The people I loved at my lowest

I’ve never fallen in love.*

(*if you keep reading, I’ll dispute this later.)

But anyway, I've never fallen in love. Sometimes I think it’s because I’m cynical, or because romance simply isn’t a part of my preconceived destiny (if such a thing exists). Sometimes I think it’s because I’m loveless, or even unloveable.

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When I developed anorexia at age 13, people told me I was unlovable. Family members looked me in the eye and said, “Claire, no one will ever marry you,” (which, through therapy I’ve realized is a reflection of themselves and not my “marriageability,” if I even want to get married), or hissed that my friends would abandon me if they learned of my condition (which, to be fair, many did), and church people whispered about me as if I was infected with a demon, praying for me to repent from a sin that I didn’t know how to get rid of.

When I entered my first residential treatment for anorexia at age 18, the girls I bunked with related to my feelings of lovelessness. One, who had somehow secured a boyfriend before her sickness (which is very normal, but still baffles me), told me that I hadn’t found love because I was too busy hating myself, starving myself, un-loving myself, instead.

When I entered my second treatment (this time a hospital setting) for anorexia also at age 18, it was the day after Valentine’s Day. The timing was ironic; fitting.

Instead of snacking on leftover chocolates, I ate a peanut butter sandwich in a nutritionist’s office, squeezing each bite with my tongue so that peanut butter squirted back onto the plate and never entered my throat. Instead of stripping my clothes before a partner, I disrobed in a medical exam room. I let myself be prodded and probed with tools and Purell-infused hands. Instead of curling up for a movie at night, I wrapped myself in a beige hospital blanket on a blue hospital bed, and cried.

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Lovelessness seemed to resonate through the halls of the EDU (eating disorder unit), as well. Most of us were heard screaming over the phone, crying in front of the mirror, and ranking our moods as no more than 4-out-of-10 in group therapy.

But in a way, love resonated too.

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There were many people I loved in the hospital.

I loved Grace, the nurse who found me crying on my first night and quickly brought me a towel, turned on the shower, and instructed me to get in.

I loved Dr. Vasquez, an old man with squinty eyes who told me stories about growing up in Mexico, showed me iPhone photos of his grandchildren, asked me to recap new episodes of ABC’s The Bachelor (Ben Higgins’ season), and who treated me as a person rather than a number on a scale.

When I needed to draw a self portrait for an art school application, Dr. Vasquez fetched me a plastic mirror (we weren’t allowed to have glass objects). And when I turned 19, two weeks after my admission and before I had reached the medical qualification to go on a “pass” (leaving the hospital for the day and returning at night), he wished me a happy birthday and told me to go anyway.

I loved the 11-year-old boy who ignored every hospital rule and ran around the single-loop hallway despite the strict “no exercise” policy (“What? I can’t help it. I’m 11,” he told anyone who confronted him about it.). He called me various names starting with “C” (Clark, Clyde, sometimes, but rarely, Claire), asked me to draw him pictures or play catch, and rattled off jokes on days when I was visibly upset. The one time I saw him cry after a hard meal, it broke my heart.

I loved all the patients, who shared stories, insecurities, vulnerabilities, and an understanding of our struggle that no one I met outside of the hospital walls has ever seemed to grasp.

I still love them for that.

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It’s hard for me to talk about my time at the hospital (although I write about it a lot). I think it’s because there was a lot of hurt woven into all this love. Sometimes I find it hard to describe hurt and love together, without one cancelling out the other. But they were both there, intertwined.

Anyway. I learned a lot about love in the hospital, and I'm so thankful for the people who loved me along the way.