Hi Guys! I've only recently come to terms with being trans. Im wondering how did u all kno u were trans? What feelings did u have? How did u kno if transitioning was right for u?

Well I always preferred "guy stuff"-- I played with the boys when I was little, liked to wear boy clothes, didn't really like dresses, but I didn't push the issue and I wore them whenever my mother put them on me, etc.  I never thought anything of it, though.  As far I was a concerned, I was a perfectly straight girl who just like to dress and act very boyish.

Then my freshman year of college I decided I was trans.  I don't really remember what triggered it or how I went about deciding that even what got me looking.  I just remember I was convinced I was trans for a good five months.  I got some guy clothes, started wearing boxers, got my hair cut, etc, but I only really told my roommate, my sister and my best friend from home.  Then about half way through that summer I got really scared and, for some reason, crazy religious and went into deep denial.  I grew my hair down to my butt, bought a skirt or two I never wore, forced myself to adopt all these feminine mannerisms that I'm now killing myself trying to get rid of, etc.  I'd feel trans on and off, especially when clothes shopping or when I see this really awesome guy in a movie or on TV or something and want to be like him or things like that, but I'd just push it down and pretend it wasn't there.  Then about a year ago I got a pimple on my breast and got really excited hoping it was breast cancer so I could get a double masectomy.  When I realized that I was wishing cancer on myself, I decided I couldn't ignore this anymore, so I let myself embrace it and I've felt trans for a full year with no backsliding, although I haven't really started to transition yet.  For now I'm just doing little things to feel more comfortable, but now I'm starting to have moments where I want to curl up into a little ball and die because I just want to live my life the way it's meant to be-- as a guy.  To me that's a sign that I'm starting to be ready to transition.

@Alex - why don't you share your narrative? It'd be good to hear various stories.

For me...it's been a process, really. I mean, throughout my life there have been various things that I now see as obvious signs of me being trans, but I just didn't connect the dots. I have a memory from when I was REALLY young (think: 3-4 years old or so) that I felt something was missing in my pants, so I'd stuff my underwear with toilet paper. I just didn't know WHY I did that. Or why around age 10 my mom made me put on a shirt when guests were coming over (I loved that I could just run around shirtless at all times before then). Or why I was most aroused by straight porn later on even though I was most often attracted to girls. Or why the most exciting thing for me about fitting the "lesbian stereotype" was appearing male. Or why when auditioning for school plays in high school I always chose to read the male parts. Or why I liked one of my friend's nicknames for me - "little boy" (started because I liked the Smashing Pumpkins' song "Disarm," which has the lyric "I used to be a little boy" combined with the fact that sometimes strangers read me as a preteen boy). Or why I was jumping up and down, laughing, saying "this is me" when I dressed up one time to record a silly show thing with my cousins in which I looked totally male. I also remember thinking at about 18 that I REALLY wanted to get a hysto to get rid of my period - what stopped me was fearing that if I later decided I want to have kids (like I plan to), I'd regret the hysto.

And that whole sex thing REALLY confused me so much until recently... I kept thinking things like - what the hell, I'm a girl, almost always attracted to girls, but I keep fantasizing about heterosexual sex. What I didn't really get was that I was turned on by the idea of being a guy having sex with a girl, not the other way around. The only reason I actually realised this is because once my girlfriend found out I was trans, she started treating me and my junk more like a guy's and that REALLY was a turn-on. Before then, even though at that point I already knew I wanted other aspects of being male, having a penis wasn't of huge interest to me. I would have always said "I don't care what I do/don't have down there". I've truly come to see otherwise in the past few months.

The first time I really told myself I might be trans was about 2 years ago now. Before that, I never really fully consciously considered it. I mean, there were all the things I mentioned going on and more, but I never thought of the fact that I might be trans. It just seemed like something far-away, impossible, abnormal - almost like a sickness (I'd never judge anyone or say anything negative about someone being trans as it had nothing to do with me, as I thought at the time, but I just had this "icky" feeling about it). I did out of curiosity a few times before that research what being FTM meant and stuff like that (heck, before I researched it, the word trans meant an image of an over-the-top drag queen in my mind). However, it wasn't until I started watching transguys' videos on youtube about 2 years ago that I started identifying with them (I guess seeing real guys talk about it changed the 'icky' perception I had of trans folk).

