The New York Secret I Never Planned to Share…

Unless you were living under a rock last week, or you just have no idea who I am (welcome), you would have seen that I had spent the first week of January in New York City. My favourite place on earth and my favourite time of year, when the lights of the Rockefeller Tree are still sparking and the crowds feel more of a local football game than an FA Cup match. (My nephew will be so proud of me for using a sport analogy. You are welcome, Ash. I hope I did it correctly).

As you can imagine the photos and stories were flowing, I wasn’t about to let you forget I was on my holidays. But, I was keeping a secret that I wasn’t really sure I ever wanted to tell.

I told a select few people before I went, mainly those that I was meeting in NYC, as they were obviously going to notice. I wanted to give people the heads up, to take away some of the shame and embarrassment. I couldn’t hide it in New York, but I could hide it on social media and at first, that was my plan.

Back in October, on Halloween weirdly, before I settled down with the Christmas songs and began to decorate my tree, I had a doctor’s appointment. At this spooky Halloween appointment, I was finally given a diagnosis for all the crazy shit that has been going on with me.

After a million tests, questions, judgement, I was finally met with a good doctor who diagnosed me with Fibromyalgia, along with some other things we haven’t quite figured out yet, but in the meantime I was glad I had a label to put to the absolute hell that had been going on for two or so years.

I was so relieved I cried, and completely forgot all my follow up questions and what we do next. But that was a problem for another day.

My body and mind was starting to fail me. I was in pain every single day, I couldn’t remember the words for things and sometimes I would say a sentence that was absolute gibberish and made zero sense. More like sounds coming out rather than full words or any words, really. Hilarious, but damn frustrating.

So, my trip to New York was coming fast, I was very excited about also thinking how the fuck am I going to make it trekking around Manhattan and come back in one piece, when I couldn’t even walk around my local park or supermarket without being in chronic pain.

Then, I remembered hiring a scooter in Legoland after I sprained my ankle. Did they offer such a service in the concrete jungle? Was it too busy to navigate a motorised scooter in the busiest city on earth? Carol said you will absolutely not, I said watch me, bitch.

And, other than almost crashing into a child as I forgot to take my hand off the forward control, and running over Carol’s toes three times, all was pretty much well. Plus, Carol’s toe issue is on her really isn’t it. She knew I was there, get those trotters out of me way, hun.

Other than not being able to take as many photos as I would have liked to, as I had to pull into a safe space, take my gloves off as it was bastard freezing and snap those shots, or sometimes even get out of the damn thing to get Carol to take a terrible photo of me it wasn’t too bad. Imagine how many photos I would have posted if I was on foot hehe.

I took some selfies of Carol and I, where I looked shorter as I was sat down, and I was so worried people were going to figure it out. I even remember asking Carol to squat a little so she looked shorter. I felt embarrassed, worthless and just annoyed! Annoyed that I felt like this and annoyed I had to be doing this in the first place.

Once I got the hang of it and stopped almost crashing into everything it was pretty smooth. There were however several people who would look at you dead in the eyes and walk straight in front of you. I asked Carol several times if she would slap or pinch me as this was clearly a dream and I was invisible.

The absolute cheeky bastards would almost dive in front of me like they were trying to get some sort of compensation or, filming one of those adverts where they ask if you have had an accident at work and I just wasn’t in the know.

We also had a terribly embarrassing moment, and I mean kill me now and bury my body embarrassing. There we were, minding our own business on the streets of New York, please keep in your mind’s eye, I am in a mobility scooter so I cannot go down the curb without it being dipped.

We were working towards Radio City where we were met with a crowd of people. Our stupid asses forgot that people queue here to get into see the Rockettes and now there was no way out other than forward. I couldn’t just drive off the curb as I would have caused serious damage to the scooter and probably myself, and also Carol if her god damn toes were in the way again.

The next thing we knew, a very loud and I mean loud voice came screeching through, “move to the side, I have a scooter coming through. Everyone get to the side. Scooter coming through.” He said it over and over. So many times in fact I contemplated running him over in said scooter. Sure, I’d be in jail, but at least the screeching and severe embarrassment would stop.

On the other side, part of me felt quite important and I almost wanted a give a wave so royal that even Andrew would get in trouble for.

The craziest part of it all was that the most helpful people were around late teens, 17 year olds, or even early 20s. Don’t ever let me hear anyone saying kids today are lazy as they are the only ones that made a huge effort to hold doors open, move out of my way, and even offer to give me a push when I got stuck going up a curb on fifth avenue. Thankfully I politely declined his help, but the thought was there and I am here for it. Thank you, to you and yours, Sir.

My biggest fear of the whole thing was weirdly not running anyone over, but, people thinking I was only in this scooter because I am overweight. I know I can’t tell what people are thinking and does it really matter, but it matters to me. I’ve done New York fat before thanks, hun and still managed to do almost thirty thousand steps a day. So back off my fat ass.

Hiring the scooter was my only option, besides hiring someone to carry me round, but that would not have gone well. I would have gone well, right down to the floor. My chunky but funky ass would be rolling around like a dying bug that’s just been stepped on. So, I went for the scooter option. Either that or I didn’t go, and I was not about to let my love for New York get pulled away from me because of these illnesses. It’s already taken so much.

In all seriousness, my point, along with don’t be a fucking dick, is, you never know what anyone is going through. I wasn’t going to share this information, but for that moment it was a part of who I am and maybe will be again in the future. I don’t want people to feel embarrassed about a disability or if somethings different about them. And if I can’t be honest and proud of who I am, how can I expect others to be.

On social media, you see smiles, happy faces, cute locations and poses with hot ciders and hot chocolates. What you don’t see is the pain someone is going through. Whether it’s physical like mine was, emotional (which I also had a tad off, can’t switch off that crazy on vacation, huns), grief, loss, heartbreak or all of the above. Don’t judge anyone. Don’t judge me for being in New York yet again, think of the fact that booking this trip probably saved my life. It gave me purpose, a goal, something to look forward to.

You just see a photo. You don’t know the story behind it that got us there.

Be kind, don’t be a c***.

K. Love you bye.

 xx