Thirty-nine years ago today, I was born in Portland, Oregon. By the time my mother first held me, I had been given a name and a gender, which I would carry with me well into adulthood.

Three months ago less four days, I told my mother and my father that the name and gender I had been given that day were no longer right for me — that perhaps they never had been. I told them that from now on I would live as a woman named Marcy. Immediately afterwards, I announced it to my coworkers and started updating my social media.

In the email I sent my folks (I decided it was easier to tell them that way, where I could be more articulate; that may have been a mistake) I said this:

I know you will have a lot of questions and concerns about this. But there's one thing I want to make clear.

• I don't expect you to understand me. I don't think anyone who isn't like this can truly understand it.

• I have no doubt that you love me and that will never change. I have never doubted that.

• What I need from you is to trust me, to trust that I know what I'm doing and that I'm being cautious and thoughtful.

So far, they have been working hard on doing that, and with some exceptions have done a good job. They've known me longer than anyone, so I don't blame them for struggling with it. It is hard to learn that someone you love and care about is changing in some fundamental way you don't understand.

I also told them this:

This is, obviously, a very difficult time to be openly trans. I have given that a lot of thought. If I felt there were any alternatives that would have the effect that I desire, I would pursue them. I did pursue them, in fact, and that's what led me to this point. So I wanted to assure you of a few things:

• I am not currently planning to change my legal name or do anything else to "out" myself to the federal government. My ID will remain under my current name and with an M gender marker for the time being.

• I am not currently planning to undergo any surgeries or anything that would prevent me from staying under the radar if things get bad.

One of these is no longer true — I have legally changed my name, although I have been holding off on updating my ID and so on for practical reasons. I meant it at the time, but I didn't realize how quickly it would become important to me to be Marcy and only Marcy.

In a way, it feels like the past three months have sped on by, but at the same time it feels like a lifetime's worth of events have transpired. The day I decided to transition, I wasn't sure I was even going to go on hormones, let alone change my name, completely turn over my wardrobe, and so on. I had some vague idea that by now I would be "out" in some way, that my birthday would be the right time to formally close the book on my old identity.

Last Saturday I had my birthday dinner with a few of my closest friends. I didn't give a big speech, I didn't say a fond farewell to the tried-to-be-a-man who got me here. Nothing like that was necessary, anymore. I am Marcy every day, now. I am Marcy when I dream, Marcy when I wake up, Marcy at work, and Marcy when I go to bed. It doesn't matter if I'm wearing makeup on a clean-shaven face with a dress or whether I'm wearing a tank top and boxers with two days' stubble. I'm still Marcy.

For this, I have many people to be grateful for. My good friends, my D&D group, my former colleagues, they all took my transition in stride, offering me congratulations and support. My DM painted his nails the trans pride colors at our next game. Several women I know offered to help me with clothes, makeup, and so on.

And the same was true at work. I had nothing but support and well-wishes, from my manager, my teammates, our Pride group, and people I'd never even spoken to before. A few weeks later, I traveled to San Francisco for an all-hands, presented femme the whole time, and people called me Marcy, came up to congratulate me, invited me to activities, and made room for me. For the first time in my adult life, I didn't feel self-conscious about people making an effort for me.

I also found a community on BlueSky, the social media platform that sometimes seems to be majority trans. I made an effort to reach out to other trans people (especially trans women, but not just them), to share my experiences, to compliment their selfies, to commiserate in their sorrows and celebrate their joys. The more I did this, the stronger I felt, the less isolated. I broke through my fear and told people my name, so they would call me by it, and I showed them my face, so they would know who I was.

It was by doing this that I met someone very special. Once I had decided to transition, once I had chosen a name, just before I started telling people in earnest, I wrote a long diary entry titled "My Decision". In it, I said:

I know that I have to do this because accepting transness has allowed me to see a future for myself, to imagine myself living a life, for the first time in a very long time. I never felt comfortable pursuing the traditional male cursus honorum of finding a woman, getting her to marry me, having a house and kids, all that jazz. I thought it was because I was just unconventional. Since I’ve started accepting my transness, I’ve actually been able to also accept the idea and the desire to have a life partner. It might be too late for kids, for me, and I’m certainly not planning to have biological ones. And I also accept that transitioning will close off certain possibilities for me — there are women who would have dated M— the soft, timid man who would not date Marcy the proud, happy woman. Very well. I will find happiness, one way or another.

