When she came back to the car, she found me sobbing. It was as hard as I’d ever wept in my life. She held me as I cried and shook.

I think in that moment I was realizing that my whole life had been like this. For years I had walked around with something piercing me to the core, and I had just pretended it was all fine, because I thought I had to.

But I wasn’t fine, and I had finally reached the limits of my being able to pretend. I needed to get to a place where I didn’t hurt anymore. I needed to stop being the one who was always shielding everyone else, and to be the one who was cared for.

I wouldn’t begin my transition proper for another nine months or so, until after we came back to the United States. But when I look back, that was the day I shattered like a goblet. That was the day I realized I couldn’t take one more step.

I was 40 years old at the time. People often ask late transitioners, why now, after all this time? What kind of woman do you think you can be, after missing your girlhood and your adolescence? But those aren’t the questions one should ask.

The question is, how did you manage to go so long? What enabled you to keep carrying your burden in secret, walking around with a shard of glass in your foot, for all those years?

This story may be less about what it is like to come out as trans than it is about finding the courage to do a difficult thing, even if you are no longer young, even if you do not know how. Trans people are surely not the only ones who wonder how to close the gap between the people they feel they have to pretend to be and their authentic selves.