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.
