Kicking down self imposed barriers

For most of my life, since I was 8 years old, I have had a secret, that I am transgendered. I guarded my secret for a long time.
Now I am very open about who I am. I'll tell anybody who'll listen.
Even though I feel comfortable talking to anybody about it I was hearing back that people were supportive, but weren't feeling it. I battled with this for most of the summer. Why couldn't people fully "get it" with me. Then it occured to me.
Even though I knew who I was, even though I knew where I was heading with this, my presentation didn't match up to my being. This is where I realized that I was the cause of people not "feeling it".
Looking in the mirror one day, I could see that I wasn't presenting myself as I should. What was I expecting. To be honest I spent most of the summer dancing around this all summer.
This leads me to the second half of the problem, I know very little about female presentation.

For most of my life this had all been a strongly guarded secret, so it was strange for me to think of asking anybody for input, let alone help.
Thankfully I have really cool friends. This week alone I have been given so much help with appearence and other matters that it's filled me with a new confidence.
Alot of people, although they are supportive, never really have to think about just how much goes into a transition like this. I guess they didn't or don't feel like they should be offering guidence. Let me just state that it's needed.
My friend Rika helped me alot last night, going through my wardrobe and helping me to put together some different clothes for work.
My problem isn't that I don't have clothes so much as a complete lack of knowledge in how to put them together.
I was talking to my friend and Editor Bonnie about this today as well. Bonnie is my Sage, always full of good advice. I explained the conclusions that I have reached and she gave me more great perspective.
Now I fully understand why people weren't feeling it. Carol at the Stitcher's Muse in Nanaimo was the person that really switched the light on for me. I always had my hair in a ponytail. A few days ago I came in with my hair down. Her comment was that my hair looks more like where I'm going rather than where I have been. Lots of guys with long hair put their hair in a ponytail, leaving my hair down looked far more feminine.
It's these little signals that I send out that really help people to " feel it".
Thanks for your help everybody, and especially to Corrina who puts up with me sorting all of this out.

Departures

When I left Ireland I remember looking out the window as we took off, watching the farm fields of county Antrim passing beneath me, getting ever smaller. I remember how it felt to be leaving Ireland, leaving the comfort of what I had for alot of unknowns in Canada.
I'm feeling the same thing now, in this transition. I can feel myself getting farther away from the guy that I have tried to be. I'm watching old habits and vesteges of being a guy fade away.
With my name changing, I'm rarely hearing Mike anymore, and when I do I just sounds foreign. The hormones are doing their job as well.
The funny part for me is that throughout this transition I really haven't had much stress about it, but I'm starting to feel a bit of it now.
Like me on the airplane leaving Ireland, I'm getting farther away from the known and I'm heading to the unknown. Just like then the stress of facing the unknown is tempered by the adventure of starting fairly fresh.
I know that I am fairly far along in this whole transition to be finally noticing this, but for me I'm just really noticing that I'm not a guy anymore, and the world is not really seeing me as a guy anymore. It's great, it's exactly what I want, but wow is it strange to feel.
I guess if this journey was a flight from Ireland to Canada I'd be past Greenland and entering northern Canada.
I'm definitely now ready to get on with some of the more major changes.