I Believed I Was a Homosexual Woman - The Legendary Artist Made Me Realize the Truth

Back in 2011, several years before the celebrated David Bowie show launched at the renowned Victoria and Albert Museum in London, I declared myself a gay woman. Until that moment, I had only been with men, with one partner I had wed. By 2013, I found myself approaching middle age, a recently separated caregiver to four kids, living in the US.

At that time, I had started questioning both my personal gender and sexual orientation, seeking out understanding.

My birthplace was England during the dawn of the seventies era - before the internet. During our youth, my peers and I lacked access to Reddit or digital content to turn to when we had questions about sex; conversely, we sought guidance from celebrity musicians, and in that decade, artists were experimenting with gender norms.

The Eurythmics singer donned masculine attire, The Culture Club frontman embraced girls' clothes, and musical acts such as Erasure and Bronski Beat featured artists who were openly gay.

I desired his lean physique and defined hairstyle, his strong features and masculine torso. I sought to become the artist's German phase

In that decade, I passed my days operating a motorcycle and wearing androgynous clothing, but I returned to traditional womanhood when I chose to get married. My spouse moved our family to the America in 2007, but when our relationship dissolved I felt an irresistible pull returning to the masculinity I had previously abandoned.

Considering that no artist experimented with identity quite like David Bowie, I chose to devote an open day during a summer trip returning to England at the gallery, with the expectation that maybe he could help me figure it out.

I didn't know exactly what I was searching for when I entered the exhibition - maybe I thought that by immersing myself in the opulence of Bowie's gender experimentation, I might, as a result, stumble across a clue to my own identity.

Before long I was facing a small television screen where the visual presentation for "that track" was playing on repeat. Bowie was moving with assurance in the primary position, looking sharp in a charcoal outfit, while to the side three backing singers dressed in drag clustered near a microphone.

Unlike the entertainers I had seen personally, these characters weren't sashaying around the stage with the self-assurance of born divas; conversely they looked unenthused and frustrated. Relegated to the background, they chewed gum and rolled their eyes at the tedium of it all.

"Boys keep swinging, boys always work it out," Bowie sang cheerfully, appearing ignorant to their reduced excitement. I felt a fleeting feeling of empathy for the supporting artists, with their pronounced make-up, ill-fitting wigs and too-tight dresses.

They appeared to feel as awkward as I did in women's clothes - frustrated and eager, as if they were yearning for it all to end. At the moment when I understood I connected with three men dressed in drag, one of them ripped off her wig, wiped the makeup from her face, and unveiled herself as ... Bowie! Surprise. (Understandably, there were further David Bowies as well.)

In that instant, I knew for certain that I desired to shed all constraints and become Bowie too. I craved his lean physique and his sharp haircut, his strong features and his male chest; I sought to become the lean-figured, Bowie's German period. However I was unable to, because to authentically transform into Bowie, first I would have to become a man.

Coming out as gay was one thing, but transitioning was a considerably more daunting prospect.

It took me several more years before I was willing. Meanwhile, I tried my hardest to become more masculine: I stopped wearing makeup and eliminated all my women's clothing, shortened my locks and began donning masculine outfits.

I sat differently, walked differently, and changed my name and pronouns, but I paused at medical intervention - the possibility of rejection and second thoughts had left me paralysed with fear.

Once the David Bowie show completed its global journey with a engagement in Brooklyn, New York, five years later, I returned. I had reached a breaking point. I couldn't go on pretending to be something I was not.

Facing the same video in 2018, I knew for certain that the challenge didn't involve my attire, it was my biological self. I wasn't a masculine woman; I was a feminine man who'd been in costume all his life. I aimed to transition into the man in the sharp suit, dancing in the spotlight, and now I realized that I could.

I booked myself in to see a physician soon after. It took another few years before my transformation concluded, but not a single concern I worried about came true.

I still have many of my feminine mannerisms, so others regularly misinterpret me for a queer man, but I'm comfortable with that outcome. I desired the liberty to explore expression as Bowie had - and given that I'm content with my physical form, I am able to.