I ask this question because i would like to know from all of you who decided to finally transition. For me I only started feeling like a female since 1997, before that i felt more like a male. However even during that time before, i would still occasionally cross dress and had times i pretended to be female. But something changed in me in 1997. I had a lot of stress from work and life in general and after cross dressing again, its like a light switch went off in my head, and I started realizing I am really female, even though still today i will admit to being gender fluid mentally.

There were three major milestones for me:

• Age ~9 - realised I wanted to be a girl ( without knowing why )
• Age 26 - realised that I have a female mind
• Age 33 - realised that I can do something about this

I've always just been 'me'. Now I know there's a label for people like me

Also, I've CD'd at various times since the age of 4 or 5. So the first realisation didn't just come out of nothing.

i did not cross dress till I was 10, i wore my mom's pantyhose then, but she never knew. I don't even remember how I was able to get away with it.

I grew up in a very sheltered Religious home but surprisingly my parents did not allow stereotypical female toys in the home. I thought I was a boy until puberty. My parents just thought I was a tomboy and would eventually grow out of it. Puberty was a rough time for me. I wore tight sports bras, baggy clothing, and jackets to hide my chest (even in the Summer).

When I was 15 I cut my hair off, started shaving my face, and bought my first pack of tighty whiteys, lol. At 17 I started living full time.

The strange thing about myself is due to circumstances out of my control (health issues) I had an elevated T level. Funny as it sounds now, there was a time where I thought maybe I had willed myself somehow into a more masculine existence. I have lived as a male now for 14 years and have just accepted the fact that I am trans. I knew it...I'm not oblivious but I never accepted the label.

I knew I wasn't right at around 4, but I had no idea what trans was until about 20 to even come to that conclusion.

I was pretty much oblivious to gender differences until puberty kicked in and then I started and male hormones started making changes to my body, I started having a variety of fantasies in which physically I was transformed into a female with only my imagination to know exactly what that entailed.

The short answer is that I knew between 5 and 7 years old, so I chose "before I was 8."

But I just wrote it off as "I was born a boy I'll just have to be a boy." I had no idea that I could change. Puberty was an odd time, and I used to wish and pray that I could get a bizarre disease where the only possible life-saving cure would've been a sex change.

I got married young and wouldn't explore gender identity till I was about 38. At first I thought I was a cross-dresser. Then androgyne. The genderfluid. Finally MTF. I began transitioning in earnest at about age 41.

Quote from: Constance on December 21, 2012, 08:38:28 PM...and I used to wish and pray that I could get a bizarre disease where the only possible life-saving cure would've been a sex change.

me too!

My first word i spoke was my big sister's name. Annie (2 years older), which was more like nani whenever i said it. We were best friends and we played house and barbies together. she would do my hair and makeup also when  i was a toddler. So apparently at that age i realized i was trans.

fast forward to the onset of puberty and i began secretly "borrowing" her clothes. also at this age i learned of srs. i had sent an email to some surgeon, which my mom ended up finding out about. OOPS! can't remember what i told her but i'm sure it was some stupid excuse.

and fast forward thru catholic highschool and after graduating college i think i'm finally starting to face my internalized transphobia which has been the one thing holding me back from starting my life. its like, now that i've graduated (and paid it off!), traveled overseas (south africa, swaziland, mozambique, zambia), i have began to think for myself. much different than the previous mode of operation where i would do what parents and society wanted me to do. I've began remembering my dreams and having neat visions every now and then. i'm very happy to start becoming self-aware. sure beats self-concious

unfortunately i've got tons of friends and acquaintances who i think i'll lose if i go forward. or perhaps thats just my transphobia chipping away at my self-esteem. either way i think here soon i'll overcome my fear of having to get a whole new group of friends and start my life over. better at age 25 than later!

Age 7 I can remember wanting to be a girl
Age 13 I first cross dressed
Age 21 I realised I was transexual
Age 31 I saw a Doctor
Age 32 started self medicating and electrolysis,living as woman at nights and going to LGBT bars
Age 33 saw Gender Identity clinic and started living and working full time
Age 37 had GRS

I remember around the age of 3-4 praying every night I would wake up a girl. I didn't know what "trans" was until I saw something in a magazine about it when I was older. But when I saw that it was a light bulb moment.

 I realized that I wanted to be a girl at seven. Up until that point, my gender was a non-factor. I was essentially genderless, as I saw myself.

Well i see so far in the poll there are few people like me, that were not sure until being a young adult. But it seems like there's a larger potion that knew earlier. I wonder what would explain all that?

There was a posting a while ago, on this issue where the poster referred to some of us as, 'Those who knew before we were 5'. I don't think it was as resentful as it sounds, but perhaps I should clarify my own experiences at 4 years.

In essence, I just knew there was something wrong. I knew girls were different from boys but didn't know why. It never occurred to be they might have different genitals. I thought babies were sent to hospital by God and handed out from there.

In my case, I played with girls. I had the choice to play with boys or girls and chose the girls because they did the things I wanted to do.

My first realisation that something was wrong was about 4 years when I was told I should be playing with boys. I tried so hard but they were rough, smelled funny and were frankly nasty and competitive.

I suppose I just treated it in the same way as if my friends had gone home and so I chose to play alone.

Started school at 5 or so. Seem to remember being told to stay away from the girls because they didn't like me. I do remember showing off to them a bit, but I think that was more hoping they would accept me.

My attempts to alter my appearance came a little later, but not sure when. My first memory of that was when I was 7 years. For various reasons, we lived in a house, at the time, where I had my own room. My father came to say good night and discovered I had taken some towels and wrapped them around myself. Around my nether to hide the ugly bit and push my bottom out a bit, but also over my head so I could pretend to have a lot of hair.

