Thank you for all of the wonderful posts!  For someone who has just recently come out, seeing so many similar experiences laid out in text is priceless.  The worst thing for me, I think, has been a terrible sense of isolation and just the fact that all of you are out there, even though we're strangers to one another, fills me with hope.

I was going to quote some of the aforementioned posts, but there are so many that would be apropos that noting them all would turn my post into gibberish.  Therefore, suffice it to say, "Wow, so many experiences and emotions that resonated with me."

Sorry, I'll get back on topic...

Ironically, I was raised to believe that anyone's race/sexual preference/gender identity etc... made zero difference.  All that mattered was if they were a good person or not.  Great thing to teach your child.  Quite a progressive viewpoint too--seeing as I was born in 1980 and my parents were living in the Midwestern US.  However, my mother is not what I would term 'mentally or emotionally stable', and what she really, really wanted was a perfect little boy (she always hated being female). 

I was a smart kid and saw what my mother needed to stay level, so I played the necessary role.  Internally, I knew who I was from a young age, but that knowledge became more and more attenuated as the years went on, until eventually it was hidden under this mountain of unreality that I had erected.

Despite all of the play acting I was doing, as I grew up some of the real me insisted on sneaking out:  All of my good friends were female (they were the ones who made sense to me).  I was never effeminate, exactly, but I was considered just one of the girls.  They'd take me underwear shopping at Vicky's because I had good taste--things like that.  It's been a running joke among friends my whole life that I should have been born a girl.  My handwriting is feminine.  My voice, when I'm not pitching it low on purpose, could go either way.  I'm slim and pretty graceful.  Hell, I even smell more like a girl.

But the older I got, the worse the dysphoria became and the more desperately I tried to prove my masculinity.  I enlisted in the Marine Corps.  I did a lot of dangerous, bordering on crazy, things.  Still, I was miserable and felt like everything was a lie, which of course it was, because I had chosen to pretend an entire life instead of actually living one.

I had a child and was the stay at home parent for the first three years of her life.  I adore my daughter like nothing else in the world.  I had this wonderful life, but I was still miserable.  I sought help for depression--still miserable.  Moved the family two thousand miles away--still miserable. 

Finally, it hit me, with little fanfare, when I was sitting up by myself at two in the morning.  I had been pondering what the hell my problem was (as usual).  I'd had enough wine to be honest with myself (in vino veritas, right?) and the thought just popped out in my conscious mind, "I'm a girl.  I mean I'm really a girl."  I repeated it out loud and I got this whole body, visceral reaction of pure, undiluted happiness.  I felt this huge sense of relief, like my subconscious was able to take a deep breath when I finally got it.

Then I got kicked out of my house and was essentially exiled to the other coast due to lack of options (you don't have much of a safety net when you've been the 'housewife' for years). lol  Aside from that, it's been great though.

It's the weirdest thing too.  I don't know if it's just some sort of grand placebo effect, but since I accepted who I am, my feelings, both tactile and emotional have changed.  I'm not even on HRT yet, but I feel completely different.  It's wondrous and strange and it's difficult to deny the reality of what I'm feeling no matter how logical I try to be.  The emotional changes, I would have expected, but the physical ones are just kind of mind blowing.

Elora

I was always feminine and always had an attraction to boys (I know that has nothing to do with gender identity) since I was extremely young, like 3 years old. My mom said she first noticed I was trans when I use to always wear one of my sisters skirts all the time. And eventually in pre-k I had a little boyfriend and my mom use to always buy me dresses and dolls. When I got older it because more aware to my knowledge that I was the different one and not everyone else around me lol. As a kid, I felt I was the normal one, not the cis hetero girls lol. I knew I was trans at 15 when my dad told me I was. I never really new about the term. And my family helped me accept the term. They didn't really help push my transition because I was already transitioning, I just wasn't labeling what I was doing because it was always normal to me  to grow out my hair, and wear girls clothes, etc.

I was a very feminine child.   I remember being six years old and realizing I wasn't going to grow up to be a woman.  I remembered making a conscience effort after that "be a boy."  Even as a small child I had some notion of fake it until you make it, when it came to feeling like a guy.

