For the early stages, I was a strange child. Teachers called me fussy or like an "old soul" I still sometimes feel that way when I interact with people my age range. I always been surrounded by the disinterest of things other kids cared about. I just liked cute things and had an obsession with cats. Putting on cute clothes sometimes, wearing a cute dress, acting cute was all fun. Elementary school at the earliest, probably 4th or 5th grade, I realized I found girls more attractive to me, but.. I experienced something called puberty around that time. I developed something called breasts and it made me grossed out with myself. Eventually I experienced period cramping and I would be very uncomfortable with how my physical form looked and felt. I knew immediately I was different, but I couldnt put a finger on it. More so that I was unable to verbally express my feelings or feel like it was ok to confide in someone about it. I thought it was just only me and eventually I would grow out of the disgust I had for my own body. Eventually I grew more distant from other people and push them away for fear that people would eventually find out about my feelings for other girls while hating my own body. It wasn't something I could find out about until middle school where my auntie gave me an old, outdated laptop for school use. In that laptop I would discreetly search around but in the early 2000s the exposure to society of queer and trans people were not easy to research. Much of the terms and lingo were not used often or part of society as much as now. My first exposure was a word that I randomly found. The word "transgender" and "gay" were the first words similar to how I felt existed. Unfortunately not much about the queer community was as understood as now. I never thought I was "trans" since I was born with a feminine shell but yet I liked some things considered "fem". I then found a youtube channel called "Hartbeat". Some reason there were no exposure of trans youtubers 8 years ago but Heartbeat, a queer comedian and me seeing their watermelon bra video while using the word "Quierd" to describe themself kind of helped me vaguely identify as queer. It's funny thinking about it but all the youtubers I followed from middle to highschool that helped me have exposure to LGBT+ and the meanings were Hartbeat, Tyler Oakley, Davey Wavey, and a few others. But.. No trans youtubers yet.. I never had exposure to opently trans people other than Gigi Gorgeous and an upperclassman from highschool I ran into at the bathroom one day. The trans guy I ran into at a bathroom had a nosebleed and a school security person told him to use the girls bathroom (which was weird but ok). To this day I prefer public women's bathrooms because I feel safer and it's usually cleaner. I would go in the guy's bathroom if it was empty and use a closed stall. I don't have a dude's pp so it makes me feel weird and I feel like i'll get judged. Part of me had a baby crush but I also was curious about his story. It did help me understand myself a little bit. I did eventually thought maybe I was trans but during this time, I went through a hyperfeminine phase while being obsessed with still cats, but also obsessed with anime, and embarrassingly pretending to be a cute "anime girl". My cute aesthetic stood out even moresince I was asian and started drawing nothing but anime and talked about anime. It was a cringy part of my past but still a part of me. Maybe around that time, I developed a persona to represent my birthname and a way to cope with my confusion and dysphoria. Just pretending to be someone else was easier on my mental health, using a nasaly high voice and acting cute for affection from my friend circle. I did have a handful of friends that I gathered with my gaydar but we fell apart after highschool.