This past Christmas Eve, for the first time since I transitioned, I returned to my childhood church in Iowa and watched people across the pews try to recognize me, a little more mustached, a little less hips. I sang from the holy red hymnal and sounded like an instrument being tuned because I still don't understand how my new voice works. What is it about singing that makes me less afraid to die? I don't know, but I kept singing as we walked back to my dad's truck, kept singing as the six of us buckled in, was singing still as we hit the gravel road under a sky full of snow, everything calm, everything bright.

Some days I feel I am haunting my past life; other days I feel my past life haunting me. A name, no longer spoken. Voicemails of my old voice, saved. And what is this "I" or "me" that does not include my past life, anyway? When did we separate? Where was the fork? Was it the day I started testosterone, Jan. 16, 2013? Or did it not happen right away?

When someone dies, it is considered polite to say that person has "passed away." When a trans person is able to walk down the street without being identified as trans, it's called "passing." Both turns of the word imply a successful transition… of the spirit and body, breaking away from each other, and coming back together again.

I'm talking to my teacher, Lynda Barry, about my transition on a recent afternoon and she asks me, "Do you feel like you died?" I hem and haw for a minute and she says, "But see, you can't say no." So maybe I do feel like I died. But also that it was not so terrible. How would I describe it? I don't know, maybe surreal and somehow peaceful. And so I am less afraid. Nothing is created or destroyed, it only changes form. So I'm here but in a different way. A friendly ghost. It's like the new-ager who said at a party once, "I go away from myself; I come back to myself." She had the best hand gesture for it. Used her arms so wholly.

Before starting testosterone, I repeated mantras to myself, hoping I'd remember them on the other end to guide myself through the transformation. Mostly: Stay soft, stay soft. And sometimes: Go toward the light. Am I still soft? I don't know. Is this "the other end"? I don't know.

What interests me most is that this same word — "pass" — signifies identity trouble and a moving through or around; it's no wonder we use it as a euphemism for dying. Pass, to go by, to cross over, to step (from pace), to go on, move forward, make one's way. To experience, undergo. To be thought to be something one is not. To decline, refuse. To not fail. It is impossible to talk about passing without talking about race, class, privilege; impossible to talk about the uncanny relationship between trans and dying without talking about the lived experience of trans people for whom contemplating death is not a privilege in an essay but an everyday possibility. Deoni Jones. Islan Nettles. Domonique Newburn. And, of a story published on Grantland last week, the case of Dr. V, now coming to light. At some point, and particularly for some bodies, the inability to pass in one way can be…fatal.