I ended up developing anorexia and bulimia at 14, which I am still battling, in a frantic effort to keep my body from looking like a man's.   You know....big, muscle, height.  I couldn't stand growing up looking like a man.  After making a brief recovery from my eating disorder, I went through a stage of excess manliness at around 16.  I guess a second attempt at fake it until you make it.  I slowly started to crumble.  I honestly thought coming out as gay was what I should do.  I liked guys and didn't really have a clear concept of what gender dysphoria was.  I have slowly become more and more androgynous over the years.  I started to come to terms with my gender and started to try to transition at 22 but didn't out of fear.  I was able to handle not transitioning because my starved body still looked androgynous and feminine.  Weak, sick, frail, but androgynous.  I recieved so much praise from gay male friends for not transitioning then.  The gay community in my home town is EXTREMELY transphobic.  I actually would get mad and defensive when people would ask if I was trans.  I didn't want to deal with it so denial was key.

Fast forward to 25.  I started to get chest hair, heavy facial hair, my hairline started to receed.  My face started to look manly.  My old feminine clothes didn't fit from my body filling out like a man.  I looked in the mirror last year and said, "I look like a dude.  I look straight up like a dude."  I guess I didn't realize how intense my identity was as a woman until I started to look more manly.  But I am transitioning now.  Moved to the beach to become the woman I am  

puberty

I think I was around 1st or 2nd grade when I first started feeling different, and noticed that I was the only "boy" who was playing with the girls in school or sitting like them with my legs crossed. 6th grade helped to solidify those feelings when I randomly took advantage of being home alone and ventured into mom's room and discovered that I felt more comfortable wearing panties, a bra, one of mom's skirts and silk blouses or a dress than I ever did in boxers and my clothes, but it also started my years of denial.

From 7th grade on out I just figured that I was gay and continued to hang out with the girls in school. 9th grade I ended up losing my virginity to a guy and something still felt like it was missing.

Jump to 21 and a boyfriend surprised me one night with having me cross dress while having sex and suddenly everything started to finally click.

Sadly that was followed by even more denial until I was about 30 and I just couldn't take it anymore.

wow, many are similar.. i need to start way back.. ( i will sumerise as much as i can)

I was born In Republic Of South Africa in september 1978, it was a policed state and information the public had was tightly controlled (lets leave politics out of it).. on the way to the hospital my parents were arguing what sex i was, .. my dad insisted i was a girl and my mom that i was a boy, little did they know i was and am both then and at present. i was 2 months prem, the only thing i had was an undeveloped diaphram and could only sleep on my stomach and had a breathing monitor 24/7 for 4 months.

i was the only boy that was born that could maintain and carry forward the family surname and bloodline. the only boy born in the whole family who could cary on the surname , as you can imagine this had a profound impact on how i was brought up (the men dont behave that way etc). both my parents were and are christians, very orthodox in many things.. according to my mom i was a gentle child who was curious about the whole world. up every morning at 4am exploring, wanting to see and understand the world and totally fearless. i have vague memories of this time period, i do remember not feeling as either male or female, i had no problems playing my sister and her toys and never considered myself as a boy, just me.. tho my neighbors son Davie (who i was friends with and encouraged to play with) hated all things 'girly'. we were a bad combination, two personalities who got into allsorts of trouble. i do remember a feeling and knowing i was somehow different from everyone.

fast forward a few years and i am 7, the year i was turning 8. my first few years i went to Afrikaans school as a result i could only read/write and speak Afrikaans (while english was my home language). this concerned my parents and i was sent along my sisters to an english boarding school (flew backwards and forwards once per month in Hercules C160s and C130s, loved that). where i had repeat my first year school and learned to speak english. here i made one friend, i believe his name was stephen  (its been 30 years...) anyway he lived on a farm out of town.. i remember going on a long weekend tohis house and we were playing and somehow the future came up.. and he was proud that he would be taking over the family farm.. me innocently stated i am going to grow up and become a women and i will help you run the farm (we were real close.) he laughed and said sure.. somehow a person at the boarding school found out what i wanted to be growing up, and lets say he said "so you want to grow up to be a girl, well girls like ....." a defining moment for me for sure, but somewhere during the year i lost it this 13 year old and put him in hospital. that was when my anger and rage at the world started.. i began to believe it would be impossible and had a mean temper.. i was angry for years, and refuse to this day to tell my parents what happened. i also learned to repress myself, and i remember watching star trek and saw spock and started supressing big time my feelings and desires.

