Huge case of the OH GOD WHY!!!??? And then tried my best to be feminine.  Didn't work.

Nope! Nope! Nope! Nope! Nope! I drove my family nuts. I never wore make up or dresses, or even any type of girl's clothing. From an early age I kept asking my mom if I could chop all my hair off until she gave  in when I was fourteen. The first time someone called me a boy, I was twelve, and still had long hair. My grandmother insisted I needed to "change the way I looked" if I were to get anywhere career wise. My dad told me that lesbians didn't have to look like boys. That he knew a lesbian, and she still did her hair and make up and wore feminine clothing. I wasn't a lesbian, and I know that now. I'd like to say that I went through something similar as a gay cis male would. I had a "girlfriend" all throughout high school because it was what guys are "supposed" to do. I put girlfriend in quotations because I found out a few years ago that my high school "girlfriend" is ftm too. Irony, you've got to love it

One time a friend asked me if she could put make up on me, and when I said no, she held me down on the bathroom toilette and scribbled all over my face with lipstick. I resented everything feminine. I remember one time when I went to Ohio for a short time for college. I was sitting on my bed in shorts, and this girl who was trying to be friends with me because she thought I was a lesbian noticed that I did not shave my legs. She started to freak out a little, saying how gross it was, and asking me why I didn't shave. Then she asked me if I wanted to be a boy. I told her no. I don't know if it was that precise experience, but sometime after that I started really imagining what it would be like to be a boy. For about two years after that, I thought about it a lot, and started to realize that it would make me a lot happier.

My parents forced me to come home from college after that one semester. I decided that I wanted to volunteer at the LGBT center in my area, and I met my fist MTF. I remember wondering why this woman, who looked completely like a woman in all regards, had a prominent Adams apple. I remember staring at it (and I really hope I did not offend her) but the thing running through my mind was, is it possible for a girl to become a boy? After that, I started researching tranmen which sent me on my path to transition. Due to social anxiety issues, I never did volunteer after that first meeting, but I wish i could meet that woman again and thank her for being there that day.   

My experience was a lot like FTMDiaries describes.  I started sprouting hairs at about age 6 too, far too young to know what was happening.  I just thought it was kind of interesting that I'd grown a bunch of new hair.  Then it all stopped being interesting and started being horrible.  Female puberty felt wrong to me.  I sprouted lumps I was sure I shouldn't have and of course there was shark week.  It felt like my body had gone crazy and started turning into something it shouldn't be (which of course it had).

Then my sex drive fired up and I went through a phase of wearing girl clothes and sometimes makeup when I was out on the town trying to get laid.  I figured that if I had to have a pair of double D's I might as well get some use out of them, and at that stage I was mainly interested in guys because I was scared of girls.  I've become more interested in women as I've become more comfortable with myself, though I think I might always be primarily attracted to men.

I never tried to be a girl/live as a girl.  I always had a lot of insecurity around whether I could be a "real" man because I thought I was quite girly, but I never thought of myself as female and never made any attempt to be female or convince myself that I was.  As I said, I sometimes tried to look like a girl, but I always thought of that as just wearing a disguise.

(Edit)
I guess sort of. I liked having the satisfaction of dressing the way I liked which would be considered tomboy. But other then that I knew deep down inside I wasn't like other girls or a typical tomboy for that matter. Even my body wasn't typical girl. All my life I been skinny and athletic. While most of the girls going through puberty had wider hips and bigger chests and they loved it,  I always said if my body got like this I'd kill myself.
But my body was never typical female.
(Thank you God)
But I was incredibly jealous of the changes that happened with my bros. Because I had a hope before puberty. some magical night I would wake up and it turns out all my life I was a boy and all this time I been dreaming lol.

Heck no!  I tried to pretend like I wasn't going to get breast, but once my mom told me I had to start wearing training bras, I knew that it was unavoidable then, so I just had to let nature happen and not fight it.  I tried not to think about it, but it made me very depressed.  I really wanted a male's puberty, not a female's but I had to deal with it.  I was upset when I heard the other boy's voices crack and get to see them develop with their height, broad shoulders, facial hair, etc.  I didn't like my thighs, but they weren't too much of a problem (being particularly feminine that is) because I'm a fat person so the fat made them look less feminine. 

I was pretty lucky because I started puberty right before middle school and besides the terrible cramps that came with my period I didn't really develop at all. I didn't have too much dysphoria from them either once I discovered tampons and no longer had to deal with icky bloody pads. I didn't even wear a real bra till freshman year and only because I felt pressured to. But all my friends started wanting to wear makeup and dress nice, so I followed, or at least tried. I was pretty terrible at it and gave up numerous times and would try again. I remember my hair was super long though because in my head I had this goal of a classic girl and I was trying to achieve it.

