Why do I only feel bad now at 24?

Lots of us start the way you are. Not all of us knew for sure at age 5 we were in the wrong body. It's okay. It doesn't invalidate your feelings. It also does not preclude you from being Trans. I know people who discovered they were Trans in their 50s. 24 is not too old. A good next step is to find a good gender therapist. One that will guide you through the self discovery you need to make the right choice for your life. Good luck, we are here too for some support.

Howdy Fucking Dooooo.

This is exactly how I began questioning my identity with gender. There were no childhood experiences or intense dysphoria. I've just always been that weird kid -- A natural contrarian.

This does not invalidate these feelings that're rising inside of you. Treating this differently from discovering your mission in life or any numerous life events only creates pain.

Identity is fluid and what makes us sure of x yesterday is making y impossible tomorrow. Weère constantly changing and this might turn out to be nothing, change your perspective and create empathy with the transgender community or nothing will change.

Pro tip: Begin experimenting now. Begin wearing feminine clothing. Grow your hair out. Whatever it takes just focus on experimenting and noting how these experiences make you feel.

You know whatès weird for me? The internal dialogue I have with myself is often feminine since I began questioning my gender identity. Different 'triggers' for girl mode have found their way into my life, such as electronic music. Why? Who knows.

Just start experimenting.

It might feel like this has come out of nowhere but a) it probably hasn't, people repress this stuff, and b') if you want to be a woman now, that's ok, you don't need to justify it, just do what's right for you.

like most everyone so far I would say you will have to find what you truly feel about yourself. I was not one that knew when I was real young .. but have been confused my whole life .. Im not sure what triggered it but I started doing more research on transgender and found things the just starting ringing a bell in my head saying "hey thats you" and thinking back over many years lots of things from my past now really make sense .. I spent a lot of time thinking it was simple crossdressing and probably just gay. but now that I have connected with the real me I am at peace and love who I am and have been getting lots of good support. so I would say just research and watch others Youtube videos there are some that I have a hard time watching and there are others that just hit home. I watched some that were about transgender kids and their struggles and I really connected with some of those and found my early life was very simular to them. I know this was a bit long winded but hope it helps

My story is roughly the same - I feel it does an extreme disservice to have all these shows about trans* people ALWAYS tell the same "I knew since I was 5" story, when the community is more diverse than that. There were signs since I was a teenager, I put it together maybe 5 years ago. I'm still putting it together, honestly - I don't know if I'm MtF or bigender (I know I'm somewhere in there). I know this isn't entirely uncommon.

For a while I did the same as you - psychoanalyzing EVERYTHING. I'm more comfortable just being now (I still have a lot of crap I need to figure out) - my recommendation, just let yourself feel what you feel, and be who you feel right now. Whatever was, was, and whatever will be, will be - but you know that's how you feel now, and the now is all there is.

If you need someone to talk to, feel free to message me :-).

A bit late to the party, but I'm right there with you. I just recently turned 24 myself, and the only reason I found out is that I decided on something of a whim to see if I could pass as a female. The only reason I even did that was because my non-binary SO had recently started masculinizing HRT, so who knows how things would have turned out if that didn't happen. The TL;DR version is that every step I took to be more passable also just felt right, one thing led to another, and now I'm planning on transition. Looking back, there are things that could be interpreted as tells, or just chalked up to eccentricity, who knows. I'm still figuring things out, but the one thing I am sure of now is that when I look in the mirror in the right light and manage to see a woman, I'm genuinely happy.

I'm in the same situation. I have no answer. My only guess is that my world views have shifted a lot in the past few years alongside maturation. As an example: I went from
"I don't know what feminism is" from age 0-17, to
"Gender equality is great, but don't we have that?" at 18, to
"Gender equality is great, but don't forget how men I see around me are also being oppressed" at 19-21, to
"Feminism is vital in every single way, the systematic oppression against women is deeply ingrained within every part of our culture" at 22+

I just mentally matured in a way that allowed me to honestly explore the world around me, and the thoughts within me, without being affected by outside influences like misogyny and transphobia.

All of my life, I wished I were a girl, but I didn't hate being a guy, so I say that I always had a gender identity condition. But, in my early 50s, it erupted into all out dysphoria - which means "ill feelings" - when I finally hated being a male and, finally, could not abide as a male to where, over the past two years, I undertook transitioning. As we say: the transgender experience is highly individualized. Even more, it is highly mystical.

I knew something was up, but I was comfortable in my identity, or I thought I was, for almost 45 years.

Don't feel like this invalidates you. Everyone walks a different path.