fast forward a few years, i was 13 years old and we had to do a school play.. featuring cliff richard - young ones as the main song.. anyway we were short of girls in my class and the boys were drafted.. i was one of the lucky ones, and while expressing a distaste outwardly to everyone was secretly overjoyed. i loved every min, and from then on began pinching womens clothes from the washing pile (never got caught as far as i know).. it was also the time religion began playing a big part in my life and being gay was a mortal sin, men wearing womens cloths was hammered into me from then.

i do recall a hustler magazine that had an article about a transsexual who underwent the change.. i was stunned, this was possible, my dreams could become real?? that was the biggest light bulb to go bling in my head.. i became more determined than ever to graduate as fast as possible and move out of home and disappear and find a way to make it a reality.

to cut a long story short, through out my teenage years (from around 13-15 before my family immigrated out of RSA) i had dreams and of being a girl. its actually where my name came from, i remember waking up from a dream and i knew my name Veronica. it was the happiest day i can recall, kept it too myself tho.. and many nights crying myself to sleep wishing i could wake up as a girl, or having girl bits in there that started bleeding i would need surgery (stupid i know, but hey i was young there was no internet or much public information).. i even remember a time of dreaming that genies were real and if i had one wish that would be it, for me to be a girl.

I am not sure when , but looking back i guess since i was a kid around 6-7.

But when looking back it did not come out as dressing female, i always just drifted towards girls and always had more female friends then male which never got beyond the friend-stage.

Later i developed more female than male and was often mistaken as female, even had one time where i spent hours with a good friend and her friend and it wasn´t until it came up , that she even noticed that i was a man. Which was so strange , but at the same time it didn´t feel bad.

So never knew 100% until last year where i came to terms with it all and knew for sure.

pre-school not sure on the age.
- did not know about my Girl Side till after i went into my 1st Foster Home and went to Pre-School.
-- from there i discover something was not right about my body & the strange feelings i had.
--- one day at school all i recall now is flash backs of me taking metal small cutting scissors from school.
---- i recall going behind some plastic barrels & wiping it out and cut into it just half an inch.
----- i saw some blood felt the pain put it away and never try to cut that mofo off ever again.
------ i always wished even now 2 years later on HRT that i did it.
------- i really dont mind a girl part at all... but really i do not care what i get other then I WANT that boy part gone.
-------- but i hope my past helps.

I realized I was A GIRL (not transgender) when I was 4-5 yrs old.

Thinking back the first time I became aware of it, not the word transgender, I didn't learn that until after the internet was invented, but the idea of a man living as a woman was in 1992 after I saw the movie The Crying Game. It was, I think, the first time I saw portrayed in the media a passable, attractive, transgender woman (although the actual actor is a gay man).  The next day I remember thinking about the movie the whole day and thinking that I would really like to be like that. To live as a woman.  But at the time I was unaware of any kind of support system.  I felt alone and afraid and I stuffed my feelings down, like I have done so many times and took up my role as a man and eventually the intensity of those feelings faded and I became numb again.

Also, before puberty, I have memories of dressing up as a girl and feeling more happiness from it than any boy ever should.   Then after puberty struck I could never ever think about sex without thinking about going to bed as a woman.  That particular dynamic has been lifelong.

I don't really recall my earliest years but my older sister considered me to be her sister and named me Tessa.  We played together as girls and my older brother would warn me that if i kept that up I would really be a girl.  I cared less about gender or anatomy but knew I would grow up to be a mom with babies of my own and secretly considered the "change" or puberty would be when it would happen.  I was born in 1951 a decade and more before the word transgender was coined.  What was common as taunts were; sissy, queer, weirdo and of course GIRL.  Sheesh what was so wrong about being a girl?  I wanted to still hang out with them as I felt more comfortable reading or playing jump rope and word games.  Boys were mean with hitting, pushing and bullying. 