Since then, I've been binding on and off, but didn't start packing until the recent revelation thanks to my girlfriend (which was only a few months back), and I've only been packing with socks since that's all I could afford. Was just about to attempt to make my own packer 10 days ago (not sure how successful I would have been), when that very day I got an e-mail that I'd won a contest on TQ Nation - a packer and TranZwear boxer-briefs. The little guy should be sent on its way to me sometime this week.

So, in the past 2 years, prior to my girlfriend finding out a few months ago that I'm trans, I kind of thought this was something I would just have to keep to myself for the rest of my life and kind of "push it away" because I saw that so many guys lost their significant others after coming out. Another HUGE concern of mine is my family. Now that my partner supports me 100% it makes it easier to deal and it also makes me think I might not have to live like this and could maybe transition. I just don't know WHAT I'd tell my family. My partner suggested I could say I developed some sort of hormone imbalance where my body produces testosterone and that my doctor said it's easier to become male than going back to female through HRT (in that the changes of estrogen would be partial and I wouldn't lose all those male characteristics testosterone caused), and that I chose to stay male because of that. But yes, I highly doubt something like that is even POSSIBLE, especially in a 25 year old (i.e. why would my body SUDDENLY at 25 or later start producing more testosterone than estrogen). So, if they asked their doctor, they'd probably conclude I'm lying. So, I'm really stuck there and thus am not sure what I actually will do.

I do, however, know that I have some time to think about it, seeing how I plan to give birth in a couple of years (after finishing school). My partner does too - that way we'll both be biological parents to our children. After that, however, who knows what will happen. I might try some form of natural transition, or I might go on T, but I highly doubt I'll just do nothing. Oh, and top surgery is a MUST for me. For bottom, I'd rather get a glue-on prosthetic than any of the current surgical procedures that are available.

And, in a nutshell (a HUGE nutshell ), that's my story.

I knew since I was a kid. I always hated having a chest. I like boy stuff, I was always attracted to girls. I always felt like I never fit the female role, it just wasn't me. I never like the whole makeup and dresses and stuff, it just didn't fit with me.

As a kid, I was fairly happy as a girl; it wasn't until puberty that I started to feel really out of place as a girl.  I was very uncomfortable with my body and the things that were happening to it, and I started to wear boys' clothes and, later, began to identify as a lesbian.  I didn't know any other lesbians, and certainly not any trans people.  However, when I was about 17, I'd become involved in some online lesbian communities, and I started to hear people talking about being transgender.  I began to look into it and immediately found that it seemed to fit me.  However, for about a year or so, I wasn't sure if I would transition or not.  I began to make small steps and see how they felt for me - I started binding, and about six months later I cut my hair short and began to pass as male.  That all felt really right for me, and living as a girl became increasingly distressing.  I spent the following summer working at a summer camp, where I was constantly being asked if I was a boy or a girl, and having to answer that I was a girl was very difficult for me.  It just got to the point where I just couldn't do it any more.  So, about 15 months after coming out to myself, I came out publicly and began living as a guy.  I took everything really slowly, one step at a time, so that I would know that I was doing the right thing for me.  And, with every step I took, I felt better and better about myself.

My childhood was very confusing because I knew that I was a girl - or, I was supposed to be - since everybody told me I'm a girl. However, I thought I was a boy at the same time. I'm not really sure if I liked guys or not, but I do remember having a crush on a really "gay" boy. Every other crush I had was on a girl.
I hung out with mostly guys until, at daycare, girls started teasing me about liking one of my guy friends and my thoughts kind of went something along the lines of "Why would I like a boy?"

Anyway...ahahaha.

For the longest while, I wanted to get a boob reduction when I turned 18, because I didn't know that you could get them completely removed.

