The biggest lesson I've learnt from being in love with someone with bipolar is that all the things that have made him interesting, exciting, enticing and extraordinary in my eyes, have also provided an equal yet opposite sense of despair, disconnect, challenge and hurt.
We can't be together. We can't be without each other. We've had our own families and partners, but always remained lovers; almost to say that we have a co-dependent addiction to each other.
For the first time in his adult life, he has finally started receiving some professional guidance and management for his illness. After a childhood full of ADHD related medications and implications, a teenage period full of the most intense form of disabling depressions and abhorrent anti-social behaviour, I have finally cracked through his shell and shown him the path to acknowledgement and acceptance of his illness.
I heard my own words to him "This is just the beginning. It's a long journey, you have to be prepared for that. Listen to professional advice. Seek a support network, don't isolate yourself. We're here to pull you through the darkest times, when you are doubting yourself. But we cant do that if you shut us out. Trust yourself. Trust me. We can do this together. "
Yet, ironically I find myself drawing on those same words of advice for myself. I cannot help but have dark times, I distrust myself, I doubt myself and I even isolate myself as a carer.
Loving someone with Bipolar feels like the most exhausting lifelong game of tug of war. I have blisters, I don't feel like my arms are mine anymore and I am literally just holding the rope in a deadlock until I feel that familiar jolt. Sometimes it jolts me forward to him, sometimes I feel slackness and I stumble back, realising that he has fed me a little over my line. A pleasant surprise, but always catches me off-guard.
To anyone who is in love with someone with mental illness: Your love is both a blessing and a curse. You have a choice to either listen to your heart or your brain, and I actually think the most powerful resource for me has been my brain. My heart hypnotises me with lust and ache, whereas my brain keeps me clear headed and able to perform the role of carer as I would always strive to.
Goodluck carers. x
