The Truth of Aphrodite

“Not all love stories have a happy ending as they do in Disney movies and fairy tales. The beautifully dark fables of the Grimm brothers tell the ugly truth: that life is never one straight happy flat road. This road has twists and turns, slopping hills and steep jagged cliffs, life and death. The little mermaid never had her happy ending with her sweet Prince Erik. When she tried confessing her love to him, she faded away into bubbles. Life is ugly, dark, and revolting at the worst of times. There are people hiding in plain sight who enjoy raping, torturing, and killing others. They crave the sweet release it brings, a high like nothing they have ever felt before. For this feeling is the closest emotion they can get to love.

Take the prolific serial killer Ted Bundy for example. To everyone around him, he appeared to be charming, charismatic, smooth, and put together. He got into law school and was planning to be a lawyer. The truth was, in reality he had no inner voice of reason, no conscious to tell him not to kill all of those women. The lucky ones got away badly broken mentally and disfigured physically by the injuries he inflicted on them in his mad rage. He couldn’t feel love for others, he couldn’t understand what the concept of love was. He could only obsess over repeating a fantasy of death: the closest act of love he knew.

But this speech isn’t about murders, this is about love. I meet my husband in this very room. When I first saw him, it was my first week here and my first time in a group therapy session. I entered this recovery home as a dead man walking. My only belongings were shoved into the bag that hung limply on my back. The doctor my parents forced me to see labelled me as severely malnourished with self-inflicted lacerations on my upper thighs, hips, and arms: polite phrasings of saying I suffered from anorexia nervosa, self-harm, and depression. There were bags under my eyes a deep rich purple colour, the colour of royalty, a joke of a reminder that I would never be the princess I always wished to be as a child. They were a reminder every time I caught sight of my reflection that I rarely slept well and when I could, I would sleep for hours on end. I could run my hands along my back and ribs, counting every bone as I went.

The first entire week, I was up and out of bed before the sun was even up. I would curl up in an armchair on the front porch, my skeleton hands wrapped around a mug of coffee absorbing its warmth, waiting for the sun to peak its cheerful face above the horizon. At meals that first week, I would mumble under my breath the number of calories on my plate. That first day I was there, breakfast was two pieces of toast, butter, and an apple, totalling 350 calories. I only drank the coffee. At lunch, my plate was a peanut butter and banana sandwich with an apple, totalling 490 calories. I only ate the apple. Dinner was family-style or serve yourself. There was pasta salad, chicken breasts, and garlic bread. I only nibbled on the smallest piece of garlic bread.

I was exhausted of life, tired to my bones. There was never enough sleep to satiate my exhaustion. I seemingly downed coffee by the gallon, gratefully for the zero-calorie drink.

Here in this room, I was prepared to die. I had no faith that I would have a happy ending. I had failed out of college earlier that same year because I was so focused on being thin. My obsession of being perfect had consumed my life. My hair was fading to a dull brown colour, it wasn’t its gorgeous coffee colour anymore. I had stumbled upon my largest deadliest cliff on my road of life by just wandering down into a garden of roses, beauty full of petals and thorns.

As I sat down in a chair in the furthest corner of the room for the group therapy session, this tall gangly looking guy enters the room with a crooked grin plastered on his face. His legs were as wobbly as a new-born foals, and his grin was so crooked it could have been a knife, yet his grin wasn’t mean, just awkwardly crooked. In this very room, there were at least half a dozen free chairs. This guy could have chosen any other chair to sit in, but he chose to sit in the chair right next to me. In order to make it to said chair, he had to cross the entire length of the room to reach it.

To me, this guy looked like he could have been shitting sunshine and rainbows out of his ass. He seemed to have a smile permanently etched onto his face, he had a muscular body, pitch black hair, and ocean blue eyes. I immediately thought I found the love child of Nico di Angelo and Will Solace. As soon as he sat down, he turned to me extending his hand to introduce himself. And as most antisocial people who are forced to come here are like, I glanced down at his hand before scooting my chair further away from him.

It was this exact moment that he made it his mission to get me to open up. He had no clue who I was. We never exchanged names. We were strangers to each other, but for some bizarre reason I was an enigma to him. I was a mystery that he wanted to solve and become friends with. Everywhere I looked after that first meeting, I could spot him.

I was bitter towards him, I would snap at him like a cornered dog. I was defensive, suspicious why he wanted to know me, and most of all fearful. Each heart-breaking smile he sent my way cracked by frozen heart. I thought it was impossible for me to love another when I can’t even love myself. Over the months, I slowly grew less harsh towards him. I began sitting next to him at meals and at group meetings. It was at my one-year mark here when I finally said hi to him. My peace offering was a cup of coffee with the small world scrolled across the cup. And that was just the beginning.

People say you have to learn to love yourself before you can love others. I say that is not true. The three years that I spent here recovering were some of the best times in my life. I began opening up to others all because of that idiot with a smile. I began sketching and painting again, something I had given up in the midst of my obsession with caloric numbers. But I still did not love myself. There were times when I would mope in bed for days on end, barely moving and rarely eating. It was Isaac who became my rock, my saviour, my angel in disguise. I loved him with all my heart. He gave me the hope to live on.

Although my story is not a classic love story as in Disney. I am no a princess and I don’t have a Prince Charming. But I do have my dorky idiot. My story is not a happy one and it’s never going to be perfect. But I finally have the courage to live my life.

I know that most of you here wish to be any other place than here right now. You believe that this place is going to be like every other recovery place you have been to. That there will be nurses here shoving IV’s full of nutrition into your arms, happy go lucky counsellors spouting bullshit into the air, and that no one here will get or understand you. I’m here to tell you that this place is not a place where you will magically get better, this is a place that provides you the support to gain the courage for you to keep living for yourself. That courage may come from another patient here, from a staff member who has been through something similar to you, or from one of our lovely support animals. The truth of this life is that we can’t stop you from slowly killing yourself, that is not our job here nor our duty. Our job and duty here is to give you something that will make you want to live for it. For me, that is my partner in crime.

I came here not looking for love or happiness. I came here ready to die. I left here three years later with a ring on my left fourth finger, at a stable weight, and no scabs on me. Every time I look at Isaac, my heart swells with pride, because even though he had his own issues that he was and still is dealing with, he took the time and patience to get me to open up. And I’m thankful for him being in my life every day. I wish we meet under different and happier circumstances, but I would never trade this life for another.

Thank you, Isaac, for everything you have given me and life.”

The light pink haired women steps off the stage into the therapeutic circle as everyone stands and applauds. She goes to sit in a chair next to the black haired and blue-eyed man that was in her speech. Her cheeks turn as pink as her hair from all the attention and she turns her face into the chest of the man. He softly chuckles, gazing down at her because she is his whole world. He kisses her hair as they sit content in the room where everything began for them.