I was so confused by my, uh, downstairs bits. I never paid attention to it and when I did, I had hair down there. So I went "exploring" and wondered why there was a hole there. I was so confused.

Basically, I've known most of my life, but I never knew you could be transgender. I thought that if you were born a girl, you were a girl and if you were born a boy, you were a boy, end of story. Even when I discovered ->-bleeped-<-, I didn't understand it at all. So I only started identifying as male sometime around August 2010.

So. Feelings: confusion, depression, anger. Yeah.

It started when I was a kid, I liked being the boy in the games like house. never wanted to be the girl. got along well with other boys better then girls, never new what to say to girls. still dont know what to say to girls, i have to reword stuff all the time just so that My girlfriend understands half of what I say. I moved around a lot as a kid only hung out with one girl and my kid brothers mostly. I started to know everything wasnt right round grade school when i hung out with more boys than girls and the boys thought I was weird. Bought 12 I fell hard for a girl, go figure it was my only chick friend that I was really close too. I had about 2 or 3 other chicks i hung with but they fell to the wayside most of the time. I was fighting my feelings for this girl and my feelings about wishing I was a boy becouse a boy could ask her out. Became really depressed becouse I didnt know what to do and became pretty suicidle too. I never made it to the cutting stage but got really close. I started wearin baggy clothes and becoming as guy like as possible and then I became worried that i would losse her and went into denile about everything for a year and even tried my mom's version of dating( online) didnt work out so well he was a cutter and it was just really weird trying to make myself like this guy. I started to serf the web to see if i could find anything that could help me and i just stumbled onto FTM. after reading it, it was as if the sky parted i finally had an answer to my problem of wanting to be a boy.I ended up ending it after telling him that I didnt like him and that i liked girls. he wasnt happy but he accepted it. 4 mos after that i was dealing with the idea of my my crush going off to college and it was really starting to kill me the idea that I wouldnt see her agian.  turns out she got the courage up before I could and asked me out I tell yea my heart sang.  It will be 6 years since that and I a happy most of the time and i cant wait to start T. im 22 and my life is looking bright.

Since I was 4 I felt that I should have been born male.  There were early signs such as trying to give myself a short haircut when I was 4, and then the underwear stuffing behavior someone else in this thread mentioned.  I could never picture myself growing up to be a woman, it sounded completely absurd to me.  Whenever my cousins and I 'played house' when we were kids, I wanted to be the husband, when we role-played different adventures, I always wanted to be the hero who saves the girl, because in my head I certainly wasn't the latter.

Things got more complicated when I hit puberty.  If I had managed to delude myself that I somehow wouldn't grow up and look like a woman, my body quickly brought about the reality, and I became increasingly depressed as I 'developed'.  Like Devyn, I didn't know anything about transgendered people until way later in my life when I met a MTF, so I figured I'd just have to accept that I was born female and learn to live in that role.  I was also confused because I didn't yet understand the difference between gender identity and sexual orientation.  While I was attracted to girls, I'd also had several crushes on boys, so through failed mid-western, conservative logic I'd concluded that I couldn't really be a boy in a girl's body.

As for the decision to transition...  In 2004 I met a MTF transsexual.  I instantly supported her 100% and with a ferocity that seemed (to my boyfriend anyways) a bit odd.  I later realized it was because I understood and could identify with her experience, and she inspired some self-analysis of myself.  In 2005 I researched FTM transition heavily, and was considering transition, but hints of my plans to my boyfriend were met with "if you do, we're just friends", and since I loved him and didn't want to be alone, I repressed some more, which resulted in a manic episode and then 4 years of severe depression.  In mid-2009, I started to lose the weight that I'd gained during my depression, researched transition more (including lurking on these boards), and made the decision to leave my boyfriend of 6 years.  After moving away from him and getting the rest of the weight off (115 pounds in total), I slowly started masculinizing my appearance to see if it alleviated my discomfort, and it did. I associated with some lesbians (and dated one), but never fit in at all, obviously.  After 'accidentally' passing a few times and realizing how happy it made me, I was 100% certain that transition was necessary for me, and now I start T next month, and I'll be 27 in June.

