bf: gosh, you looked like a pretty girl even then
me: well i was, is the thing π i just hadn't figured it out yet
of note, this isn't even necessarily a "trans"* thing. a great many girls who were correctly identified as such from birth, still can take decades to understand and define femininity on their own terms so that it can include them, and they can see how pretty they always were.
*: "scare quotes" because "trans" is an external description. i have only ever been azurelore. only ever a girl. the things other people insisted about me, and forced me to humor and mask and hide for my own safety, they had nothing to do with me. that all was somebody else's problem.