It’s here! Everyone on the Edge has been a project I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I am so overwhelmed with the response I have had and hope that this series will encourage more of you to open up. It’s an absolute honour to read and share your stories and help people recognise that truly, everyone really is on the Edge.

I would like to introduce you to my next guest, Jade. Jade and I met at University, we instantly connected, we had a joint passion for food, and (surprisingly I know) went on a massive gym year together, we recognised how similar we were and following her being pissed off that I had died my hair the exact same shade as her. We became best friends. We have a lot in common, however I have always recognised her strength, and inspired to it. Jade has been through real periods of struggle, often alone, and reading this gives me incredible guilt that I couldn’t be there for her, when she may have needed it. Jade has always inspired me, and having moved to Canada last year, I really do miss her. I know she will and always has been there if I have needed it, I want to do the same, but the below has made me realise that sometimes, the people you love, need to get through their storms alone, or with the people they need. Bill and Jade’s love is a representation of dedication and overwhelming adoration. It’s a relationship I aspire too. Their wedding was truly beautiful with original vows, which based on below, have been upheld through some heartbreaking times. This is a long piece, but it is so desperately raw, important, and beautifully written. I really do beg you to read the entire lot. I know its going to help a lot of people. Thank you Jade, you will always be my friend, and I hope that writing this, has given you something. I love you dearly – the floor is yours…

Friday 6^th January 2017. The day I shared commitments to my life partner, announcing them out loud and with conviction, believing every single word I had written, believing that every single word I read to him would be our truth as a married couple. 

I promised my husband that I would be his equal, I would be his supporter, that I would be his biggest, most rewarding challenge in life and the person who would be by his side as he fulfills his potential. I would be with him in every loss and in every victory. I would be with him in every disappointment and every celebration. I would be the person to build a family with and make him a parent. I would be the one he could be authentically himself with, rubbish Dad jokes and neck beard included.

I knew I was always going to push him because I see he is capable of achieving great things. I knew I was always going to play devil’s advocate because I see that he strives to deepen his knowledge. I knew I would always be ready to receive him and his problems because he deserves space too. I was always going to be prepared to listen to him. I would always treat him with respect and curiosity as we navigated our life together, not jumping to conclusions or rash judgments. I knew I was always going to make sure that my husband felt like he was loved, knew he was deeply appreciated and above all else, understood that he was a choice I actively made, an enhancement to my life that I would continually invest in. We would grow together, learn together, and move together down the path we both desired. 

That’s what I would do as a wife, I told myself over and over again. 

It was always meant to be the two of us braving all the world had to throw our way. We vowed to make sure we both held on to our individuality and we would make room for personal growth in our relationship. Our marriage was an assurance, an acknowledgment of our independence coupled with the intertwining of our lives. Him and I. Me and him. Us. Two together. We. They. Them.…. We did not expect a third entity to enter into our marriage. That is, until it did. 

Unwelcomed and unknown, the third wheel came crashing into our relationship like a fucking atomic bomb. It blew us over, whirled us around, kicked us in the arse, trampled all over everything we were working so hard to build and then, for laughs, it gave us the middle finger and found its comfy spot, leaving me almost unrecognisable to not only myself, but also to my husband. 

It took me three years to ask for help.

And throughout those three years I battered my husband with words, I grazed his ego time after time, I belittled him into thinking he was not good enough and everything he did was done wrong. I shouted and raged about trivial things to the point that my husband would have to walk out of the house to get away from me. I swore him to secrecy about the goings on behind closed doors. Secrecy about just how neurotic I had become. No one was allowed to know there was something wrong because that something wrong, was me. 

Most days, I would wait for him to get home from work and then sit and tell him all the things that were total shit about our life together. Sometimes this berating would last for hours at a time. I would cry and tell him all the things I needed from him to make me better. Telling him he wasn’t doing enough and what he was doing was not cutting the mustard. I looked to him to cure me of my troubles. I would spoil special occasions on purpose. I would refuse to socialise with people and guilt him into staying with me rather than seeing his friends. I would lock myself away in the safety of our home and expect him to remain with me at all times – forbidden to reach out to anyone for help. I would push and push and push until he broke down and then I would fall into his arms and apologise, hoping that yet again I would be forgiven for my behaviour. 

And I was. 

Every single time. 

He accepted my manipulation, held me while I sobbed on his shoulder. He always vowed to do more, to try harder, and to change. He always said he would make things easier, better… and that he would work on himself. Truth is, he didn’t need to. I was the problem. I was the unwelcomed decay that merged into our relationship, leaving nothing but a puss filled cyst that continued to grow and ooze with every passing week and every new emotional meltdown. I was the nasty in our marriage.

I had my first appointment with my GP not because I was concerned about my presenting mental health challenges, but because my husband had told me the night before that he wanted to end our marriage. 

He wanted to be as far away from me as possible. 

In fact, when asked what he would want to happen in an ideal world, his answer was not to have me mentally healthy but instead for him to live alone a top of a mountain in a log cabin. 

Without me. 

After that confession, I lay next to him that night in bed, quietly sobbing, my skin tingling and hot. I remember thinking to myself that night, ‘now I know why people harm themselves’ because in that moment all I wanted to do was to stop my skin from being hypersensitive, I wanted the tingling to stop. And for a brief second, I considered ripping my skin off in any way I was able. To end the sensation that acted as a reminder throughout that lonely night that the man I loved, no longer loved me. 