I had uniforms from 7-10 grade so fashion wasn't a big deal. I wore makeup occasionally and cut my hair super short just because I liked it. My family always let me dress however I want. It wasn't until I transferred to public school and really felt the pressures of being feminine that I tried my hardest to be a girl. Like others here, I liked boys and I wanted them to like me. This lasted about a semester and then I came across a video of a trans guy and I had a realization that that was me. Then I embraced my masculine side, though I still had to dress feminine occasionally. I never really hated being a girl either. When I had to be I tried my hardest to dress nice, because if I was going to be a girl I was going to be a pretty one. It always felt like a costume though. Like playing dress up. When I finally embraced being a dude I realized I did like girls too. The only reason I hadn't was because I couldn't see myself in a  lesbian relationship.

So long story short I did embrace being a girl or at least my idea of one. It didn't work very well though and I'm much happier as a guy. I think I missed a lot of anguish because my body was always androgynous.

Kind of. I gave it a half hearted shot...enough to think I passed as a female and avoiding suspicions, but I was still considerably more masculine than a lot of the girls around me.

When I was 5 I wanted a mohawk. As a young child, I screamed that I'm a boy. My mind eventually dissociated itself (I ended up growing boobs in the 2nd freaking grade) and my mind had a completely different image of myself than my physical body had. I started getting periods at 11 and was in hell. I was so frustrated, why did I have to put up with those? It felt just wrong. I was mad when anyone called me a tomboy because wasn't it obvious that I was a regular boy?
The summer before the 9th grade, I started wearing makeup. It felt like dressing up a mannequin when I had to put on a bra and panties. It wasn't my body. This wasn't me. The badass person who lived inside my head didn't look like this. This was just... Well, other people must have seen that really I'm actually a tough crazy guy and the makeup isn't me. They had to be able to see that. (I was a bit delusional).
It made me sick whenever anyone assumed I was female or like a girl. It still does. My boyfriend (now my fiancé) always used to say that chicks are crazy "Except you," he told me, and my mind wondered why he considered me a girl in the first place. He called me sexy, I wanted to be badass. People called me beautiful, I wanted to be one ugly b*stard. Now he calls me a sexy man and it turns out he was actually gay all along. He was thrilled when I got my first real binder, and we're looking forward to T and eventual top surgery. This makes me happy 
At the end of my tenth grade year it clicked into place. I'd heard about trans people before, and wondered, and eventually stopped being in denial. I'd always loved my broad shoulders, deep voice, and peach fuzz mustache, but I'd wanted more male qualities all along. And with T and surgery I can have those Fortunately I can pass sometimes pre-T. When people call me "sir" or "man" I rejoice.

Ironically, when I stopped forcing myself to be physically feminine, the more feminine qualities I had mentally stopped being repressed. Now I'm not weirded out by talking about clothes or hair, because my hair is awesome now and I can wear suits and be a dude.

I always had never been able to figure out why and how I felt differently from other girls around me. I never assigned much importance into considering the matter. As far as I knew, I was a girl (maybe?...) that didn't like "girl" things as much as "boy" things/mannerisms and preferred hanging out with the guys. I felt like I was one of them, yet wasn't at the same time. Puberty served to only pronounce this feeling. I was begrudgingly aware of the fact I could do nothing to change it (or so I thought at the time) so I accepted it passively. I often didn't really entertain substantive thoughts on the issues that run deep under the still waters of gender like most of my peers, however. It was happening and I went on with life feeling odd or out of place with unknown cause. I would often comment during my teen years "I'm a gay man in a woman's body" without being aware of the actual impact and insight expressing that lived experience had, and here I was using it sans knowledge of the social context of gender and sex and all that goodness.

In some ways during that time I appreciated that my body formed in a very visually pleasing way. It never felt proper for me, but I wasn't really hating what I saw in the mirror anytime soon. Even up to the time I got them removed on June 10th I still thought I had an attractive physique with them. I was never short compliments on my looks and I cut an amazing figure in some outfits. Ultimately though these all proved to be hollow yet pretty words that never mattered to me because all the while deep down a secret war raged between who I felt I was and who I was meant to be and attempting to groom myself to become after denying I ever could do anything about my life circumstances. Every time a new person was attracted to my body, I felt like it was some sort of lie or pretense I had to keep up no matter how tiring it was to wear the mask and perform the act all the time.

At first all it was was menstration. I didn't really gain a bust until later on, like around 15. So I just continued doing whatever and dealt with the bleeding. I wouldn't say I ever embraced it so much as when I gained breasts, everyone around me pressured me into being femminine and I thought sometihng was wrong with me so I pressured myself to be as well. Ultimately I made myself miserable by doing so. I did a great deal of experimentation though while doing this. I learned a great deal through the experimentation that I'm thankful for today. So I wouldn't say I embraced it so much as forced it upon myself.

