I Believed That I Identified As a Homosexual Woman - The Legendary Artist Made Me Uncover the Reality

In 2011, a few years ahead of the celebrated David Bowie show opened at the renowned Victoria and Albert Museum in London, I publicly announced a gay woman. Up to that point, I had exclusively dated men, including one I had entered matrimony with. After a couple of years, I found myself in my early 40s, a recently separated caregiver to four kids, living in the US.

During this period, I had begun to doubt both my personal gender and sexual orientation, seeking out clarity.

My birthplace was England during the dawn of the seventies era - pre-world wide web. When we were young, my peers and I didn't have social platforms or video sharing sites to consult when we had curiosities about intimacy; rather, we looked to celebrity musicians, and throughout the eighties, artists were challenging gender norms.

The Eurythmics singer sported masculine attire, Boy George adopted girls' clothes, and musical acts such as Erasure and Bronski Beat featured performers who were proudly homosexual.

I desired his narrow hips and precise cut, his angular jaw and male chest. I aimed to personify the artist's German phase

During the nineties, I passed my days operating a motorcycle and dressing like a tomboy, but I went back to traditional womanhood when I chose to get married. My husband transferred our home to the US in 2007, but when our relationship dissolved I felt an undeniable attraction returning to the masculinity I had once given up.

Considering that no artist played with gender as dramatically as David Bowie, I opted to devote an open day during a summer trip returning to England at the gallery, anticipating that possibly he could help me figure it out.

I didn't know precisely what I was looking for when I entered the show - maybe I thought that by immersing myself in the richness of Bowie's gender experimentation, I might, in turn, stumble across a hint about my personal self.

Before long I was facing a small television screen where the visual presentation for "the iconic song" was continuously looping. Bowie was moving with assurance in the primary position, looking stylish in a dark grey suit, while to the side three accompanying performers wearing women's clothing gathered around a microphone.

In contrast to the drag queens I had encountered in real life, these characters didn't glide around the stage with the self-assurance of natural performers; rather they looked disinterested and irritated. Relegated to the background, they chewed gum and rolled their eyes at the tedium of it all.

"Those words, boys always work it out," Bowie voiced happily, appearing ignorant to their diminished energy. I felt a brief sensation of empathy for the accompanying performers, with their heavy makeup, uncomfortable wigs and restrictive outfits.

They appeared to feel as uncomfortable as I did in women's clothes - frustrated and eager, as if they were yearning for it all to be over. At the moment when I realized I was identifying 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! Revelation. (Understandably, there were additional David Bowies as well.)

In that instant, I knew for certain that I desired to shed all constraints and transform like Bowie. I craved his slender frame and his defined hairstyle, his defined jawline and his flat chest; I wanted to embody the slim-silhouetted, artist's Berlin phase. And yet I couldn't, because to genuinely embody Bowie, first I would have to become a man.

Declaring myself as gay was a different challenge, but gender transition was a considerably more daunting prospect.

I needed several more years before I was prepared. Meanwhile, I made every effort to adopt male characteristics: I stopped wearing makeup and eliminated all my women's clothing, trimmed my tresses and started wearing masculine outfits.

I sat differently, walked differently, and adopted new identifiers, but I halted before hormonal treatment - the potential for denial and second thoughts had caused me to freeze with apprehension.

Once the David Bowie display completed its global journey with a engagement in Brooklyn, New York, after half a decade, I revisited. I had reached a breaking point. I found it impossible to maintain the facade to be a person I wasn't.

Facing the familiar clip in 2018, I was absolutely sure that the problem wasn't about my clothing, it was my physical form. I didn't identify as a butch female; I was a feminine man who'd been in costume since birth. I wanted to transform myself into the person in the polished attire, dancing in the spotlight, and at that moment I understood that I could.

I booked myself in to see a physician not long after. It took additional years before my personal journey finished, but none of the things I feared materialized.

I continue to possess many of my traditional womanly traits, so individuals frequently misidentify me for a homosexual male, but I'm OK with that. I wanted the freedom to explore expression following Bowie's example - and since I'm content with my physical form, I have that capacity.