Was every trans adult a trans kid once?

Well, it's complicated, right?

When you're over 40 you start to get a peek at what people mean when they say things like "it was a different time."

Boys Don't Cry came out in 1999. I'd just turned 21 that same month.

Growing up in a time and place where the existence of trans men wasn't even hinted at and the existence of trans women was only culturally available to us in the form of cruel jokes and serial killer movies was just different.

Worse, obviously. But also different.

The idea of transness as I understand it now was so inaccessible to me that I honestly hesitate to call my young self trans.

The closest I can get is to say that if I'd understood what transition was, however young I was at the time, I'm pretty sure I would have wanted it.

But the not knowing was *so* pervasive. It's a struggle to explain it. Transmasculinity was a color only insects could see. A 3rd dimension to a flatlander.

It feels more accurate- even now- to say that I was gender nonconforming from around 16 years, lesbian identified, and struggled with depression and self harm.

All the would haves and could haves, well, they weren't. That was all of what I was. The only reality I had access to.

A last thought: Even calling my past self "gender nonconforming" feels a bit off, since that ALSO wasn't really language I had access to.

Dressing like a girl/woman was so incomprehensible and terrifying that I felt I was forced to copy what my lesbian friend wore.

I always wanted to be performing femininity and womanness more accurately, doing a better job at it. I just... couldn't. How wearing men's clothing actually *felt* to me was more like failure and incompetence.

I never felt I was failing at being a woman- I didn't have a concept for being AFAB and doing so- but it felt like I was constantly failing to competently do what was expected of me as a woman, or even to understand those expectations beyond grasping my failure at them.

And this had nothing to do with being lesbian- I was proudly and gladly a lesbian. Lesbians were both known and affirmed enough in my cultural milleu that I had no problem being one.

But I knew I didn't look or act like a woman should, and that bothered me.