I've posted a number of things about my past and how things have just always been a certain way in my head. It's just how I popped out into the world. I don't even call myself transsexual. That's something psychologists made up and when I first got that label it started years of me thinking there was something really "wrong" with me - that I had a disorder (also got the GID diagnosis ... along with social anxiety .... regular anxiety ... depression ... I think they were running out of things to diagnose me with at one point and finally I just said eff that). I'm happy that for some people it's like "seeing the light" but for me it was a very dark time in my life. So anyway, the answer to the question is pretty much I've been like this my whole life and that "this" is uniquely me and it seems pretty damn normal.

I started figuring things out just this past year.  For quite a while before that, I knew that something was wrong, but I couldn't for the life in me figure out what it was. 

I grew up wearing my brother's and (male) cousins' hand me downs and always played with them.  Aside from giving me some barbies and things like that (which spent a good amount of time in my closet), my parents pretty much just let me be me.  My group of friends has always been easy going too, so, as far as I can remember, I didn't have any issues as a child.  The only things that stick out in my mind are thinking just how foreign having a period felt, pretty much denying the fact that I had a chest, and pretending I had a penis.  These didn't bother me enough to think seriously on, though.

Things were fine until high school, when there was suddenly a push to be feminine.  If you didn't dress or act right, you were "frumpy," so I started mimicking the girls around me.  Eventually, I got to the point where I knew I wasn't the person I was presenting, but I still had no clue why.  The first few years of college were oh so fun with depression, cutting, and suicidal thoughts.  That got a bit better after a few years, and I started trying to pick apart why I couldn't stand being inside myself. 

This past year several things happened to get me going. I met a drag king, who changed my impression on how male a person born female can look.  However, the light bulb didn't go off until one day when I was sitting in my room trying to figure out why I felt like ->-bleeped-<-.  At that point, I knew it was something physical, and I knew I hated my chest.  From an outside perspective, it looks just fine, and I'd tried everything I could think of to make me feel better about it.  Anyways, that day I got fed up, grabbed an ace bandage, and wrapped it up.  Looking down, I felt like 'oh, well that's a lot better..."  One sock in the underwear later, I was a lot happier.  Another key moment was when I came home from getting my hair cut short for the first time.  Before that, I've never felt any connection to the person I saw in the mirror, but with a male haircut and my chest wrapped up, I saw me.  The more I accept and present myself as male, the less I feel painful in my skin and the more I can see myself having an actual future as a person, rather than a character.

Mine was being 3 years old in head start and finally figuring out that other people saw me differently than I saw me. What a rude way to find out that people see you as a girl when you know you aren't. All thanks to a photo and a headstart wanting good reviews.

I didn't start feeling something was wrong until after puberty. I remember being a pretty happy little girl when I was a kid, maybe even a little on the emotional side. My family is very conservative though and I was a very sheltered child, so when I started having strange thoughts after I had started puberty I never really pondered much on them. I didn't know they could mean anything. When I graduated high school and started college I started becoming interested in the LGBT community and thats when I learned the transgender even existed. I started doing my research and things finally started making sense, the passing thoughts I had had over the years now fit and I now knew I wasn't weird. At least, no more than normal ^^.

I grew up hating dresses and most girly things besides my long hair.  I wanted to build a time machine and go back in time to be a knight, I was the hugest dork. When normal girls wanted to be princesses, that's what I dreamt about, being a knight, or a cowboy, or some ridiculous thing like that. I was even more miserable in catholic school because we had to wear skirts and jumpers up until 6th grade and I just felt sick with myself everytime I put it on. I tried to force myself into be a "Normal Girl" for three years in highschool and it drove me insane. Halfway through college, I realized there was a name for what I'd felt my whole life, and started coming to terms with myself. What really cemented it in my mind that I wasn't just an insane tomboy or something were the littlest things. I thought about getting old and being called an old LADY and it made me want to die right then and there. I thought about having to check "F" every time I filled out a federal form and it made me sick to my stomach. I realized that when I DID fill out 'female' on those forms and job applications, I felt like I was lying. When someone calls me my legal name, or hell when someone calls me a girl, it feels like the worst possible insult.

