How old were you when dysphoria began?

[nerdperson777]

Really good question.  I never really thought about it.  I knew that I never liked dresses or skirts.  Fortunately my mom barely wore dresses except for big events like weddings so she didn't make me wear them.  To my knowledge, I've only worn them 3 times in my life.  The two that I remember currently is a skort for a wedding when I was 12 and being forced to go to prom at 17 in a dress and makeup.  I was never really taken seriously by my parents and they decided everything for me so I gave up on a lot of things, including the way I dressed.  Most of my clothes growing up were incredibly plain shirts, solids or stripes.  So basically I dressed androgynously.  

But my hair.  I had the same hair style from birth to 19.  I didn't know much of anything about hair so then I just opted for the same kind of hair every time I went to the hairdresser.  She had done my haircuts for as long as I remember.  She even told my dad when he walked in for a cut that even she was tired of my same haircut.  I had a simple bowl cut, no layers, no highlights, no nothing.  It wasn't until my teens or so that I realized that I really liked it when a razor was used on the back of my head.  I liked the prickles.  After my haircuts I would keep rubbing them until they stopped being prickles basically.  They turned red, stopped being perpendicular, I forget.  IT FELT SO NICE, but I didn't know why.

 And with me giving up on being heard, I paid attention to nothing growing up.  I was ignorant of everything except what my parents decided for me, just studying.  Only in retrospect did I remember some people as my bullies.  I got slapped around and got in fights at home.  There's nothing to lift a finger at when I'm in school.  Do I really have to go berserk like I do at home because some guy threw away a test paper I passed to him because I touched it and asked for another page that wasn't touched by me?  There were some thing about living as a girl that I was fine with but some not.  I didn't like being treated as lower class.  It was a thing I especially experienced in early schooling because I wanted to play balls with the boys.  They would discriminate and only let me in on rare instances, like maybe there weren't enough people.  So I was forced to play with the other girls, either riding swings or climbing the jungle gym.  Then there was dad.  He's very traditionally patriarchal.  He was always going on about girls can't do certain things for whatever reason.  One day he said a neighbor's son quit his job as a ice cream scooper after several years.  I was just joking about how I probably couldn't do it.  He just agreed with me and said girls can't do it because you need strong arms for that job.  So he basically called me a girl and I didn't like that.

I was content with most things before puberty.  I liked to act like Tarzan, pounding my chest.  Being absolutely ace, I never really thought about what's under that loincloth, nor did I actually care.  I had to wear a bra sometime when I was 12 or 13, I forget.  I know lower body parts started the week after my 13th birthday.  Even when puberty was discussed in 5th grade, I knew that I didn't want any of it.  I humored my mom by getting training bras because I just liked new things.  And then I never wore them.  When her conservative friend saw that I wasn't wearing one at 12, she just HAD to tell my mom to make me wear them because it's ugly not to wear one.  So eventually I had to wear one.  I'm not actually sure what kind I actually wore first, but it was some sort of thin sports bra.  It was uncomfortable.  I was always trying to pull it down because I was used to wearing clothes that went shoulder to hips or thigh.  Eventually I had to wear "normal" bras and I had to pull them down even more.  Plus I didn't really like the indentations it made on my skin.  I didn't know of any way out of bras so I was stuck with them.  Then my lower body.  When it happened, I did not like it.  I tried to rinse the blood out in the sink and stuff it at the bottom of the laundry pile.  (Mom did both our laundry until I went to college.)  I put on a new pair of underwear and acted like nothing happened.  And then mom found out.  She taught me how to use a pad.  Being dysphoric and not knowing the words, I rather have my underwear all destroyed than wear that thing.  But blood stains, a lot.  Also I wasn't given the choice.  My chest isn't so big so I can live with it.  But a uterus?  That causes me so much dysphoria.  It lessened a lot when I gave up on life.  Now that I have hope again, it just sucks more.  I also used to not get so many cramps or much loss of iron but it's really hitting me every time now.

So I guess my big issue is having puberty in the first place.  If my body stayed prepubescent, I would probably be absolutely content.  Also my age fluidity places me in a preteen mind most of the time.  Body wise I would be set, but socially would be another thing.  Since I did not get the choice of my puberty, I would need T to get to the preteen level I want.  I looked up that not having a primary hormone could be dangerous so I'll just have to make testosterone just enough to be dominant.

[Guest]

I must have been around mid teens or something like that. I realised i wasn't doing it the way the girls of my age did. I tried and tried and just couldn't bring myself to love the stuff they did. I never really liked girly things. I was a gamer and i loved playing soccer with the neighbors.

I didn't have a clue what was wrong with me untill my mid 20's, then i seriously had issues with the way i was supposed to dress, walk  and talk. I wanted to do boy things more then i wanted to do girly stuff. It only got worser when i was in my late 20's/begining of my 30's then i realised something was off. I stumbled on AVEN and learned about being asexual, then i learned about gender and sex and a whole new world opened up to me. I'm glad i found Aven and i'm glad i learned so much about myself. Now i know that it's ok to be me and that i'm not weird for being me. One of the biggest eye openers of my life and i'm grateful for it!

[nerdperson777]

^I tried to get into those stuff at 19.  I'm glad I didn't.  People always told me to grow my hair out.  It was always shoulder length.  They said they think I'd look good in it.  And then those games.  I could not let go of them.  But ironically I've mostly let go now, as now I know that it was an escape from the life I lived.  So then I had a hard time at 19 and 20.  It's still hard now, just turned 22.  I felt better once I didn't abide by gender rules.  I used to not lie on the couch with my laptop and open legs because dad said it looked like giving birth.  Now that I'm not a girl, I let myself do it.  Since I've not come out to relatives, I have to make sure I don't do all those things, like manspreading (even though I'm not a man) when they visit.  Definitely made me grow to understand some things in the world beyond the logic rationale.  Now I have to look at the work experience rationale and not look so clueless around people due to my lack of interacting experience.

[Maiflower]

I was 15