In retrospect, I find hard to believe that I used all those small coping mechanisms but only realised later that I was a trans-woman

uhh ... it always seems to obvious in the retrospect. but don't be too hard on yourself for not figuring it out earlier, you probably didn't even know that the possibility existed so how could you have guessed it?

we're sometimes very blind towards options that we don't even consider possible in the first place. which makes us blind. but alas, what to do about it?

(how many other things are there that we simply haven't thought about yet?)