I've known since I was very young.  During my teens and early 20s I did what I could to deny it the best I could by trying to act as masculine as possible.  The denial and emotional battle in my head was driving me crazy though.  It got to a point where I couldn't really focus on anything but justifying to myself why I wasn't trans.  Then one day I got to a point where I couldn't deal with it anymore and from that point I stopped worrying and just let myself be okay with who I was.

QuoteI spent most of my life being bewildered by the way that the world treated me, and being bewildered by the male role that I was expected to play. I could never figure out exactly why I felt that way, but I knew that I didn't like it. Drinking and compensating and all of the other various ways that we try to adjust to living in the wrong gender role ensued.

When I got to 45 I began to figure out that I am trans, and my relief started - I finally had my answer to that life long question.

Most of the anxiety I feel now is not about accepting who i am; rather it is anxiety about fitting into my new role. There is so much to learn and I feel like I'm a very ugly, awkward bull in a china closet at times while I'm trying to learn it.

Yup, that's me too. It's actually funny when I look back and see how I spent so much of my life pretending I knew where I was going and what I was doing, when in fact I didn't have a bloody clue, lol.
Of course I felt fear when I eventually realised but the relief was way bigger....'OMG! So I'm not just a miserable, ungrateful nut job for no reason after all!!'

For years, I just tended to avoid feminine things.  I always ducked out of shopping with my daughter, saying it was girl thing.  I knew it would send my dysphoria into overdrive.  Now, I want to go shopping with her despite my dysphoria. Now that's she's a teenager, she doesn't want Dad around.

Acceptance came easy. I did it when I was a child. The hard part was always doing something about it and setting things right. I was dressing as a girl by the time I was 11. I felt more myself then than I ever did as a boy. I didn't know until I was 19 that I could be a girl. I didn't seek help because the path to transition wasn't made as clear as it has become today. It worked out though because I eventually had a son. I have 2 wonderful Daughters as well and my wife, whom I thought would leave me has been so supportive.