I always have said there isn’t (nor should be) one trans narrative. My own story is similar, in that I didn’t explicitly have feelings as a young child that I was really a girl. Most of my life, I simply knew something wasn’t right, something didn’t fit.

I was maybe in my teens or twenties when I got an inkling that the problem had to do with my gender. It would be another 20+ years that I could fully come to terms with being transgender. This was in large part due to the prevailing narrative of the time, that of “being a woman trapped in a man’s body.”

For decades, actually living as a woman seemed like an unattainable fantasy. It wasn’t until I was able to overcome all possible reasons against it (I’m too old, what if I don’t look good as a woman, what if my friends and family abandon me) that I could give myself permission to transition.

By the way, of the three objections mentioned, the only one that came close to coming true was that I lost some friends and family when I transitioned. The family has slowly come back, though, and any friends who didn’t understand weren’t really good friends anyway.