Three years and six months after I first went to my GP in Brighton and asked to enter the NHS gender reassignment pathway, I'm sitting at my computer, staring at a flickering cursor on an empty screen. Writing the closing entry in this Transgender journey series, my first thought is to consider a return to normality. I no longer feel constantly aware that I have recently had a major operation (as long as I don't have to run for a bus, anyway).

Then I remember that much of the time, for me, transsexual living has not been extraordinary. It lent no added glamour or intrigue to a trip to the launderette. It threw up no complications that most other people would not have to face. Only two of its specific flashpoints – coming out and having sex reassignment surgery (SRS) – caused immediate and significant changes to my relationships with my family, friends, colleagues and body. While they have long since ceased to need crisis management, all of these relations will continue to change, for reasons most likely unrelated to my gender.

On reflection, even trying to identify 'normality', physical or mental, in any life is absurd. So, far better to ask: was this four-year engagement with the medical services (which it will be after my final Gender Identity Clinic appointment) worth it? Did I act on my lifelong gender issues in the right way? Do I feel more comfortable in myself, or the world around me, as a result?

I last analysed this in February 2011, when the slow, subtle effects of hormone therapy were far from irrevocable. I concluded that yes, this was right for me, mentioning that many of the (few) documented cases of regret stemmed from poor surgical outcomes rather than the decision to undergo it.

So it's proved for me: I'm happy with the aesthetic, physical and sensual results of SRS. Just as I never had any serious doubts beforehand (I did have concerns, but mainly about how my body would react), I've felt no regret afterwards, about any of the process. This is hardly surprising: the gaps between clinical appointments allowed ample time to explore any apprehension before committing.

Surprisingly, changing my name came to feel like the biggest 'break' in my life. Most other aspects were gradual or long-anticipated: this was immediate and confronted me every day, even affecting my memories from when I went by something different. Transitioning did weird things to my sense of lived time, too: sometimes I felt like a teenager, as I found my style and dealt with hormonal changes; at others I felt far older than my years, as if I'd lived two lives. After a year or so these issues resolved themselves, and I could return my mind to more everyday things.

There were other, more serious psychological difficulties, which it would be dishonest to ignore. There's a strange pressure on LGBT people to present their lives as overwhelmingly positive: a reaction against past portrayals of us as destructive or unhappy. But the level of self-assessment and justification needed throughout transition took its toll. So did the strains of worrying about how people would respond to my shifting identity and appearance, whether or not verbal attacks would lead to physical ones, and the long period of living as female before hormone therapy. The aftershocks caught up with me as soon as I relaxed, and took a year to process.

These, however, have receded into the past, leaving me with a body that finally feels right. I am no longer experiencing gender dysphoria. I have stopped worrying about the authenticity of my identity, partly because I have been lucky enough not to be challenged about it too often.

If anything, it feels more authentic to have realised myself as I wanted to be rather than accepting the identity imposed on me. Anyway, I tired of debates about who was 'real' in the 90s, as people at school argued over whether Oasis were better than Take That because they weren't 'manufactured'. All that mattered was how good the music was (or wasn't).

Perhaps it helps that I don't care too much about claiming 'womanhood' for myself, separating concerns about being 'masculine' or 'feminine' from those about my body. (Maybe it's also telling that the first things I wished to buy after surgery were a suit and a vibrator.)

Deep down, I feel just as genderqueer after the physical changes as before. I believe that there are as many gender identities as there are people; all unique, all constantly being explored in conscious and unconscious ways.

But who's going to commission those blogs - or read them?