The next thing, my Father, mother and elder brother and sister burst in, hauled me out of bed and made me take the stuff off. Actually, thinking, it probably just dropped off.

I soon ended up in a Hospital in Seattle. I was there for about 5 days, for tests. They said there was nothing wring with me and my parents just needed to man me up.

They took this to mean they should beat me them make me stand there and not cry.

The psycho-analytical might look at all sorts of sources for my situation from that. I take the position that if reasons were relevant these people wouldn't need to endlessly earn fortunes reciting the same old crap.

I am now in my mid 50s. My physical health is not good. I have absolutely no chance of achieving anything form myself, even if I still had any inclination.

Can't wait for it all to be over, just had enough!

I'm 24 now.   I knew something was off when i was a teenager,  but I wasn't willing to research or accept anything until a few months ago.

I always knew that there was something different about me. I wasn't 'normal' but I really didn't know what was so different about me. I remember paying my brother to let me play with his toys (army toys and cars) and I was so desperate that I actually would pay him. But at the same time I did like playing with dolls etc so that made the 'typical' girl I suppose. My room was pink and I had Barbie plastered all around my room. This was until I was about 8-9. I then started to really feel different to every other girl my age. I remember vividly being at my Auntie's one day and her saying to me 'you should have been born a boy'. That set off something in my head and I thought yes, I should have been. It would have made me 'normal'. I also remember wearing some boys' trousers when I was about 9 and they had an elastic trim around them similar to boxers and my mum's friend said to me 'why are you wearing boys pants?' and I was thinking 'well that's what I'm supposed to wear' but even then it still didn't make sense. Ever since I was old enough to dress myself I hated wearing girls clothes and begged my mum to let me wear stuff that was remotely masculine. I was always known as a tomboy and people used to make comments in the street if I was a boy or girl. For some reason that always hurt, but I still don't quite understand why. When my chest started growing I hated it. At about 14 years old I started to bind my chest when I was alone. I'd find any way to do so just to make me a bit flatter. Even though I knew I wasn't supposed to be a girl many many years ago, I finally stopped suppressing it and denying it about a year ago. Most things make sense now, and I know that I'm trans. I was supposed to be born a boy, I am a boy. There are still some things that don't make sense, but I'm still young and working them out. I know what I am now though, and I'm a teenage boy.
Joey

I think I always felt sort of different from both genders. I don't remember much from childhood, maybe therapy would trigger me to remember more. But I know I felt pressured to act differently than I felt inside when I was about 9, and remember rather being alone. I don't really know if that had something to do with gender - what is gender anyway? I don't know anything else than that I just don't feel like I am a girl. That truth I discovered consciously during this autumn, when I just started to try things that made me look more like a boy, and I've liked every last one of the changes so far. If I look back, I know though that the few times I cross-dressed as a teenager felt like coming home, they were so comfortable and I couldn't understand how I and that "role" were thought of as different by others.

I knew there was something about my gender from a very early age. I started crossdressing at 8.
After a lot of circular thinking and a big big big confusion about my gender, I decided I would do something about it at 21. Shortly after taking very seriously the idea of transitioning, I hid it under the rug.
Years passed by with ups and downs, trying to fit in as a male. Couldn't take it anymore, so I'm starting to transition now, at age 28. No hormones yet, still into full time. Hopefully, HRT will begin in February :-)

Some of you have answers to this that resonate deeply with me. Until this past summer, I had no clue that there was a word to describe me, and people like me. Up until this past summer, I always thought the word "trans" was only used in a derogatory fashion to throw hate at those who worked as female impersonators, or feminine acting gay men or those who claim the queer designation.

It was when I watched an episode of a popular TV program called "What Would You Do?" with John Quinones and a transgender woman who played a waitress in a restaurant for that program. When I was younger, I saw a sex change surgery video on an old VHS tape. I knew that was what I wanted, but didn't know why, and didn't know what it meant for me, even though I felt female from the time I was younger and, therefore knew I was different.

The past months since summer have been big months for me because of being able to finally put it all together, and seek the medical help I need to transition. Something else that helped me prior to going for therapy and medical help for transition, and prior to going part time was doing research and running across videos by JesslynGirl on Youtube. I knew then for sure that it was finally ok to give myself permission to finally be myself, start coming out to people I knew I could trust.

I have known no better freedom, and known no such anxiety and stress at the same time, since I was in my early teens when I became suicidal over what I can now recognize as gender dysphoria. Until these past recent months, I knew nothing about gender dysphoria. Until these past recent months, I didn't know there was anything to describe what I was feeling all these years in regards to anxiety, stress, and depression.

To be honest, my anxiety and depression and stress also have other causes in the form of PTSD, but now I have the proper help with it, and I am thinking much more clearly.     

I became really conscious of it at 9 years old. Before that, I knew the difference between boys and girls but never really thought about it. I recently realized that I need to do something about it because it's one of the things that hinder my progress in life.

I really only knew that I was trans about a few years ago. I'm 25 now so I would be about 23 then. Before that I was a very repressed person and I believe that I basically couldn't deal with the fact that I identified as female so suppressed everything.

Now that I have accepted myself as I am I can see a whole lot of "signs" in my past that should have clued me in to my gender dissonance earlier on, but I was so oblivious and in such denial that I didn't see them.

Then when I first started to entertain the thought that I might be trans, I would go back and forth not really knowing who I was. Eventually I was able to push through all the self doubt, but there's still a little bit of it lingering here and there. Not that I think that I would ever go back to believing that I was male. That seems completely impossible to me now.

Oh and I guess that I started realizing that I was different from most boys around middle school (maybe around 10 or 12), but I really had no idea that it was because I was trans.