I Was Convinced I Was a Gay Woman - The Music Icon Helped Me Uncover the Actual Situation

In 2011, several years before the acclaimed David Bowie show launched at the prestigious Victoria and Albert Museum in England, I declared myself a homosexual woman. Until that moment, I had only been with men, with one partner I had married. By 2013, I found myself nearing forty-five, a recently separated parent to four children, residing in the US.

During this period, I had commenced examining both my personal gender and attraction preferences, searching for answers.

My birthplace was England during the beginning of the seventies - before the internet. As teenagers, my peers and I lacked access to social platforms or digital content to reference when we had curiosities about intimacy; conversely, we turned toward celebrity musicians, and in that decade, artists were challenging gender norms.

Annie Lennox donned boys' clothes, Boy George wore girls' clothes, and bands such as well-known groups featured performers who were publicly out.

I craved his slender frame and precise cut, his angular jaw and male chest. I sought to become the artist's German phase

During the nineties, I passed my days driving a bike and dressing like a tomboy, but I went back to traditional womanhood when I chose to get married. My partner moved our family to the United States in 2007, but when the union collapsed I felt an irresistible pull revisiting the masculinity I had once given up.

Considering that no artist experimented with identity quite like David Bowie, I opted to spend a free afternoon during a warm-weather journey visiting Britain at the V&A, anticipating that perhaps he could provide clarity.

I was uncertain specifically what I was looking for when I entered the display - maybe I thought that by losing myself in the extravagance of Bowie's norm-challenging expression, I might, consequently, discover a hint about my own identity.

I soon found myself standing in front of a modest display where the music video for "Boys Keep Swinging" was recurring endlessly. Bowie was moving with assurance in the front, looking stylish in a slate-colored ensemble, while positioned laterally three backing singers dressed in drag crowded round a microphone.

In contrast to the entertainers I had seen personally, these characters didn't glide around the stage with the confidence of natural performers; instead they looked disinterested and irritated. Placed in secondary positions, they chewed gum and showed impatience at the tedium of it all.

"The song's lyrics, boys always work it out," Bowie performed brightly, appearing ignorant to their lack of enthusiasm. I felt a brief sensation of empathy for the backing singers, with their heavy makeup, uncomfortable wigs and restrictive outfits.

They seemed to experience as uncomfortable as I did in women's clothes - irritated and impatient, as if they were yearning for it all to be over. Just as I recognized my alignment with three men dressed in drag, one of them ripped off her wig, smeared the lipstick from her face, and showed herself to be ... Bowie! Shocker. (Naturally, there were additional David Bowies as well.)

Right then, I was absolutely sure that I aimed to rip it all off and transform like Bowie. I craved his lean physique and his defined hairstyle, his defined jawline and his male chest; I aimed to personify the slim-silhouetted, Berlin-era Bowie. Nevertheless I couldn't, because to genuinely embody Bowie, first I would need to be a man.

Declaring myself as homosexual was one thing, but personal transformation was a considerably more daunting outlook.

It took me further time before I was ready. During that period, I tried my hardest to embrace manhood: I abandoned beauty products and threw away all my skirts and dresses, shortened my locks and commenced using men's clothes.

I altered how I sat, walked differently, and changed my name and pronouns, but I paused at surgical procedures - the chance of refusal and remorse had left me paralysed with fear.

When the David Bowie show finished its world tour with a presentation in New York City, following that period, I revisited. I had experienced a turning point. I couldn't go on pretending to be a person I wasn't.

Facing the same video in 2018, I was absolutely sure that the problem wasn't about my clothing, it was my biological self. I wasn't a masculine woman; I was a male with feminine qualities who'd been presenting artificially all his life. I desired to change into the individual in the stylish outfit, dancing in the spotlight, and now I realized that I was able to.

I booked myself in to see a medical professional shortly afterwards. The process required another few years before my personal journey finished, but not a single concern I worried about came true.

I still have many of my feminine mannerisms, so people often mistake me for a gay man, but I'm comfortable with that outcome. I desired the liberty to play with gender like Bowie did - and now that I'm at peace with myself, I am able to.