Worn down by strangers
All you need’s a friend
You’ve been worn down by strangers
This is not the end
This is the end

This weekend just gone, I spent some time travelling to and from Manchester. The reason I did so is relatively immaterial (although if you follow me on social media you may have seen an explanatory picture), but (rationale behind it notwithstanding) I was in Manchester, at least for a day, bookended by travels.

Maybe it’s kinder to breeze over the main leg of the journey (a train’s a train; neither were as comfortable as other journeys have been, but they would do), but getting through London was much more of an adventure – even though it looked very simple as the crow flies.

I’ve done this before, even when dragging a wheeled suitcase with me (as I was on Friday). Get on the Weaver line, transfer to the Victoria and up the escalator at Euston. It’s simple. It looks simple and it feels simple. Hell, I’ve been to Manchester enough times to know that it is simple. But it quickly became apparent to me that it is, suddenly, no longer simple.

Getting onto the train on the Weaver line required no less than three strangers offering me hands to push/pull me over the gap and onto the train. I was one inch from falling into the gap one is advised to mind on the Victoria line before a kindly stranger offered to take my case for me. No less than three times did I drop said case, once down an entire flight of stairs I was taking due to a broken escalator, and once on an escalator itself. Yet another stranger caught it deftly.

I even managed to injure my leg at one point by walking into something I really should have seen.

I got to Euston by a miracle, feeling a huge and uncomfortable combination of grateful and guilty. For the first time since diagnosis I genuinely felt ashamed of my disability, whether or not it inconvenienced a kindly stranger. Meeting my wife and continuing on our travails was fine, but for the entire time I was abundantly aware that I had been beholden to other citizens of London to have made my journey. They didn’t fail to do so, of course – around ever corner there was somebody ready to hold something, point a way, steady my balance, or offer generic, well-meaning help.

And if they hadn’t, I may well have seriously hurt myself. I certainly felt close to doing so more than a fair few times, and the way back from Manchester was particularly unpleasant, having to do most of this in reverse having picked up cramp and IBS pains along the way.

This is a new and unexpected complication. Up until now I have been rather blasé about having myotonic dystrophy. No longer being able to play a full-size guitar is something I am struggling with coming to terms with, but I can do that. Fine, the lift at work is broken; it’s painful getting up the stairs, but I can do that. Okay, I drop things a lot, including my mobility aid; my body screams in pain when I bend down to retrieve them, but I can do that.

But I am going to have to accept that, strangers or not being present, there are some things I can not do.

And I’m going to think about this.