I seem to have crossed the passing point. People who I encounter in everyday life assume I was born a woman, almost without exception. Even my voice, which is still enough to get me called ’sir’ over the phone, seems to pass muster when backed up by my appearance.

Everyone used to stare, or double-take, or rubber-neck. EVERYONE. For more than two long years.

Until last August–when I deemed it safe enough to come out to my son J., five months after his mother and I separated because of my need to transition–I lived part-time in both genders, and looked like a misfit at all times.

After my epiphany (April 2006), even when I was in “man-mode,” I was wearing women’s clothes, and makeup. I was unwilling to allow my body’s masculinity to remain unchallenged, but still unmistakably phenotypically male. In general, people are upset by overtly femininely attired men, especially when they’re caring for a child. I was upsetting the natural order.

When I was in woman-mode, things were better internally, but I felt forced  to overcompensate. Too much makeup, always a skirt, always carefully put together. I knew that people would see the maleness of my body, and hear the deepness of my voice, so I wanted them to have no question that my goal was to be a woman, even once they clocked me as trans.

In spite of my goal being completely obvious, most people didn’t know how to respond. The clued-in would use female pronouns. The generous, but clueless, would call me things like “friend,” and ignore pronouns. Many would use their language–spoken and body–to convey their insistence that no matter how I looked, I was a man to them.

I worked like crazy on refining my female presentation. I shaved 20 lbs off my frame through yoga. I burned my face with a laser every few weeks. I shaved every piece of me. I bought clothes continuously (at deep discounts, hoping to avoid financial destruction), striving to make up for decades of wardrobe learning in a couple of years. Eventually, I went on hormone therapy.

Then suddenly, sometime over the past month, I crossed over. My face now says woman more than man. My body is skinny. My hair is long and luxuriant. My clothes fit me, and work together. I apply makeup expertly.

In general, people wouldn’t guess I had ever lived as a man.

The friction with the world around me has dissipated. The same clothes that used to train everyone’s eyes on me now attract minimal attention. I get smiles, instead of confused frowns. People call me “miss” instead of “friend.”

The back of my neck is finally relaxed. I no longer continuously fear being taunted, or embarrassed. I no longer need to obsess over how other people see me–over trying to overwrite the effects of the testosterone that ran in my veins for years.

Now that I’m finally out from under that cloud, I can appreciate how difficult a place it was to be. Although I’m confident enough to endure it, I do not enjoy being a freak, and that is how people have been seeing me.

In time, I’m sure that my confidence will rise to a point where I can put the process of being me as I move through life back on autopilot, and turn my attention back to the normal grist of adulthood–career, family, home–and stop re-living an amplified version of teenage angst over not fitting in.

For now I’m just quietly incredulous when I move seamlessly through the world. For someone who has had to release her demons, and then embrace them in this most public of ways, it’s wonderful to to be able to take a walk in their absence.