That article resonated with me but I was even more clueless than she was. Heck, I didn't even experiment with wearing women's garments of any kind until I was in my mid 40s! I didn't know why I was different, I only knew that I was different and that I didn't fit in with the guys.
I know exactly what she meant about our motivations to hang around girls (wanting to be them) but again I didn't know why I liked to hang around them - they were always an enigma to me, and dating never quite worked the way it does for most boys because I didn't know that I was approaching dating the way a girl does.
I grew up in the mid-southern region of the US, and transgender was a word that simply did not exist there. I was born in 1962 so I didn't have access to information that might have given me a clue. I lived in an information vacuum bubble for 40+ years.
It was gender dysphoria descending on me like a hammer in my 40's that compelled me to figure it out.