It took me a long time to reach the point where i knew transition was the right way to address my gender dysphoria. I thought i wasn’t girly enough because i wasn’t always miserable with a man’s life. But what i’ve come to realize is that for me, much of it was cosplay.

I was play acting when i flirted, when i puffed out my chest and portrayed masculinity, when i made love as a man. And while there were times when i could “relax in my trailer” the take never cut, the cameras kept rolling and i could never remove my costume.

Until i did. And that became acting too. Friends and family went along with this new experimental role as if i was garth brooks suddenly in emo hair, they did what i asked they called me the name i asked, they referred to me as a girl but i didn’t feel like i could believe them.

Until i did. One day and then the next and then the next. I knew i was a woman. For me, that day came when i no longer needed a superficial costume. When i felt like a woman without any makeup or clothes, with the last remnants of grey stubble, and streaky mascara.

I’d been on HRT for just 6 months at that time. It was still hard to accept that others saw me as a woman. But those days were filled with confidence that grew in me like water from a natural spring. Femininity was still a performance but not a costume, it was me: shapeless clay

Molded day by day by practice and social conditioning by the lively conversation trees suddenly unlocked when alone with another woman out of the earshot of men, that were once hidden by how i had been perceived. And yet i still felt like i didn’t know how to love as a woman.

Until i did. 3 years on, i took shape. My smile, my polite attentions, my consternation, my nothing at all —suddenly imbued with the power to soften the hard stone countenance of man, to nourish, to challenge, to light the way, to conquer. It’s been a journey.