An informal collection of stories about and reasons why I probably should have realized I'm trans way sooner than I did, in no particular order

Disclaimer: gender is hard. This is more therapy an exercise for myself than any sort of prescriptivism. Your mileage may vary ;)

Shoutout to all my very patient and lovely friends, you're the best <3

In the winter either sometime late in high school, or shortly after we graduated, I was driving with my then-girlfriend (H) to her grandmother's house and we were listening to NPR on the radio. I don't even remember what segment or show it was (maybe This American Life ?), but I remember they told a story about a trans woman.

H mentioned offhandedly at the end of the story that she couldn't understand how anyone could be trans, and I was a bit surprised -- because it seemed perfectly reasonable to me. Despite never having knowingly engaged with trans media (not that there was much of anything broadly published on the topic in the early 2010's) or even the concept of gender all that deeply, it seemed obvious to me that gender was just another way in which people can differ greatly from "traditional" expectations

We talked about the story and the existence of trans people for a few minutes longer until we arrived, and promptly forgot about the topic

When we were young kids, my Mom would shave me and my brother's heads every summer (which I imagine was a practical rather than an aesthetic choice). I don't think I had much of an opinion about this at the time -- I was more concerned about climbing trees and finding cool rocks!

When I was in preschool, my Mom tells me that I was obsessed with a girl in my class because she let me play with her long hair all the time

Starting when I was in middle school, I refused to have my hair cut for a few years straight. Because I was A Teenage Boy™ , nobody saw fit to actually explain to me how to take care of long hair; and I was in a very mad at the entire world but I don't know why phase anyway so I didn't have much motivation to learn. (I told myself the hair was part of this metal/emo aesthetic I was going for at the time -- it was awful)

I missed a big chunk of my final year of middle school when some Very Bad Stuff happened, and I was subsequently forced to cut my hair. I did not trust my parents for a very long time after that. (we're cool now though, it just took a minute)

At a family get-together one year when I was fairly young, maybe six or seven years old, one of my cousins who was a bit older than me found some stage makeup. She has always been very theatrically minded, so she made up a silly play for us to put on for the adults and did my makeup for the performance (I'm sure it looked hilarious)

I think most of the adults found it all very cute, but I distinctly remember looks of deep discomfort from some of the men, and the insistence to swiftly get cleaned up after we were done.

I think everyone kind of hates their bodies during puberty, but I desperately hated mine -- especially into my early 20s. My deepest fantasy was to have my brain uploaded into a computer so I didn't have to have a body at all.

A really frequent point of contention in my romantic life was my incredibly muted emotional expression and capacity. I truly believed for many years that I just didn't experience emotions in the same way others seemed to.

I worked really hard for a long time to change ("improve") my body and self-image in the socially prescribed ways: exercise, facial hair, styles of clothing, and aesthetic choices in the things that I professed to like. Almost none of this was conscious: I was just running blindly away from this creeping feeling of despair.

"masculine" was the thing I was supposed to be. After all it was one of the most fundamental aspects of my identity: a gift from my parents and from the doctor who signed my birth certificate and from the ultrasound technician who created the very first image of my body. A gift even older than my name. The horrific wrongness of my body and emotions and mind must have just been the product of stress or alcohol or depression. I must have been doing something wrong. I must just be wrong.