It just did not occur to me...

I tried to write a bit on how I experienced gender when I was younger, how I eventually found out I'm trans, and why I am so "late" compared to some other transguys.
I know a lot of transguys who expressed they were boys from a very early age. A recent example is the born-deaf transboy Ryland, who got a lot of media attention lately because of his accepting parents. Many of them have clearly expressed they wanted a penis or felt like they were/should have been boys.
But me as a kid... I was both a very typical and a very atypical transboy.

I never said "I AM a boy" or "I want a penis", etc. Though I did say a few times "Why haven't I just been born a boy?" or "I wish I were a boy", but every time those thoughts were dismissed as utter crap, and thus I just shut up about it and figured I just 'had to deal with it'. I also tried pee-ing standing up a few times, but which child doesn't? As soon as I realized I was just making a big mess I quickly stopped trying.
I just never thought deeply about "D-'s and V-'s" (I was especially oblivious of the whole existence of the latter. In my head there were people with dicks and people without them.) and I thought that that little sausage was the ONE and ONLY thing determining whether you were a boy or a girl (since that is what people tell you). Even though I did not identify with the 'other' girls (in the case of tomboyish girls I could get along quite well with them though), never picked female game characters or dreamt of myself as a female, but I also knew I had no 'little sausage', thus I considered it a FACT I was a girl. Just like you can't say a black person is actually a white person or that a donkey is actually a horse.
The other fact that I did not truly feel like one of those elusive creatures called a "girl" did not take that away. I just figured I either had to be crazy, or all other human beings without a dick felt exactly like I did but just 'coped with it better'.
The whole thought that a human being can also have a GENDER (= 'sex of the brain') did just not occur to me because I saw sex/gender as some factual thing. You have XY chromosomes or XX chromosomes and that's it. A square cannot become a circle and the other way around.

I have had several phases of denial and trying to be "just a normal girl", the longest and most persistent of them in high school, post puberty, because at that point I suddenly had to face the facts of my biology even more than before. Suddenly people wanted me to shave my legs and armpits (I didn't), wear a bra (I didn't. Bras are for women) and cope with a monthly feast of blood and gore. Also did I get bullied with my boyish appearance again (my classmates would call me "it" and ask "are you a boy or a girl" in a nasty-whining tone, etc. and would not communicate normally with me at all and acted as if I was some sort of a crazy anomaly), and because I figured I ''had no choice" I grew my hair out, and tried dressing a bit more feminine, which still consisted mainly of big hoodies and jeans. At that time my tomboy friends got their puberty as well, and we'd hate together on how shitty it was to be 'female' and how much we hated the flobby things on our chest and that monthly 'shark week'. I did not feel too "off" then, as they despised their puberty as well. I thought it was normal.
But when they got older and matured into women, they started loving their breasts, female clothes and curves, I still despised them when I looked in the mirror. I did not understand what was "wrong" with me, why I could not just accept and love it like they could, why everything female felt so foreign and weird to me. I started to realize that what I felt wasn't "normal", like I had always thought, and started to think I thus had to be crazy and just out of my mind. Until I, by mere coincidence, saw a documentary about transgenders. This guy spoke on how he felt about his body, how foreign and 'wrong' it felt to him, how he had never felt like a girl, etc. and I just sat there... eyes wide open "HOLY FUCK! This is me!"
It was like I got a blow in the face with a hammer. All the time it had been staring me in the face. The awkward feelings, the feeling of it being 'wrong' and weird, of not-belonging with the female half of humanity, the reason why I never grew out of my "tomboy phase", like most kids, why the thought of being a lesbian couple freaked me out, and why I could never imagine myself to have female sex with a guy. Why the thought of being a gay guy or a guy with a girl turned me on more, made me happier, than assuming the female role in a relationship. Suddenly it just all "clicked", you know. (FYI: I am pan, which is basically bi but even more... open)
However, it would take another couple of years before I could FULLY accept it for myself and not feel 'weird' or 'crazy' or like I 'let people down' (my parents, friends, etc.), and then another year before I'd come out to quite a few of them and make the final decision to actually transition from female-to-male.

My life has been quite a rollercoaster ride, not just gender-wise, and it is difficult to structure it, but nevertheless I want to. For my own sake, and hopefully also to help others and show them things from my point of view.

Feel free to ask questions, if you have any, or suggestions for next posts, etc. whatever you want to share. I hope you are enjoying reading my blog :)

Cheers,
Erik