This weekend I have been up into the loft to condense stuff I have got up there. This meant going through all of childhood toys, school work and basically my whole past. In a way, I hoped to find some evidence that pointed to me being trans when I was a child like a story I'd written at school in which I pretended to be a boy, or repeated drawings of trains, trucks or cars. I know this sounds silly and it's very stereotypical but if I had found something, ANYthing.... What I did find were letters to Santa asking for Barbie dolls at Christmas, drawings of mermaids, drawings of myself with long, blond hair and a diary page describing a family wedding at which I was a bridesmaid and me saying that I liked my dress. I rarely did pretty pink and purple coloring and I did write stories about aliens and scary crooks and pirates but there was nothing that really stood out as being at odds with my gender. I can never remember feeling uncomfortable with my gender as a child. Perhaps that's why there was nothing to indicate that I saw myself as anything other than female, or that I wanted to be anything other than female. The first memory I have of what I now know is dysphoria was when I was around 10 years old and even then, it was very vague. Just an 'off' feeling, that something wasn't quite right. Surprisingly, when I look back on my childhood toys and things, even the photos, I don't feel dysphoric about it. Yes I was dressed rather girly but my mum chose all that so it was out of my hands and I didn't feel uncomfortable with it at the time. I feel like it was after I turned 10 and moved up to the next school that I gradually began to lose myself. When I look back at any photos beyond the age of 11, I don't recognize myself. In my teens, especially my late teens and early 20s, I became extremely girly in the way that I dressed and in the way I expressed myself through my art work. I suppose that was me conforming to how I was expected to be but my family (especially my mother) use that against me to 'prove' there's no way I'm trans. I can explain (to myself and those that support me) why I appeared to be so girly as a teenager and young adult. I thought it would fix me. But I can't explain my girlishness as a child. It was just me being me and at the time, I was comfortable with my gender. I don't know what changed to make me become uncomfortable. I suppose it was puberty. But just because I was comfortable as a girl as a child up to the age of 10 or 11, does this mean I'm any less trans?
There is no thing called less trans. Its your feelings that count. Often people have gone through a time where they exaggerated their opposite gender behaviour. You might have a look at the first pdf: http://emptyclosets.com/forum/gender-identity-expression/156085-i-just-im-kind-scared.html#4 People have transitioned in their 70s. Its really up to you. (*hug*)
I know that people transition at all stages of their life but what the people around me keep saying is that people who are genuinely trans have been fighting these feelings all of their life and have known all along they wanted to express themselves as the other gender. I only realized that I actually wanted to express myself as male a year ago and didn't realize anything was wrong with my gender until a year before that. I'm now almost 27. I'm fed up of fighting the people around me. I keep being told time and time again that I didn't display any traits of the other gender and that I was born a girl therefore, I am a girl. I was comfortable with my gender as a child. I'll admit that. But coming up to puberty there was an uneasiness and I mistook it for the normal awkwardness of puberty. I tried to fix the uneasiness by exaggerating my gender to be more female. That is why I didn't display any traits of the other gender. I can't explain why I liked wearing dresses as a child and playing with Barbies. I suspect that to me, they were just clothes and toys and I didn't read anything into them gender wise.
I was your age when I had first the guts to use man's deo and try man's clothes, "just for fun". Now I realize I was terrified of the real me back then. We grew up thinking that being trans is being something awful or sick, and nobody wants to "become" someone awful and/or sick. Don't underestimate the way we grow up, because it sure had had an impact, the result being repressing our own feelings. They are just saying what's on their (missinformed) minds, never take it personal. They have no idea, really, but they are acting as if they were the experts. In other words, they are your average fools. You don't need to "qualify" or anything like that. Every experience of being trans is different. They are trans out there that were yelling since childhood "I'm a boy!!!", while I silently accepted the girly girl clothing and said nothing, even if it felt silly and sometimes even degrading. I believe that a sure sign is that you experienced your puberty as hell. That seems to be common among everybody.