Recognising that I was not “normal”

I’ve been dreaming of being a girl and secretly cross dressing for so many years, I take it for granted, but it had a beginning.
The cliche idea of a trans person is of the little boy who wanted to play with dolls and dress up, but that wasn’t me. I had a pretty conventional ‘boy’ childhood. I assumed I was a bit and would grow up and do boy things, and marry a girl and carry on being normal.
However, around puberty arriving I guess I started to think differently.
We had the “special lessons” to learn about the differences between our bodies and what was going to change. I was fascinated by what I learned about girls and their bodies. I wondered what a bra would feel like, what a period is like, how does it feel to wear a sanitary towel?  Sounds like silly things for a boy to wonder, but it captured my imagination. I used to try to imagine the feelings and in my head, all my fantasies were of being a girl or being turned into a girl. I had a weird fantasy of being locked into an iron leotard (a sort of trans man-in-the-iron-mask) to make me be a girl. Weird eh?
At some point in puberty I found a lump in my chest and my nipples really sore and hard. Hormones or whatever but I had started breast growth. The GP said it was nothing to worry about and would sort itself out, which it did. But it does make me wonder, whether that’s what should have happened for me. And now, looking back, I so wish it could have carried on and I had grown into a girl.
I fancied girls, always have, still do and I became fascinated with the way they look and their changing body shapes. Also their clothes, and the shape of a “vpl” through a skirt, the outline of a bra through a white blouse, or a bra strap, or tights and the way they crease behind the knee as girls walk. What was different about me from any other boy looking at girls was that I was wondering how their clothes and underwear felt, and how they experienced their bodies, rather than just how I fancied them as a boy. Although there was that too.
I tried on my mother’s clothes and underwear in secret. I even tried wearing a sanitary towel in my pants to see how it felt.
All the time I was very confused and conflicted. I felt wrong and scared of what would happen if everyone found out about my shameful secret. I worried that it was perverse or gay. I worried about my weirdness a lot.
As I said, I was still fancying girls, so maybe some actual girlfriend experience would resolve who I was and I would be “normal”?
Erm...in a word, no. Kissing is unisex I guess, our lips are the same. “Getting to second base” was something different though. Touching a bra and its soft satiny fabric, the softness of a breast within, the feel of a firm nipple through the bra. Far and away the sexiest thing I’d ever experienced. Did I feel all “normal boy”? No, I wondered how it felt to her. I put on a bra and tried how it felt to touch myself through a t-shirt and bra, then under the t-shirt. I wanted her experience not mine.
And that is why I know I’m not a normal boy.
I dream of the female experience and having a female body.
I secretly cross-dress and wear shapewear lingerie and padded bras to give me some sense of a female body but that’s not really real.
Somewhere inside me, I have a transgender woman who I’m always striving to connect with but not brave enough to embrace.