I did invalidate myself a lot before I realized I was trans. Tried very hard to repress, told myself I couldn’t be a woman, and just generally tried as hard as I could to deny my thoughts and feelings about my body and gender. But that being said, there’s no one easy answer here.

Not “feeling like a woman” can mean a lot of different things. Does that thought occur in relation to your body, to your presentation, to how people speak with you? Gender is an abstract concept, so what “feeling like a woman” means is relative to the speaker and the context of what they’re saying. Throughout my childhood, I had recurrent fantasies about becoming or being a girl. When I was little, I used to lay in bed at night daydreaming that I had a magic ring that would turn me into a girl. I would purge myself of those thoughts on a regular basis, especially as I entered adolescence and my voice dropped. I would feel intensely dysphoric and engaged in escapism as often as I could, playing female characters in games, writing about female characters, generally inserting myself as women and girls on books and shows that I wanted to embody.

But all that being said, I would not have said that I felt like a girl or a woman at those times. I felt trapped because I wasn’t able to be a girl. I felt deeply uncomfortable with my body and my presentation. But I doubled down, repressed, tried to be masculine, and tried to embrace manhood, as much as that repulsed me. I felt like a woman in the sense that I desired womanhood and a different body. I wanted to be female and embody femininity. But if I was asked, “Right now, do you feel like a woman” I would probably have said no. That question would not have been worthwhile in helping me discover my gender identity. What it really came down to is “If I could be a woman, would I” and “what is my gender identity, does my dysphoria with my body and gender come from a different gender identity”. For me, the answer to those questions ultimately saved my life.

But that’s just my thoughts on that particular question and my experiences discovering myself. You need to ask yourself for truths about who you are. You need to introspect and see who you actually are, what it is you want. Try presenting differently in a safe way, play an online mmo but go by a woman’s name and make friends as a woman. Order new clothes online that you can try on. Ask trusted friends to use a different name or pronouns with you, just to see how you feel. Try makeup or nail polish. Try wearing things you normally wouldn’t. Just give yourself space to explore your gender safely. And see how all these things make you feel. Ask yourself if you would want hormones, if you would want to feminize your body. Being a woman isn’t the only option either, there’s also gender nonconformity and non-binary identities. There’s people who are agender. But to find out you have to explore those things.