I Was Convinced I Was a Gay Woman - The Music Icon Enabled Me to Realize the Truth

During 2011, a couple of years ahead of the acclaimed David Bowie display launched at the prestigious Victoria and Albert Museum in the UK capital, I came out as a gay woman. Up to that point, I had exclusively dated men, one of whom I had married. By 2013, I found myself approaching middle age, a freshly divorced parent to four children, making my home in the America.

During this period, I had commenced examining both my personal gender and attraction preferences, looking to find clarity.

Born in England during the dawn of the seventies era - pre-world wide web. During our youth, my companions and myself didn't have online forums or digital content to reference when we had curiosities about intimacy; rather, we sought guidance from pop stars, and throughout the eighties, everyone was challenging gender norms.

Annie Lennox wore masculine attire, The Culture Club frontman wore girls' clothes, and bands such as Erasure and Bronski Beat featured members who were publicly out.

I desired his narrow hips and sharp haircut, his strong features and masculine torso. I sought to become the Berlin-era Bowie

In that decade, I passed my days operating a motorcycle and dressing like a tomboy, but I reverted back to traditional womanhood when I decided to wed. My husband relocated us to the America in 2007, but when our relationship dissolved I felt an undeniable attraction revisiting the masculinity I had previously abandoned.

Considering that no artist challenged norms as dramatically as David Bowie, I decided to use some leisure time during a warm-weather journey visiting Britain at the V&A, hoping that maybe he could provide clarity.

I was uncertain exactly what I was seeking when I walked into the exhibition - possibly I anticipated that by losing myself in the extravagance of Bowie's norm-challenging expression, I might, in turn, stumble across a clue to my own identity.

Before long I was positioned before a modest display where the music video for "the iconic song" was playing on repeat. Bowie was moving with assurance in the foreground, looking polished in a dark grey suit, while positioned laterally three accompanying performers dressed in drag gathered around a microphone.

Unlike the entertainers I had encountered in real life, these female-presenting individuals weren't sashaying around the stage with the self-assurance of natural performers; instead they looked disinterested and irritated. Positioned as supporting acts, they were chewing and expressed annoyance at the tedium of it all.

"Boys keep swinging, boys always work it out," Bowie performed brightly, seemingly unaware to their lack of enthusiasm. I felt a fleeting feeling of connection for the accompanying performers, with their thick cosmetics, awkward hairpieces and restrictive outfits.

They seemed to experience as uncomfortable as I did in female clothing - frustrated and eager, as if they were yearning for it all to end. At the moment when I recognized my alignment with three male performers in feminine attire, one of them removed her wig, wiped the makeup from her face, and unveiled herself as ... Bowie! Revelation. (Of course, there were additional David Bowies as well.)

Right then, I was absolutely sure that I aimed to remove everything and become Bowie too. I wanted his slender frame and his defined hairstyle, his angular jaw and his masculine torso; I aimed to personify the slim-silhouetted, Bowie's German period. Nevertheless I found myself incapable, because to authentically transform into Bowie, first I would require being a man.

Announcing my identity as gay was one thing, but transitioning was a considerably more daunting possibility.

I needed further time before I was willing. In the meantime, I made every effort to embrace manhood: I abandoned beauty products and threw away all my feminine garments, shortened my locks and commenced using men's clothes.

I altered how I sat, walked differently, and modified my personal references, but I stopped short of surgical procedures - the potential for denial and regret had rendered me immobile with anxiety.

After the David Bowie display finished its world tour with a engagement in the American metropolis, five years later, I went back. I had arrived at a crisis. I found it impossible to maintain the facade to be an identity that didn't fit.

Positioned before the familiar clip in 2018, I knew for certain that the challenge wasn't about my clothing, it was my biological self. I didn't identify as a butch female; I was a man with gentle characteristics who'd been in costume since birth. I desired to change into the person in the polished attire, moving in the illumination, and at that moment I understood that I could.

I made arrangements to see a physician not long after. The process required another few years before my transformation concluded, but none of the things I feared came true.

I continue to possess many of my feminine mannerisms, so others regularly misinterpret me for a homosexual male, but I accept this. I wanted the freedom to explore expression following Bowie's example - and given that I'm at peace with myself, I can.