You're Beautiful To Me

The nurse leads me to my room and I find that Frank had organised for me to have my own room so I would be more comfortable and I smile at how thoughtful he can be. An orderly comes along a minute later with my bags and they tells me to settle in and someone will be back in twenty minutes to show me around before my first therapy session. They both leave the room and I wander across the room to my bags and pull out a framed picture of Anna and Frank, Anna laying face down on Franks chest and both of them are asleep, their facial expressions identical and I smile like I do every time I see it and when I took it. They look so cute and it melts my heart to see it. My smile soon turns to tears again and I sit on the edge of the bed, clutching the photo to my chest while I sob until a lady comes in and smiles sadly at me. "Hi Mr Iero, my name is Lindsey, are you alright?" I look up at her and nod slightly and she smiles reassuringly before crossing the room and sitting next to me. She gently rests her hand on my shoulder as she says "I'm going to be your therapist while you're here, is there anything I can do for you?" I shrug and mumble out "I just miss my husband and daughter that's all." She nods in understanding before noticing the picture that's now sitting in my lap. "Is this them?" She asks, gesturing to the picture and I nod and smile. "Yeah." "May I?" She asks and I nod, handing her the picture and she holds it gently while looking down at it. "They're gorgeous, you guys are a good looking family" she tells me and I laugh a little as she hands the picture back. "She looks just like you, but I think she has her dad's nose." "And his eyes, they both have this shine to them that I've never seen before" I tell her and she smiles reassuringly at me and says "What are their names?" "Frank and Annabelle." "And have you named this little one yet?" She asks, gesturing to my stomach and I shake my head. "We don't know what it is yet but Frank thinks it's a boy so we've been referring to it as a boy but I don't know..." I trail off and she nods in understanding before saying "I know this is a really difficult time to be away from your family but we'll do everything we can to help Mr Iero." "Gerard." She smiles warmly and says "Gerard."

After Lindsey shows me around, showing me the cafeteria, the rec room and the art studio she takes me to her office and we start our first session. We talk about my relationship with Frank before she tries to delve into my past, asking me about the first time I can recall being unhappy with my body and I clam up, trying to defend myself against memories of Matt, my boyfriend when I was fourteen. I refuse to talk any further and I run out the clock on our hour by remaining silent and when it's ocer I stand up to go back to my room Lindsey stands too and says "Ok Gerard, it's time for dinner now." I stare at her in disbelief, not wanting to eat and she says "You either eat what we serve you or you will be taken to the infirmary and hooked up to an iv which will feed your body the nutrients it needs and you will be isolated from everyone else, your call." My eyes widen as I realise she's serious and I hang my head as we walk to the cafeteria. After I struggle to eat most of what was on my plate I leave the cafeteria and go into my room, laying on the bed and grabbing the other photo I brought with me. It's Frank and Anna again but they're awake this time and both of them have the most beautiful smiles on their faces. I lay on the bed and trail my finger over their faces while I bite my lip to hold back the tears that want to fall until I fall asleep, exhausted from the very emotional day I've had.

Three days later I'm no longer frightened when I wake up here and I am starting to crack in my daily therapy session, just wanting to go home and I've decided that my past isn't worth protecting myself against if it's keeping me away from my only reasons for getting out of bed in the morning. "Gerard" Lindsey starts when I sit on the couch in her office. "I was fourteen and his name was Matt. He was like twenty but for some reason he took an interest in me and I was absolutely infatuated with him. I'd always been overweight but the teasing at school had gotten really bad around the time we met and the way he looked at me, it made me feel beautiful and I needed that, badly. He always used to tell me I was perfect to him and we started a relationship that I knew I wasn't ready for but I craved the way he made me feel like I was the most special person in the world so I went along with it. We'd been together about a month when he started offering me drugs. It started out small like smoking weed and drinking but soon I moved on to pills and at the end I was constantly off my face on cocaine. I ran away from home and was living with him when we'd been together for about six months. We still hadn't slept together, I wasn't ready to go that far but one night he got me so high I couldn't really move and he......he took my virginity." I pause, needing a moment before I continue with something I've only ever told Mikey and my mother. "After he was done three of his friends came into the room and he......he let them take turns and I couldn't move enough to fight them off. Eventually I blacked out and when I woke up my whole body hurt so badly and there was blood on the sheets." I start to cry as I keep going, finding it impossible to stop now that it's coming out. "Matt came into the room not long after I woke up and he climbed over me and slapped me in the face, screaming at me that I was a dirty fat ugly whore and that the only way people could fuck me was when they were so high it didn't matter because of how fat and ugly I was. Then he showed me photos of what they did to me." Lindsey continues to stare at me passively. "Did you end the relationship?" I shake my head. "I tried. But every time I tried to leave he wouldn't let me go, he kept saying if I left he would send the pictures to everyone in my school and to my mom and I didn't want her to know what I'd done so I stayed. For a week straight every time we saw each other he would hit me and call me fat and ugly and worthless and he'd spit on me. When my body had healed from what they had done he let people pay him to use me and he told me if I didn't do what they wanted he would send the pictures but after they would leave he would show me the money and then tell me he should be getting so much more but they won't pay it because of how fat and unappealing I was so I stopped eating. He told me if I was thin people would actually like me and that he wouldn't have to treat me so badly and I just wanted him to love me so I did what he wanted. I went from being two hundred pounds down to being eighty five and he still didn't want me, he still insisted I was fat. I had dropped out of school completely at that point and I think my mom had given up looking for me. One afternoon he was kissing me and touching me and I finally felt loved for the first time in so long when there was a knock at the door and it was a friend of his who used to come around and have sex with me while he beat me. He was always the worst and I tried to resist but it ended in a worse beating because he was on something. By the time he was done with me I could barely move and he and Matt left to go out to some bar and I decided I'd had enough. I dragged myself out of the house and stumbled back home. My mother nearly fainted when she saw me and she wanted to call the police but I wouldn't tell her anything and begged her not to. Every time I gained any significant weight back I could hear his voice in my ear telling me I'm fat and useless and that fat people deserve the kind of things he put me through." I look back up at Lindsey and her eyes are red and watery, her bottom lip quivering with the effort of not crying.

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