I woke up this morning to the first rays of sunlight hitting the large window of the room. Lifting my head from the pillow and glancing to the side, I saw Jeffrey sleeping soundly and peacefully. Perhaps for the first time in months since he’d taken off that tight, painful corset, he’d rested so comfortably. The deep lines and redness on his chest were still there, but the tense, anxious expression on his face had given way to a childlike serenity.
I slowly got out of bed, put on a thin cardigan, and walked to the mirror.
The mirror was there again. My short hair, the scars on my chest, my changing figure… everything was still there. But this morning, when I looked in the mirror, that poisonous voice inside me was gone. Instead of the broken, incomplete woman I felt I knew, I saw a woman who, after a twenty-year battle, had managed to stand tall, a woman who loved and was loved.
I quietly went out onto the balcony. The mountain air was cool, the scent of pine filled my lungs. Twenty years ago, on our honeymoon, we had stood on this very balcony, imagining how long and perfect the future would be. How could we have known that life would throw such cruel surprises at us, that it would batter us so much? But here we were. We weren’t perfect, we didn’t have the flawless bodies we used to; but here we were, and we had managed to hold on to each other.
I felt familiar arms wrap around me from behind. Jeffrey had woken up and quietly come up behind me. He was wearing one of his old, comfortable t-shirts again, but this time it was so obvious he wasn’t wearing it to hide it from me, but simply to protect himself from the morning chill.
“You’ll get cold,” he whispered, resting his head on my neck.
“I’m not cold,” I said, wrapping my arms around his. “In fact, it’s been a very long time since I’ve felt so warm inside.”
Jeffrey took a deep breath and buried his face in my hair. “Last night… I think I experienced the greatest relief of my life for telling you the truth. Carrying that burden was so hard; while you were fighting cancer, I was fighting the invisible walls in my own head.”
“Me too,” I said, turning to look him in the face. “I thought you were fighting alone, and you were fighting alone. But it turns out we’re on different fronts of the same war.”
Jeffrey smiled. That tired, melancholic smile seemed to give way to the youthful man he had been years ago. “How about breakfast? I’m really curious if they still make those awful crepes from twenty years ago at the hotel restaurant.”
“Awful crepes? You loved them.”
“I was just pretending to eat them to impress you.”
Our laughter broke the silence of the mountain.
When we left the hotel that weekend, neither my reflection in the mirror had magically returned to its former state, nor had Jeffrey’s weight vanished. But as we held hands in the car on the way home, we knew everything was much more real, much stronger than before.
Life had left its mark on us. But those marks showed not that we were broken, but how much we had overcome. And from that day on, we learned one thing very well: Love isn’t about being perfect; It was about never letting go of the other person’s hand, despite your flaws.
He moved towards me and carefully rested his hand against the scar tissue on my chest—the part of myself. I had spent months avoiding in mirrors.
His touch was gentle.
Warm.
Familiar.
“No more hiding,” he whispered.
“No more hiding.”
He rested his forehead against mine.
That weekend didn’t restore our bodies to the way they looked twenty years earlier.
My hair didn’t magically grow back.
My scars didn’t disappear.
Jeffrey didn’t suddenly lose the weight he had gained.
But none of that was what was needed fixing.
What we needed was honesty. We needed to stop assuming we knew what the other person was thinking. We needed to stop hiding our pain because we were afraid it would make us less desirable.
And we needed to understand that both of us had survived the previous year in different ways.
The woman in our honeymoon photographs no longer existed exactly as she once had.
Neither did the man standing beside her.
But the people underneath those changes were still us.
Still married.
Still frightened.
Still imperfect.
And still choosing each other.
For the first time in almost a year, Jeffrey didn’t turn away from me.
And neither did I.