I finally got a diagnosis of Polycystic Ovary Syndrome at seventeen and everything made so much more sense to me. Suddenly I wasn’t born a freak, there was a reason for this.
I’d been actively trying to lose weight for a year by then, and nothing was working. I starved and starved, I was walking everywhere and I was really doing my best to beat the cravings and still the weight Would Not Shift.
Getting a diagnosis had taken years, with my first doctor kindly informing me – when my mum dragged me there, doubled up with pain – that if I just made more of an effort with my overall diet and fitness my periods would regulate. Fat and lazy then. Thanks.
Once I was diagnosed I learnt that my body was working against me. Producing insulin and storing fat at a rate of knots. The spots, the hair, the weight, it wasn’t my fault.
I discovered that women who were hirsute in the past became the Bearded Lady Circus acts we still know about today. These days there is a whole movement of proud women who have hirsutism and they stand by the fact that they are rare and bearded. They are brave and I admire them; but I am a coward and I did not and do not want a beard.
Back in school though, before I understood what was causing these changes in my body, changes that made me feel so different to the other girls, I continued to bury myself in my work. I had always been focused, driven, but as other teens partied, had crushes and broken hearts I kept to myself, ignoring it all. My only crush was Scott Oakley, who was in most of the same classes as me but glided through secondary school with a gilded perfection, smart, good-looking, captain of the football team and popular with all the alpha girls.
We used to catch the same bus to school, and he’d talk to me when it was just him and me after the majority of kids got off several stops before ours. Occasionally we’d walk home together, with him living three streets further out than I did. For these ten minutes of the day, I would be caught up in his golden warmth and feel like the most important person in the world.
I knew my crush was a non-starter, that I had no hope and that my fervid dreams of him declaring his undying love to me under the lilac trees that lined the path as we walked home were exactly that, fever dreams. A burning heat in my body turning my mind quite mad.
Scott never called me Harry or joined in with the other kids when they dug the knife in, not until... No, I’m not going there today, I do not have the time for that. But neither did he seek me out or acknowledge our secret after-school friendship in any way. Like I said, unpopularity is worse than nits.
By the time I’d got my diagnosis and made the move to sixth-form college I had risen to the top of the class and learned my lesson about sighing after boys out of my league. I left with six A-levels, no real friends and a PCOS diagnosis but most importantly I developed a far healthier way of dealing with my symptoms.
I had tried the pill, but that didn’t work; it merely gave me migraines and constant bleeding. So instead I learned to change my way of eating. I stopped starving myself, slowly replaced my bad choices with good ones and programmed my brain to resist the cravings. It was not easy but I was a woman obsessed and started to work out like mad. By the time I was ready for uni I looked like a different person. The spots were diminishing, the hair not as hideous. My periods were still hell but I was going to start the next stage of my life with a whole new persona. I was going be the woman I wanted to be, I just had to make her. I was going to take control. In any future interactions, I would be the one who held the power.
An hour later and I am sitting sipping a mango mocktail at the bar in a high-end restaurant, watching one of my clients practise his new-found dating skills.
My client’s self-confidence is clearly now sky-high, the date looks to be going very well and I know my work with him is done. As I pat myself on the back for a job well done, a well-dressed man saunters over and strikes up conversation. I explain I am not here to flirt but do tap my number into his phone whilst those shallow little butterflies dance in my stomach. He is an orthopaedic surgeon in private practice and I say I am a university lecturer. It’s my go-to get-out response – trust me, revealing I am a sex and relationships psychologist does not provoke the reaction one wants when meeting people for the first time. We agree to meet for drinks on Wednesday and it takes all my self-control not to lick my lips as he walks away. Jay may not want to go for drinks but I reckon I can make do with Dr McDishy, my fragile ego reassured that I haven’t completely lost my touch.
As I return home and let myself in, I hear the piano being played. It’s a baby grand and the last owners chose to leave the piano rather than take the windows out. Kevin was overjoyed but never plays – claiming to be traumatised by enforced lessons as a child – so either he has suddenly become a Master Pianist or Dan is still here, over twelve hours on. The two of them are increasingly spending time together outside of work, and it’s a cute development. I wonder if they’re sleeping together and am itching to ask. The Love Doctor in me sees them as a perfect match but I know that Kevin will start some self-destructive bullshit and deliberately sabotage anything if he thinks I have caught wind of a blossoming crush.
I peek my head around the door and there they are, both squidged up tight on the piano stool and Kevin is singing ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’and I know that this is one of the songs he has been saving up for a while, wanting it to be perfect before he performs it. It is not an easy song and Dan is playing the piano whilst looking across at him with an intensity that speaks volumes.
There is no way I am disturbing this little beat of perfection. I quietly withdraw from the door and take myself to bed, a stupid smile on my face.
Chapter Eleven
Jay
‘And then she like said, Nah, you don’t need a new au pair, you need a new husband. Facts.’ Chloe is holding court with the girls around her. ‘Jay. You listened to it yet?’ Chloe asks as I approach them.
They are a tight group of three, the oldest of all the kids that attend the youth club, and have been coming for years. They are exactly who I want to lead as my peer support ambassadors for this latest project as soon as I get it signed off. They always make me smile and Chloe, their self-appointed leader, has a can-do attitude I respect. She is one of those people that will succeed at whatever she puts her mind to, and is a great influence on her friends. A natural born leader and one that comes from a home so broken that it would ensure a dysfunctional trajectory for most.
‘Naaah. Shut up!’ Ellie scrunches her features up to form her favourite are-you-dumb face. ‘He don’t listen to podcasts, no offence, but my man’sold.’
I can’t stop the laugh bursting from my lips and I hunch myself over and pretend to stagger with a cane, stuttering out ‘charming’ in an old man’s voice.
‘Serious. you should give her a listen, it’s good. They should have her blaring out in the supermarkets and stuff.’
‘I did. I gave her a listen a few weeks back, a couple of times.’ I say in response. There is nothing that will get me to admit I wrote in to her.
‘Wise.’ Megan smiled. ‘What d’ya think?’
‘She spoke sense. I liked her. I could reach out to her if you like, see if she’d come spend some time with us. I could ask if she was interested in volunteering?’
‘Could you do that? Like really?’ Chloe asks me.
‘I’m not making any promises but I can reach out and ask.’
‘Slide into her DMs, you mean?’ The girls wink and nudge each other.
‘No, definitely not. That’s not my way. I’ll email her office in my professional capacity and see what she says. She chats a lot about how she loves this city, let’s see if she’s got time to come over.’
