We found love in a hopeless place.

I should begin by apologising for the predictably clichéd Rihanna reference. As cringe-worthy as it may sound, this lyric could not ring truer to my experience of finding love. 

I have, for the past four years, been crippled by mental illness and have spent the majority of those years in hospital. Through endless days of depression, anxiety, borderline personality disorder, self-harm and anorexia, my life was stripped of happiness, of comfort, of enjoyment, of love and of hope; that is, until I met Jordan. We met as inpatients on a locked eating disorder ward, a place utterly devoid of hope. Alarms, blood and vomit, screaming and darkness, locked doors with no keys, loneliness. To some, a relationship between two people with mental health problems may sound like a disaster waiting to happen, as in many cases these relationships can be, but with Jordan, it is different. 

He builds me up more than my illnesses wear me down. He makes me feel loved, precious and beautiful. He has seeped into every relationship in my life; my friendships are so much stronger, my family life is much less strained. He gives me the strength to carry on when I cannot see the point in living. He is my reason to recover, my sustenance and my hope. When I am with him, I am a version of myself I never thought possible: I am the Alice I have always yearned to be. But more than that, I can bring him out of the darkness a little, I can hold him, comfort him, love him, and make him feel just as he makes me. I am part of someone else, I am not alone, and neither is he, and that feels wonderful. There are, of course, difficulties in being in a relationship where both people have mental health problems: we argue, we are overly sensitive, we have to worry on a deeper, more dangerous level about each other, but somehow, we always seem to find a way through those trials and each time, we come out stronger than before. Since meeting him, I have left that ward, and I am slowly but surely recovering. Every day is still a struggle, but now my burdens are shared with him, and his with me. I have hope in my life again, and laughter, music, love and tenderness. So, in a way, I am so glad that I have been through, and continue to go through, so much pain because if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been so lucky as to meet him.

 

This is it.

It's been about a year since I posted on this blog. In my last post I promised to write more, a promise which, evidently, I have failed to keep. Yet a lot has changed for me since I last wrote and I have, of late, found my fingers itching to begin again. So here I am, with my tail between my legs, tentatively asking you to give me another chance. 

I find myself somewhat incapable of producing words to describe how this last year has been for me; if I were to use a cliché, it could be described as a roller-coaster, except roller-coasters tend to suggest an element of fun and excitement, of which my year has had very little. I have been in and out of various hospitals, putting a huge strain on my friendships, my family and perhaps also on myself. Aside from the day patient unit I am currently attending, my most recent stay in hospital was five months on an adult eating disorders ward. I suppose now would be the time to also tell you that I have Anorexia Nervosa. Although not a recent development, my eating disorder is something that I have always tried to keep on the down low; for a long time I was able to do that, perhaps because I didn't 'look ill' (I hasten to highlight the fact that weight, inpatient admissions and so on have no bearing whatsoever on the severity of the illness- it is first and foremost a sickness of the mind) or perhaps because I was so deep into deception that I actually deceived myself. But of course, these things have a tendency to find their way out of the woodwork eventually, and come out it did. My illnesses(or was it just me?) caused me to lose my treatment at the specialist personality disorder unit, lose touch with many of my friends, with reality and with myself. I was in a haze of starvation and for a long while I felt invincible, superhuman. I could do everything everybody else could but I didn't need to eat. But slowly, that energy was drawn out of me and I found myself almost incapable of climbing the stairs to my bedroom. I lay in bed at night, scared to sleep because I could feel my heart slowing down, and scared to wake up because what was there to live for? I was so numb, and that worked for me. I was free from the torture of misery and self hatred that used to consume my mind. But it was not sustainable, and I was caught before I faded completely, or at least my body was caught. I went as an inpatient to a specialist eating disorders ward, and I was fed. I gained weight. But in my mind the storm was brewing once more, for the feelings that I had for so long dampened with starvation began to creep up on me again. I went through the motions, meals and snacks, rest, medication et cetera, but while my body changed, my mind most certainly did not. That is, until recently. After being an inpatient, I moved downstairs to the day unit where I have been for just over four months now, and it has been immeasurably helpful, a world away from the impersonal, clinical, acute environment of the ward. I am surrounded by people with the same goal- to improve, to get better, as opposed to being immersed in a competition as to who is the sickest, the thinnest, the most distressed. While every meal, every bite is a struggle, I am starting to come to the realisation that being debilitated by this abhorrent illness is no life. It's not the life I want, who would want it? Just the other day, I walked past a middle aged woman in a wheelchair, emaciated, unable even to stand. At first, I felt ashamed of myself, my size, my weakness. But then I realised: I don't want to be in a wheelchair in 40 years time. This realisation, of course, bears no judgement on that poor woman, for she did not choose to be ill, she cannot just decide to be better, nobody can. But seeing her suffering made me even more determined to fight for my recovery. It will undoubtedly take time, and hard work. But if I can avoid spending my life in hospital, starved and isolated, I will do everything in my power to do so. I have a deep longing, that has been growing for some time now, to be free. Not just from my wretched eating disorder, but from depression, from self harm, from anxiety disorders, from BPD (although I strongly question that diagnosis). I want to be able to sleep at night. I want my mother to be able to fall asleep without worrying if she will find me dead the next morning. I want to be able to smile without being disingenuous. I want to go to the pub and order something more than a diet coke (I don't even like coke!). I want to travel, to learn, to help other people, to love. I want to have normal ups and downs, joys and sorrows. I want to live. Not a half life, a life. I can't do this any more, being desperately ill. I've had enough of the struggle, of the turmoil within. And no, I'm under no illusions that this will be easy. Hell, it will be the most difficult thing I have ever done, but it must be done, if not for myself then for everyone around me.