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I am stirred awake in the middle of the night by a singular thought: “Others knew there was something wrong with me long before I did.”

And with this, I’m wide awake, hours before dawn. There will be no return to sleep now.

The giggling girls. The boys on the bus. My harassers at school. The youths on the street. They all saw it long before I did.

From here, the relentless nighttime thoughts come tumbling out of my frontal lobe.

First amongst them, the realisation that I misunderstood nearly everything back then and for years afterwards.

For they all saw my face, so childlike, gaunt and unmasculine. And so they responded in kind, with unwavering contempt and hatred.

If for years I had attributed events to arrogance, racism and warped notions of honour, it turns out, no, all of the threats, harassment and intimidation were simply a response to my face and form.

This realisation carries me back to the present — laid on my back in bed, in our hillside home overlooking the expansive Black Sea, the peaks of the Caucasus mountains on the distant horizon just visible — to this woman beside me.

What a blessing to have been assigned the companion at my side who took me as I was. What generosity to have been granted this soul mate who saw none of what others found so repulsive.

What kind of magnificent grace to be sent a kindred spirit who would stand with me through thick and thin — through tribulations sometimes difficult to bear — and see none of what others saw.

What unfathomable mercy for one so poor in spirit and miserable in sin, to be granted such immeasurable bounties despite myself.

Could there have been any treatment for the ailments which afflict me better than this?