A lot of similarities to your experience from the opposite side of the aisle. I was a very shy introverted kid but I definitely did never feel I fit in with other boys and prefered hanging out with girls. In universtiy I took some feminist theory courses, one in particular with a cool radfem prof, and this combined with getting interested in the goth subculture made me realize that being male didn't mean I had to be masculine. I do remember the feeling of visceral happiness when I was first experimenting with dressing in a more feminine way that I was expressing something deep inside myself and it felt very liberating. I suppose this is the closest I've ever felt to their "gender identity" (but it certainly didn't make me feel like a woman it just was not having to be a stereotypical man that felt so liberating I knew I was still male)? I also do remember getting some books about transsexualism and exploring the issue (more thinking "maybe if I take feminine hormones that will help me to look more androgynous or feminine, not actually wanting to be a woman.)

But the books I read were what we'd call today very transmedicalist and they said you should only transition if you want to live full time as the opposite sex and have dysphoria. I never thought of myself in any way as a woman so I dopped the idea.

I moved to a very small town where being openly GNC in dress is difficult and I guess I really just continued being myself and generally supporting feminism but not thinking a lot about gender issues until last year I was actually looking for some info about feminism on Reddit and thought maybe to get involved in discussions and there was this thread in one of the main feminist subs where a woman was saying some very common sense things which reminded me of what I had been taught about feminism and gender and she was just being moobbed by a group of like 20 people who were just saying horrible things to her and calling her a "TERF" (I barely even knew what that was referring to) but they were also saying "r/GenderCritical is evil! and even reading it will turn you into a bigot!" or something like that. I didn't even know what "GenderCritical was but these people, despite being in a feminist sub were acting like the MRAs and GamerGaters I had argued with a lot in the past, shaming and bullying a woman just for being a feminist soI figured I should check out anything they hated so much, particularly as I knew radfems to be good people and not bigoted at all.

Queue the usual. Reading GC, discovering the debate sub, Meghan Murphy, Magdalen Burns ETC. and getting "peaked". Finding what GC people believed was actually very similar to my own beliefs about gender which I've had for like 25 or 30 years.