I Believed Myself to Be a Lesbian - The Music Icon Made Me Discover the Truth

Back in 2011, several years before the celebrated David Bowie display launched at the renowned Victoria and Albert Museum in the UK capital, I declared myself a lesbian. Up to that point, I had only been with men, including one I had wed. After a couple of years, I found myself approaching middle age, a recently separated parent to four children, residing in the US.

During this period, I had started questioning both my sense of self and attraction preferences, looking to find clarity.

Born in England during the beginning of the seventies - before the internet. During our youth, my peers and I didn't have social platforms or video sharing sites to reference when we had curiosities about intimacy; instead, we turned toward celebrity musicians, and in that decade, artists were playing with gender norms.

The Eurythmics singer sported masculine attire, The Culture Club frontman wore feminine outfits, and pop groups such as Erasure and Bronski Beat featured performers who were publicly out.

I craved his narrow hips and defined hairstyle, his angular jaw and masculine torso. I aimed to personify the Berlin-era Bowie

Throughout the 90s, I passed my days operating a motorcycle and adopting masculine styles, but I went back to traditional womanhood when I decided to wed. My husband transferred our home to the US in 2007, but when the marriage ended I felt an undeniable attraction returning to the manhood I had previously abandoned.

Considering that no artist challenged norms quite like David Bowie, I opted to use some leisure time during a warm-weather journey returning to England at the V&A, hoping that perhaps he could help me figure it out.

I lacked clarity precisely what I was looking for when I stepped inside the exhibition - maybe I thought that by losing myself in the extravagance of Bowie's gender experimentation, I might, as a result, stumble across a clue to my personal self.

Before long I was positioned before a compact monitor where the film clip for "the iconic song" was continuously looping. Bowie was strutting his stuff in the front, looking sharp in a charcoal outfit, while off to one side three supporting vocalists wearing women's clothing clustered near a microphone.

Unlike the performers I had encountered in real life, these ladies failed to move around the stage with the poise of born divas; conversely they looked bored and annoyed. Placed in secondary positions, they chewed gum and rolled their eyes at the boredom of it all.

"Those words, boys always work it out," Bowie sang cheerfully, appearing ignorant to their lack of enthusiasm. I felt a brief sensation of understanding for the accompanying performers, with their pronounced make-up, uncomfortable wigs and constricting garments.

They gave the impression of as uncomfortable as I did in women's clothes - annoyed and restless, as if they were yearning for it all to conclude. At the moment when I recognized my alignment with three male performers in feminine attire, one of them removed her wig, removed the cosmetics from her face, and revealed herself to be ... Bowie! Shocker. (Understandably, there were further David Bowies as well.)

Right then, I became completely convinced that I wanted to rip it all off and transform like Bowie. I craved his narrow hips and his defined hairstyle, his defined jawline and his flat chest; I wanted to embody the lean-figured, artist's Berlin phase. And yet I couldn't, because to truly become Bowie, first I would require being a man.

Coming out as queer was a different challenge, but gender transition was a considerably more daunting outlook.

I needed several more years before I was ready. Meanwhile, I did my best to adopt male characteristics: I stopped wearing makeup and eliminated all my women's clothing, shortened my locks and started wearing masculine outfits.

I altered how I sat, walked differently, and changed my name and pronouns, but I halted before medical intervention - the chance of refusal and second thoughts had rendered me immobile with anxiety.

After the David Bowie exhibition concluded its international run with a stint in New York City, five years later, I returned. I had experienced a turning point. I found it impossible to maintain the facade to be a person I wasn't.

Positioned before the familiar clip in 2018, I became completely convinced that the problem wasn't my clothes, it was my body. I didn't identify as a butch female; I was a man with gentle characteristics who'd been presenting artificially since birth. I wanted to transform myself into the individual in the stylish outfit, moving in the illumination, and then I comprehended that I was able to.

I scheduled an appointment to see a physician soon after. I needed additional years before my transformation concluded, but none of the things I feared occurred.

I continue to possess many of my feminine mannerisms, so people often mistake me for a queer man, but I'm comfortable with that outcome. I desired the liberty to play with gender following Bowie's example - and since I'm content with my physical form, I am able to.