Puberty was a cold wake up and a hateful experience and there was no alternative I knew of.  We learn to cope with what we cannot change and i did my best to act like a boy and some sort of manish person but my real identity never changed and was reduce to a shadow girl who followed me through life.  She was imprisoned within me and sometimes expressed herself in loving boys and then men, wearing long hair and loving more sensitivity and feminine apparel.  And then i did my best to purge the clothes and very idea of being female.  I internalized transphobia and learned enough about the too typical Trans narrative to consider myself ineligible.  I was prepared to take my secrets to the grave but the very persistence of my true girl gender identity never quit and finally we found our freedom a few years ago.  Yes, a long strange trip but I won't die wondering and feel very grateful to be here.

I didn't have an "aha" moment when I decided I was trans.  I recall being interested in stockings, hosiery etc. even back in kindergarten.  I used to browse through the lingerie section of department store catalogues when I was a bit older.  I recall on one occasion discovering tights for boys.  I wanted those, but couldn't bring myself to ask my mother for them.  I also started trying on my sister's tights and later stockings and garter belt, when I was about 10 or 11.  However, unlike many here, I played with boy's toys and wasn't interested in dolls.  I was also interested in technology, but not sports.  So, I guess I was a bit of both genders when growing up.  I started buying tights & pantyhose for myself while in my late teens, more so after I moved out on my own.  I have been wearing pantyhose or stockings daily for most of my adult life and now wear a bra & nail polish daily.  Several years ago, I was also into full cross dressing, but moved away from that.

One big thing, when I was a kid, was I was terrified someone would find out about my wearing "girls" things.  Unlike today, such a thing just wasn't accepted back then.

Bottom line, there was no moment when I suddenly decided I was trans.  It was just a matter of looking back over the years at what I wanted.and felt.

Quote from: alice1234 on August 17, 2016, 07:02:02 PM
i was about 8 or 9 and i tried on me mums things and it felt comfortable but i didn't have a name for it so i kept it to myself till about 12 i dreamed of being a woman then i confided in a friend and realized who i was after that years of internet research until i came out. in retrospect i wish i commited at 12.  cheers
Alice

Quote from: xSMITHx on February 27, 2017, 08:42:15 AM

I just knew. I was 4 and I just knew I was supposed to have been born a boy. It wasn't about genitals or body parts at all ( my brothers were not born yet; I wasn't aware of penises or that my not having one meant anything). I just knew.

I can't remember the exact moment as a kid that it dawned on me something was off. Somewhere between age 6 and 8 when I started having to go to school, and when my grandmother started making me wear the clothes she picked when I visited her.

It wasn't a clear revelation. I was moody, unhappy and extremely nervous and self conscious of people's eyes on me... and I didn't talk much. I guess that's how it manifested when you have no words for it and no surety.

Later, about 5 years ago maybe, I knew about most of this stuff superficially but I was lying on my bed trying to sleep and wondering why the hell my life was such a mess and who the hell I was. I typically converse with myself in my head when I'm trying to figure things out and on that occasion the answer to the question was just there as if it'd been obvious all along. Maybe I just hadn't asked myself the question properly before or allowed time to think about it. Anyway, once answered it couldn't be unanswered. I thought about it and the more I did the more I knew it was true as all the evidence from the past made sense. It wasn't me wanting to become something else. I'd considered myself a broken version of that thing to start with, which was why I had so many body issue problems and felt so self-conscious, avoided intimacy, etc. Should have been so obvious. 

I always felt 'off' from as early as I can remember. When my brother and I would play make believe, I'd always be the girl heroes etc, as children we never really thought anything of it, it was just who I wanted to be.

