The saddest part for me about coming out late in life is that I missed out on having a girlhood. Sure, I did a lot of the girly things with my sister and my best friend. And I know I would have been a tomboy so my early life wouldn’t have been that different.
But there are a lot of formative experiences after puberty that I really miss not having. I never learned how to braid hair. I never got to experiment with makeup. And I didn’t get girl talk because no matter how much I tried to fit in with groups of girls, I was never fully accepted.
Instead I had to pretend to be a boy. I had to try to fit in and just feel awkward about the whole thing. I never felt like I could communicate with boys and I didn’t care about the things my peers did like sports and violence. The only boy I was ever close to ended up being gay. In retrospect, our friendship was the closest I ever got to dating in high school.
I wish I had a time machine so I could go back and have the right puberty at the right time. So if you have a trans teen or know one in your life, please advocate for hormone blockers and gender affirming care. Don’t let your teen miss out on having the life they want.
Finding Haven 
I am not telling you not to regret. I don’t know your age at your coming of gender age, so to speak, but I didn’t really know until I was 59, and started to transition at 60, I am now 61. I see my whole life is connected as one big journey, so this for me is part of the journey, and even though it is so so later than most trans* individuals, i love where I ended up landing. The journey I see as necessary to being a woman.
Funny, I was accepted by many girl clicks. They carried on talking as if I was just one of them. Of course, I am sure they did not see me as a girl, or if any ever did they never said anything to me or that I heard from others that make. Those were the days of my haze of drug and alcohol abuse. I really felt a lot more comfortable being with as opposed to my guy friends, but I did not have the wits to recognized what could have meant. (btw, I have always detested locker room talk)
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