Dear David Bowie

Dear David,

I hope you don’t mind me calling you David - it’s just that you saved my life and I feel close to you.

When I first heard your music I was a teenager. I felt so alone. And so different. And I was different. I was painfully thin and in constant pain. I had a hole in my side that oozed out from my intestines due to Crohn’s Disease. I’d had to take medicine (that was completely inneffective) rectally, which utterly humiliated me. A surgeon regularly burned my open wound shut with no anesthesia only to have it burst open again, the skin ripping apart. I’d been sick since I was 11 and didn’t think I would live to be an adult. I thought I was the most disgusting, revolting girl in the world.

These were my shameful secrets and though I may have looked normal on the outside, except for the extreme thinness, I was anything but on the inside, imploding into myself, day by day, minute by minute.

And then I listened to your music. And you kept telling me to hang on. That you were an outsider too. We were both aliens.

When I listened to “Quicksand” it described the feeling of sinking into the mire and being impotent to stop it, that I was incapable and terrified of expressing.

“Kooks” filled me with joy and hope that I could be that kind of child, parent, person.

“Life on Mars” broke my heart and “Suffragette City” filled it with joy til I thought I would explode.

You made me feel human, valid and special through your music.

I can never thank you enough for all the gifts you have given me. I still listen to your music all the time and it never fails to thrill me, fill my soul with your magic and remind me of my humanity.

I have no doubt that you are indeed stardust, merging with the cosmos in an infinite burst of love.

But just for today, I am crying.