Fast forward about 9 years, I'm now 14 years old, I'd been sexually assaulted by the girl across the street, I'd been stealing my moms old clothes from when she was a teenager (some gothier mesh tops black skirts etc) and I was having a breakdown in my room because my mother'd FREAKED when she caught me wearing nail polish for the first time.. 'You're going to be sorry when your father gets home! He's going to put a stop to this right quick!' I literally just cried and poured it all out to my father, who just stoically exclaims; 'I'll allow the nail polish, but that's as far as this goes. If I catch you, or hear from anyone else, that you're wearing dresses, or makeup... not under my roof. Are we clear?' I had to swallow a very bitter pill that day, but I wasn't deterred, my brother graduated high school, and I'd began bringing extra changes of clothes to school with me, and my makeup kit, and changing in the bathroom at school.

Fast forward 7 years. My cousin D has come out as transgender. Her parents weren't initially super cool about it, quite the opposite in fact, but SUPPOSEDLY my father was.. I was furious, my first reaction was 'that (expletive)(expletive!)' 'Why does she get to and I don't?!' 'Why do my own parents tolerate her but not me?!' I began to feverishly research the process in its entirety anywhere I could. I was finally aware it was possible, and not just with copious amounts of plastic surgery. However, my fathers words still rang in my ears, about my being homeless and essentially not their child anymore, I buried it all. I buried it deep. I became what I assumed would be a 'pinnacle' of masculinity, even if I still wore makeup and nail polish. I cropped my hair short or I'd shave my head entirely like a skinhead. I drank, spit, cursed, smoked, fought, and had all but destroyed everything I was. I'd also had a constant rush of suicidal thoughts, I'd begun self harming again. All I could do to stay alive and stay sane was stay busy. I smothered myself in work, and when I wasn't doing that, I was hiding on the internet playing video games, at least there, I could be the girl I was supposed to be without judgement, or I'd be still secretly doing 'research' on transitioning, but whenever I wasn't sitting in that chair, I wanted to die. And it wasn't much of a life, in my eyes, to give up.

I carried on this way for another 10 years, by then I was 31 and nothing in my life made sense. I had a great job, high paying, with benefits, I have a beautiful girlfriend who loves me and we were going to get a place together, a house. Everything a typical hetero cis male would need to be 'satisfied' in life. It. All. Meant. Nothing. There was one piece of the puzzle that didn't fit. Me. I started having suicidal thoughts even now at work. I ended up with 'hash marks' all over the back of my hardhat for every time I thought about throwing myself to my death at work, and chickened out. It seemed like a good solution to me, I'd die in an 'accident' at work, my family and girlfriend get a boat load of money, and I sleep forever. My girlfriend finally cornered me about my feelings, I explained what I felt how I felt, why *I* think I feel that way. She urged me to seek help.

I approached my doctor about psychological help and now I'm here.

   I have been a life long crossdresser and never thought it was more than that. Oh I thought/wished I could be a woman but the thought that I maybe trans never really crossed my mind. Not until I discovered I could obtain HRT meds, which I did, and took them without another thought. It was just something I knew I wanted to do.
   In hind sight all the signs were there. I just never put it together.

  Hugs,
    Jeanette

@JeanetteLW

You sound like me in many ways.  I have been cross dressing to one degree or another for most of my life.  I'm at the point where I want to take this further, but haven't decided what yet.

James,
  I hope you aren't as backwards as I am. I say that because how I have gotten to where I am today (barely started) is completely backwards from the way commonly considered the proper way. The recommended progress is to first consult with a gender therapist and explore this feeling that you should be something other than your assigned at birth gender. Next step once your gender dysphoria is confirmed is to consult a doctor to set a plan for transition and get baseline hormone levels taken. Next would be to agree on a transition plan and start closely monitored HRT.
   Well like I said I do things backwards and I am currently awaiting a call to set an appointment with a gender therapist.  I've already checked off the other boxes and in the exact opposite order. With this  appointment I will have finally put myself on the "right" track.
    Please don't do it my way as the right way can be so much more beneficial to you and your own progress.

  Hugs,
  Jeanette

I suspect I may be like you in that regard.  I was into cross dressing and enjoyed it, but never sought any professional help.  I'll have to work up the courage to do that.