After denying previous cracks in my teens and twenties as just a part of me beeing weird; I will list my curent final round that lead to loosing my denial:

1. Actually... playing Celeste. I don't even remember what it was, but it somehow it brought my mind to think that I have to process something I surpressed and since then it didn't leave my head. That's also why my chosen Name is a homage: Madlaine

2. A year later a psychologist (unrelated issue) put me on the right way to find out that I'm actually a veery high masking autistic person (CAT-Q 148...) and the negative results in my youth are wrong because my symptoms in earlier assessments don't match the symptoms of a male autistic person but of a female autistic person. And back then (and still today...) it was in many doctors minds that autism is clearly gender-specific. This realization that I'm actually allowed to be different and don't have to actively fit in (my parents denied the possibility of me being neurodivergent because the tests were negative) gave me the energy to rediscover myself. And the gendered test-result were forshadowing

3. While already seeing myself as genderfaer (enby-fem genderfluid with only very rarely masc-parts) a few weeks later, I still was in denial. I'm autistic so enby is kinda okay. But binary-trans? Me? naah

4. After a while I discovered that my gender identity can rather be described as "sometimes more, sometimes less, sometimes 0 but never anything else than femme". At this point I already wear some feminine clothing at home and outed myself to my gf.

5. < crack > GF was away for the weekend and I bought my first makeup to try to get some euphoria to get over a depressive phase. And seeing myself without that weird beardshadow and with some contouring and some accessories... wow... I discovered what was wrong all these years.

6. I never imagined my own wedding. I just couldn't imagine myself at my own wedding in a suit. Which is weird. I love suits. I love women in suits. My next suite will be tailored feminine, but I will still wear suits.
   But one evening, I suddenly see my wedding. I'm in this fabulous mixture of a violet suit and dress. I'm a women ... so that was why I could never imagine myself as husband...

7. < final cracks > telling my girlfriend my name. I'm Madlaine now. She calls me her girlfriend now. I will one day become her wife <3

8. If all goes well, HRT starts in December. 30 by then, but well, it's never to late I was told.