I am Janie. That other part of me has receded into, well, I don’t know where. I live my life pretty much like any other woman.

And yet…

After all this time, it is still hard. I still constantly assess my surroundings to see if I’ve been clocked. I still have to make an effort with my voice, my posture and even sometimes, my attitude. I am not doing any of these to conform to someone else’s idea of womanhood – it is who I want to be, and when I’m on, I’m happy. The outer feeds the inner. It is an amazing thing to feel so right, the way you were meant to feel and to be, that what you strive for is actually what makes you happy.

I know I am very much the kind of woman I was meant to be, but I am starting to resent that it isn’t coming more naturally to me after all this time. I can make all kinds of excuses, like how late I transitioned and such, but it doesn’t make it any easier to have to deal with restraining where autopilot takes me when left unattended.

This is made all the worse by my age. Even regular women find that, as age advances, they have to pay more attention to the way they carry themselves, how they dress and so on to project an appealing image. For some it just gets to be too much of a pain to bother with. I am far too vain for that – at least for the time being.

I really wish that I could just let things fly, unedited, and have everything come out just right. But, frustrated as I may occasionally be, it is more important that I be thankful for the place I live, the people who love me and the person I have managed to become, imperfect as she may be.