Definitely an "oh god why" for me and I never saw a single thing about myself that was "feminine." I knew technically that puberty would happen since we started sex ed in Grade 4, but in my head I never considered that it would happen to me. I think it really burst my bubble in a lot of ways, because up until that point I figured that one day my genitals would be swapped out lol And when puberty did happen ->-bleeped-<- really hit the fan and felt like my life was turned upside down. Could no longer go around in my uncle's cut off shirts, couldn't wear the boxers my mom had got me at certain times of the month and overall just felt gross about the whole thing. And nope I never embraced it. There was maybe a month long period when I began high school where I "tried" to be somewhat feminine...felt gross so went back to being me. I was lucky that my mother didn't try to force femininity onto me too much, with the exception of formal events which were always a battle.

this might be odd, but i never really noticed changes happening. i have a small, weirdly shaped chest and i was a pretty chubby kid, so they don't look much different than how they did when before puberty, honestly. i remember getting hairier, though and i was really happy about that. all my friends were like "oh no! now we have to shave!" but i embraced my body hair and i'm really lucky to have as much as i have without having started T yet haha.
i don't know, i just never saw any part of going through puberty as "female" for me.

After reading how so many of you felt when you puberty hit, I had to write about mine.  I played with the boys growing up, on the ball fields and in the woods.  When they needed to pee they went behind a tree and were back shortly, I had to run home and back. As couple of have said, I thought one day I will grow the parts and I can do that too.  The summer before 8th grade I got my period and even thou the amount of blood was small to start out, it hit me hard for I knew everything was changing.  It did discover tampons that fall and they made life so much better for me, as I didn't have to feel and see that pads all the time.  I did develop cramps for a day each month; OTC meds worked fine for me.  That summer I still did many of the same things with the boys, but a couple of them were taller than me as I was always been one of the tallest and I could see my relationship with them was changing..  Before school started my mom said we need to go shopping for school clothes and you probably need a couple of little bras now.  I somehow did know that my nipples were growing and getting a small hard area behind them; I think I just didn't want to accept that my chest was growing too. My mom and two grandmas were very interested in buying me all kinds of girly things now. I never liked feeling a bra around my chest. My first two years of high school I did try to be like many of the others girls and joined in with them on many things.  Somehow many times I felt different from them and how they talked and saw things.  My last two years of high school I was more finding out who I really was.

I liked attention. Girly-me got more than tomboy-me ever did. So I did what I was "supposed" to do and felt like I fit in more than I had before.

...sort of?
I've always had a very strong sense of 'Oh god, I don't know what I'm doing?!' in any situation where there was some kind of expected behaviour, social, gendered, or otherwise. As a response to that, I've always tried to do what  other people told me was expected.
I hit puberty early, and needed a bra by 10, which was horrifying and confusing for me. I never fit in with or understood the girls, but my twin sister did, so I cautiously followed her lead in most social situations, occasionally slipping away to play with the other boys when the girls got sick of my awkwardness.
By the time I hit 13-14, the other boys started getting awkward about me playing with them, and mounting social pressure (including unnecessarily gendered things like the school not letting girls take wood shop) made me try even harder to follow my sister's lead and 'be a proper girl' but I never managed it. I just really wanted to be normal and fit in, so I kept trying, going through waves of increasing the intensity of my attempts at femininity and failing miserably, until I just couldn't stand it any more. I mean, I tried really hard to make myself be a girl, because people were expecting that of me. I'm not sure that counts as 'embracing femininity' as OP puts it.

I was a painfully late bloomer, not getting my period until I was 14. When the changes started, I was so relieved because I thought there was something wrong with me up until that point.

It's hard to say whether or not I embraced femininity, but I certainly didn't know I was trans until I was 24. I definitely enjoyed dressing up and male attention for a lot of years, although I can't say it came from a very genuine place.

I think there is a real danger around trans male circles to devalue the feminine in our need to distance ourselves from it. Part of transitioning for me has been accepting a feminine side of myself, and now that it doesn't have all the baggage attached, I'm finding my gender expression to be a lot more genuine in its blurry gray zones. I have tried to maintain a real appreciation for femininity and the femmes in my life, and to realise that distancing myself from femininity won't push me any closer to my masculinity.

HAH.  no... no I did not embrace any sort of femininity.

I (literally) embraced my femininity by binding my entire torso that I was no longer able to look at by unspeakable way that I could get my hands on all alone without any support from anyone.

I wish I knew about binders back then at least.

I had a lot going on in my life when I hit puberty, and while I was not by a long shot immune to its effects, I didn't really notice it or think about it much. Everything else was really crazy. My first period was memorable. I got it on an airplane over the atlantic, and when I landed I asked my dad what to do and he cluelessly bought me some pantyliners. Obviously those were not helpful, and I didn't realize that the bleeding would keep on after I cleaned it up the first time, so that first period was a mess. We had gone over menstruation in sex ed but I hadn't listened because I didn't think it would happen to me.

Everything else about my body was kind of background noise in my teens. It's hard to look back on now and see how insane my life was, but all the upheaval was at least distracting enough that I didn't have to suffer too much from puberty.

I made a few token efforts to attract men using boobs and makeup. Never really worked, never got used to it, never felt good about it. Aside from trying to be liked, I never wanted anything to do with feminine things. I even avoided punk feminism social groups and activities (Riot Grrls writing zines and sewing DIY punk rock clothes) that I didn't realize might have made me happier, because I saw them as girly things.

I didn't make many friends, but I had the wittiest slogans on my mens t-shirts.