Dearest Aphrodite,

I am having the most wonderful week. There’s a beautiful synergy to the world, at the moment, and I feel so lucky to be a part of it. I feel aligned with life, the universe and everything, and of course…I’m in love.

It’s not exactly surprising, to tell the truth, because I’m always in love. Peril of being human, they say, to fall into it sometimes. I know I fall more often than most, but I don’t mind. Every time I feel that unbearable lightness of being and the crushing electricity squeezing around my heart I knock my head to the side and just smile. Here we go again, and long may the voyage last this time. Stars guide me on my journey, and the wind picks up and blows me to uncharted and exciting waters.

I love exploring new places, even in my own mind. I think that’s been another one of the softer, more lovely things about studying psychiatry. That it’s always a path that I’m walking in my own mind along with someone else, and I learn new and interesting things about myself even as I help other people learn new and interesting things about themselves. The moments of joy and connection are so precious to me, hard-won as they often are by weeks of therapy and medication. The first genuine smile of a patient who has been depressed just hits differently when you’ve seen so many fake ones over the preceding weeks. I’m in love with those moments and that feeling. My name means happiness, and I love making people happy, even if it has led me down some very odd roads. I can’t help that, these days I prefer to just roll with it, even if that makes me odd too.

So it’s an odd kind of love, this love of mine, but us Greeks have always been good at that. Sometimes I think we invented so many words for it to cover over the fact that it isn’t just odd how we love, but also how much we love and how freely. I am Greek to my core, so I am in love with my work, I am in love with Knife Ears and I am in love with the world. I will say to whosoever asks me that while may it be said that love is not wise, it is fun and endearing and therefore so am I.

The sweetness of a happy smile seems to enchant others, and I feel the magic spinning around me once more. The hospitals are alive with the sound of music and merry chimes, because love is in the air.

My many thanks,

MarieAthena