catalogue and think "I wish that would look that good on me" .Throughout my teens, twenties, and thirties, cross dressing took the edge off just enough that it was manageable. The dysphoria became crippling at 44, to the point I couldn't live one more day without addressing it.

At the age of 4. My oldest memory of dysphoria is from my first days of primary school. I didn't have siblings and going to school was kind of an eye opener to the difference between boys and girls. I remember watching a girl across me in the circle and wanting to be a girl too. I wasn't into dolls, but I liked other girly stuff alongside cars etc. and loved to identify with female characters in cartoon series.

Quote from: Lady_Oracle on December 22, 2014, 07:46:05 PM
5 are my earliest memories of it but it wasn't until puberty that it started to cause serious issues.

Before puberty I just wanted to be a girl. Puberty is when I really started having problems with my body.

I am such a cliche, haha! Knew at 4 or 5, REALLY knew at 12, had been secretly wearing and sleeping in my sisters dressing up dresses for years by then, then got sent to boarding school and just had to crossdress in my imagination.... oh the conflicted emotions on being called pretty by another boy... wow!... did badly at school, was bullied and to my shame a bully, the GCSEs (did crap) A Levels (same) then college, uni, my face changed by puberty, made me very sad, 20s, dated loads of girls, overcompensating, was only interested in them if they were extremely good looking, got a job as a car designer, bought a flash sports car, imagining it all would make me a man. Depression, despair. 32, My mum got sick, I took stock and decided to go for it. Never felt happier. Cant wait to start HRT. Work as a prop designer in the movies, my hildhood dream so saving up the cash for my other childhood dream; FFS, and looking forward to the rest of my life, for the first time in my life.

Quote from: ChrissyChips on December 27, 2014, 05:59:33 PMI buried it all with the mantra 'Yes, I wish I'd been born female, but I wasn't so get over it'

One thing is for sure, now aged 46, the dysphoria is terrible and undeniable.  You know what the really weird bit is though?  I know this will sound sooo dumb, but, although I have wished I was born female for as long as I can remember, I only recently figured out I actually AM female. I didn't even realize that was possible, does that make sense?

^That makes SO much sense its unreal!