My mother made me a starving man—and only a female physiotherapist brought me back to life. I didn’t realise at first that my hunger wasn’t physical—it was for love and acceptance.
My name is Oliver. I’m thirty-four. Born and raised in Manchester. My mother raised me alone; my father left before my first birthday. All I remember from childhood is tension, anxiety, and a constant struggle for her approval.
My mother was a woman of cold beauty—refined, strict, eternally on diets, fitness challenges, and cosmetic procedures. She was never happy with herself, and through that, with me.
I was never good enough. Not in school, not in sports, not in my own reflection. Mum made me eat on a schedule, monitored my weight from nursery age, banned sweets, carbs, and forced me into sports when all I wanted was to draw or read. She’d say, “If you’re not thin, no one will ever love you.”
I grew up with that belief. In my teens, I was awkward, brooding, lonely. I wanted girls to like me but was sure no one ever would. So I decided: if I couldn’t be loved, I’d be perfect. I trained to exhaustion, starved myself, punished my body with runs, weights, protein diets. I sculpted my body like armour.
Over the years, women noticed me, but inside, I was still that scared little boy waiting to be abandoned. My relationships were short, tense, shallow. Until the accident. A blown tyre on the motorway sent my car spinning, flipping. I woke in hospital with a broken leg, a dislocated shoulder, and my sense of control shattered.
At rehab, I was assigned Grace Thompson—a woman in her thirties, confident, firm, but somehow… warm. She didn’t treat me like just another patient. She saw the fractures inside me.
At first, I held back. But her questions were so simple, direct, her voice so calm, that I started talking. About my childhood, my mother, the endless chase for approval, the women I’d lost. She never interrupted. Just listened. And sometimes murmured, “You deserve love. Just for being you.”
Those words cracked the concrete inside me. We met every day, and I began waiting for those sessions. Not as a patient, but as someone who’d never felt warmth before.
I fell in love. Quietly. No confessions. Just happiness whenever she walked into the room. We talked about books, films, life. When she said she was leaving for two weeks for a conference, panic hollowed me out.
We messaged. Her replies were kind but neutral. I didn’t know if she had someone else—but she was all I had. When she returned, I asked her for coffee. She looked at me with sadness and said,
“Oliver, you matter to me. But I can’t date a patient. It’s against my ethics.”
I understood. Thanked her. Walked away. I cried—the first time in years. Not because she said no. Because I was alive. I could *feel*.
Now I walk again. No crutches. I go to the gym—not to be perfect, but to be strong. And if I ever see Grace again, I’ll ask her for coffee. Not as her patient. But as a man who’s no longer starving. Not in body, not in heart.