I certainly had no intention of pursuing romance any time soon. I am still very heavy, not particularly healthy, and still figuring out how to be a woman. And I was still carrying a great deal of trauma from previous relationships that needed to be unpacked. A few years, I thought, of therapy and working on myself, and then I might start looking into dating, at 41 or 42.

There is no way I could have imagined what happened, because it happened by chance. She was just one of the many trans women I had started following, and she had posted something in response to a prompt about a writing project she was working on. The excerpt was interesting, and had a connection to a tabletop roleplaying system I'd always been interested in. So I replied, and she asked if I wanted to beta read for her. I said sure, and she added me on Discord. And we started talking. And talking. Day after day. She did eventually send me a draft for her novella, but not before we had fallen in love.

Of all the things that have happened in my life this three months that I could have never expected, the one that is still the most surprising to me is that I made the move. I told her I was interested in her, when the feelings were still kindling within me, and not after months or years of being roasted from within, until the desire had turned into pain. Those first few days, when we were still figuring out what it all meant, and I thought for sure she would say "no, what are we doing here, goodbye", there were times I felt like I would be consumed by the fear. But I was two steps on the water, as Kate Bush sang; there was no way out but forward. And forward we have gone, together.

A month from now I will be finishing packing for the longest vacation in my life, the furthest I have ever traveled, my first time in another country. I will be flying to Ontario so I can take my love's hands in mine, so I can know her presence, so we can be real without a doubt. I will spend two weeks with her there. The me who once was would have found this imprudent, insane, impossible. But I have certainty in myself now. I know who I am, and I know that I have decided, and I am a woman who stands by her decisions and acts on them.

There are times I wish I had figured this out years ago, so I could have saved myself years of pain, so I could be slimmer, healthier, with many more years of living as a woman ahead of me. I don't think there's a single adult transitioner who doesn't feel that way sometimes. But right now, as I think about the past three months, the months to come, and the lifetime that lies ahead of me, I have no regrets. The path was tortuous and full of tears, but in walking it I have passed through sorrow into joy, and it has led me to her. However winding and parlous the road ahead, however sore my feet become, my heart will be light and the way will be sure as long as she walks beside me.

Someday I will write more about her. I feel like I could write a tome long and heavy enough to break my foot if I dropped it.

Transitioning is the best decision I have ever made. There have been moments of sadness, pain, discomfort, but never uncertainty. I will live a woman and I will pass from this life as a woman, and I will never consider a single moment of that time wasted. If you are reading this, and you have wrestled with questions about your own gender, please try reading and listening to trans people talk about their experiences. That was what made the difference for me — knowing that there is a vast diversity in what brings people to transition, that there isn't just one "I always knew" story to tell.

And if you think you might be trans, but are putting off figuring it out because you "have bigger problems", because you're "not attractive enough", because you "wouldn't fit in", please know that those fears stopped me from making this decision for over a decade, and they were wrong. Transitioning gave me the strength to tackle those problems. Transitioning made me feel like I could be attractive for the first time in my life. Transition made me finally feel like I fit in, not just with other trans women but in the world as a whole.

Even cis people should explore their gender, if only to better understand it. Live your life as the person you want to be, an examined life where you are sovereign over your own body and identity. Even if that leads you to a conventional, expected place, there is value in knowing that you put yourself there, not anyone else.

I am full of love, today. For my parents who brought me here; for my friends who helped me along the way; for my teachers and colleagues; for my trans sisters, brothers, and sibs; for my beloved who lives so far away and yet is always in my heart; for myself, and the woman I am becoming; and for the world, the big, terrifying, beautiful, unpredictable, glorious world that I am so grateful to be still living in.

And I love you, too, for reading this, for caring about the thoughts and the life of someone you likely have never met. Take care of yourself, and love yourself, too.