Oh, you innocent soul, I almost envy you. Your mind can't even try to comprehend. Please stay like this
It's not very strange if you've seen how they act. It's like they're a skipping record, closest thing to a mental glitch you can witness in a regular person.
@mean : in my experience, it was a choice and also a consequence of my abusive mother, not inborn.
But I used to say the same thing as in your example, that I was born like that, to everyone I've told my secret to.
I unconsciously convinced myself that I've always been like that because of how the media shapes our psyche from when we are little babes. The official narrative is that you're born like this, so I interpreted the fascination I had with a classmate's beauty when I was 7 as having a crush on her (I have an artist mind and she was like made of marble). I also really loved the personality and mannerisms of an older girl in my appartment building and those of another classmate (they weren't ugly either, they were like Snow White).
But looking back at it all without the mental filter I unconsciously adopted from the media, I realize that I wanted TO BE THEM, not to be with them. Until a few years ago, if someone were to even imply any of this, that I wasn't born like that, I would have hated them with every fiber of my being and hoped they'd die a painful death though. I was very invested in the narrative we're being fed. It's called TV programming for a reason.
I was born in a very conservative country too, during communism, but after that regime was over, things about LGBT started to trickle into our media too, very very slowly and very subtle things but it was enough. There's nothing more dangerously insidious than an idea.