i realised i was trans less than a year ago. now I am 1.5 months into therapy.

for me realising i was trans was more putting all the pieces together. i had a lot of typical trans traits and a LOT of dysphoria that i didn't realise i had until it all started unraveling. it's been a slow road.

i suppose a lot of sexual experimentation helped me get here. my ex and i did a lot of role play and i found myself being male when i was letting loose the most.

i have very severe anxiety which i realised stems from my dysphoria. I'd been trying to cope for YEARS until i realised that i was having all these subconscious reactions to not dealing with my real feelings.

i had known i wanted to be a guy all my life but i finally realized i was trans wen i was about 9 or 10 and i read a book about trans ppl. wen i was yunger i always did "guy stuff" and i havent worn a dress since i was 3, luckily wen i was in 2nd grade my parents let me get a short haircut. my parents always had to fight me to wear girly stuff, but eventually they let me dress how i wanted.  also wen i was little i wood try to stand up to pee lol  . and lastly i never liked to take showers because i saw my body wich i dont like. i never wanted to grow up to be a woman.

Well, that is the question isn't it? I haven't completely decided myself, though I'm pretty sure. I feel like I'm in a pretty uniquie situation, at least so far I haven't come across anyone like me yet. So here my story.
Where I am right now, I am 47 years old, in a long term marriage to a wonderful man who treats me like a queen (maybe I really am one?). And I have 3 grown daughter and 2 grandchildren. I have seen other transmen who have transitioned at my age, but all the ones I've seen have been really butch from the start, I never really was very butch.
As a child I always felt like I was a boy, I preffered boy clothes (though I didn't fight the girls clothes too much when Mom would push the issue). Preffered hanging out with the guys, and prying boys games with boys toys.
I always had a fascination with sex from early on (may have been some sexual abuse that I don't remember), mostly with males, I've always been very attracted by males, but I am also attracted to females (though never really sexually, maybe that I just never explored that possibility?)
Puberty was pretty confusing, in fact I've blocked most of it out of my mind entirely. As a young woman I was VERY promiscuous, very angry with men, determined to treat them the way they treated women!!! In my early 20s I decided I really did want to get married and have children (actually I always wanted children)
From the time I got married until just recently, though I have continued to feel very male, I have lived dressed and acted very female (playing the role I guess?), doing and being what was expected of me.
But now, fairly suddenly I might add, I feel a near deperation to express my maleness! I'm not sure how I could pretend all this time and now suddenly not feel okay pretending anymore. I only know that this really is not a new thing with me. I've always been this way.
As for my sexual orientation, looks pretty clear to me that I am a gay man, but maybe bi, I'm still confused about that.
Anyhow, I have not yet decided where this journey will take me, or if I will choose to transition. I do know I HAVE to come out though, I can't keep it secret anylonger, and I fear for my marriage, because I really do love my husband but he is VERY straight!

I'm not fond of makeup or dresses, but that has nothing to do with being trans.  Keep in mind that a lot of what we think of as gendered traits are just socially constructed.  There's nothing inherently female about dresses, and nothing inherently male about oh let's say, trucks.
I feel like I'm trans because I'm extremely uncomfortable with being female.  I wince when someone calls me 'she' and struggle to even say my old name.  My chest and hips gross me out, and when I crossdress I feel relaxed and well, complete.  For me it's not about the social construction of what it means to be a girl, but just that my body feels wrong and when I look more male, it feels more right.

I hate being treated like a woman, I hate being talked to as though I were a woman, I hate looking like a woman. I desire to be treated like a man, talked to as though I were a man, and look like a man. Hence: I am very positive that I am trans.

how do you know?

I started feeling like i was maybe transsexual, but everyone has doubts, especially because its such a rare condition.  I started to know for sure when I...

1. heard people using my new name and it just felt so right
2. when I was seen as male and loved it, and loved being treated as male
3. when i imagined myself growing up to be an old woman, and couldn't imagine/ bear it