Your journey reminds me of my own, althrough I don’t identify as trans. I had the same experience growing up, feeling feminine and feeling more comfortable playing with girls than boys, and as a teen longing to be female myself.

My sex is biologically, male, and like you, I don’t want to change my body using surgery. My gender is a social construct — my society reads me as male, and I can’t really change that, aside from what you mentioned, publicly identifing as trans. I don’t have a lot invested in what society things of me, and I’m not active in the social justice circles you mention, so I’ve just decided I am myself. Nothing more and nothing less. There’s no identity I can take on which will allow me to more authentically represent myself. So I’m just going to keep being me, which is why I don’t think of myself as trans, genderqueer, non-binary, or whatever. A desire to be female or be feminine waxes and wanes within me but that desire doesn’t somehow dissolve or invalidate my present or past states as male. The feminine little boy that I once was doesn’t retroactively turn into a little girl physically disguised as a boy because of my feelings today.

I was and I am a misfit into my social expectations as male. But I can’t right that wrong by claiming I was a good fit all along for my “actual” identity as female. My identity and experience are what they are, they aren’t as I wished they’d be.

I’ll always be muddling through this, as I think we all do. Stay strong and don’t let anyone make you feel ashamed of yourself or your choices.