I definitely experienced the lack of concepts/words as a youth, and lack of safety as a youth and adult. It wasn't until my spouse fully deconstructed our religion and embraced their own queerness that I had the emotional capacity to come out to myself.

Another factor for me, as a late 30s NB transfemme, is that I personally don't have much dysphoria around my genitals or name, but rather feel like something critical is missing when restricted to traditionally masculine modes of expression, both socially, bodily (e.g. breasts) and sexually.

As a kid I think it just came out as awkward loner most of the time. After all I didn't _not_ feel like a boy, but if I'd known I could be a girl too, or take what I like from both and be bound to neither, wow would that have hit home. Now that I'm feeling the freedom to carve my own path of gendered expression, there's a world of difference.