It's hard to say, really. My memories of the questioning stage are really murky for some reason. I do remember that I started to get really uncomfortable being referred to as "she", but for awhile I thought I just hated being referred to, especially since I would mostly hear it from the students I was teaching, and usually when I had said something unclear. I also remember being extremely, viscerally uncomfortable every time I would remember that I had a uterus and could get pregnant. For a long time I just chalked that up to being extremely childfree, but looking back I do think there was more to it than that.

I also had some conversations with my partner and my mom about gender and learned that most people actually do feel comfortable with their gender. My mom's only slightly relevant anecdote was about how much she hated having small boobs in high school, and I was like, wow, what I wouldn't give for small boobs. My partner (a cis man) has kind of a soft face and a high voice and he used to get misgendered some amount, especially as a child. Hearing him talk about those experiences was pretty wild. His immediate reaction to the misgendering was always a sort of "wow, those people are extremely wrong", whereas when I tried to put myself in his shoes, I realized I wouldn't have felt the same way if people had "mistaken" me for a man.

And then I began to realize just how much of my "style" was because I was performing femininity. I had long hair and I hated it, but I didn't want to cut it because "women have long hair", even though I knew women with short hair. I wore skirts occasionally, hated them too, but couldn't figure out why. I had precisely one fancy dress that I would wear to every wedding, funeral, what have you, and I couldn't imagine buying another one.

Just a bunch of little things, each meaningless on its own, but together, well, I'm extremely trans it turns out.