Lay next to the man I loved, knowing he had hatred in his heart for me, I was filled with a sadness so deep, that the pit of my stomach ached. The next day, I cried my ugliest cry and begged my husband to give me time. All I needed was some time to do the right thing and get myself fixed. That was how I felt in that moment; broken. I asked him, how committed he was to ending the marriage. His answer was that he already had one foot out of the door and he no longer wanted to choose me. He wanted to choose himself. I knew in that moment that I had to do something to show him that I wanted to be better, that I wanted to be the wife I promised him I would be. I wanted us to be a team again. I wanted to right all the wrongs I had committed. I wanted us to rediscover the connection we had, that so many people were envious of. 

After begging and crying for the first four hours of the day, my husband agreed to give me time. 

I called my GP and had an appointment for the same afternoon. 

Before heading to see the doctor. I first went to visit my parents to tell them about being unwell and that my husband wanted to end our marriage. They were overwhelmed with the information I was giving to them. Three years of problems spewed out in less than 3 minutes. My helplessness palpable to anyone in my vicinity. I wept from the depths of my existence as I finally faced up to the fact that I was unwell and had managed to beat my husband down to a point that he no longer wanted to know me. He no longer loved me. He loved who I used to be, but this person standing in front of him was not lovable. Instead I was loathed. 

Sitting in front of the doctor, I finally admitted to him everything I had experienced in the preceding 3 years. My GP was concerned, offering emergency care via the hospital. I refused. I told him I would wait to see the community mental health team. Little did I know, I was too far gone in my condition and my needs could not be met by any professional other than a senior psychiatrist. Within forty-eight hours of seeing the GP, I found myself sat in front of a psychiatrist, being assessed intensively and having to describe all I had been through. Divulging my deepest darkest secrets and thought processes that I had been accompanied by for so long. 

The hardest thing about my initial appointment, was not talking about my symptoms to a stranger, but instead watching the look of distress creep across my mums face as she sat at the back of the room listening to my confessions. Gentle sobs and runaway tears deceived her usual impenetrable exterior. I felt saddened to see her look on, helpless in that moment, with no answers and no solutions to offer me. With no maternal remedy to make me better. No old wives tale to rid me of my dark thoughts. No tools in her toolbox to help mend my problems. All she could be in that moment, was my safety net. All she could do was hold me up and protect me from falling off the edge into madness. Although I know she wished she could do more, take away my pain, make me better, resolve the issues I had… it was not possible. What she actually did in those first few weeks saved my life. I am not sure if she knows that…but it did. My mum being exactly who I needed her to be in the initial diagnosis stage, was my saviour. And it is because of her that I carried on moving forward and showing up for myself. She was my whole heart when I was unable to love myself. 

When I first sat in front of the psychiatrist, it was in that moment I realised just how unwell I was. I had ignored myself and refused to acknowledge that I needed help for so long that I think I may have actually convinced myself that I was fine. I couldn’t possibly see a doctor about how I was feeling because my mental health issues were not as severe as other peoples, therefore I did not qualify for suitable intervention and I did not deserve it. Of course it was me who set the qualifying criteria for help and it was me who decided who was deserving and undeserving.

I look back now and think about the reasons I refused to seek help and support. When hiding my issues from others I took it to the Nth degree, always making sure that I was in control of the external because I could not control any of the internal shit that was going on. My emotions were too heavy to handle. My unpredictable behaviour changes shocked my system. I had energy levels that made me feel like running a marathon…I would have vivid nightmares and visions of my family members dying. I had images of jumping in front a train, of slicing my tongue off, of my husband coming home to find me dead in the bath (I dared not bathe in over a month after that particular vision). 

I received my diagnosis on the 8^th March 2019 – Bipolar 2, Unstable Personality Disorder with OCD tendencies and severe Generalised Anxiety Disorder. I reluctantly accepted medication to help alleviate the symptoms I was suffering with while a treatment plan could be established and a holistic, therapeutic medication regime could be identified. I was devastated to be told that I would likely need medication for the rest of my life. Something I still struggle to process to this day. 

I don’t like taking medication. I avoid it at all costs. In the beginning, I used to ask my husband to sit with me in bed until I fell asleep just to make sure that nothing went wrong as the medications took hold. After taking my first few doses, I started to panic one night. I couldn’t feel my heart beat. I couldn’t feel it at all. Where had it gone? The medication was causing my heart to stop. I panicked. I called my husband and told him – I can’t feel my heart. I was frantic. Moving through the bedroom, instinctively grabbing things I may need for a trip to the hospital. It was only after stopping me in my tracks and asking me to explain what I was feeling did my husband realise what was happening. My medication was working. I couldn’t feel my heart beat. Not because it wasn’t there, but because for the first time in almost four years, it wasn’t banging on my chest trying to burst out. I had become so accustomed to living with my heart beat thumping 24/7, that I had forgotten that actually, you’re not supposed to feel your heart beat in that way. 

As the medication began to help, I turned my focus back to my marriage and while starting treatments for my new mental health condition, my husband and I entered into couple’s therapy. I was taken aback that he was willing to do this and I assumed that he was taking part in an effort to save our marriage. This wasn’t exactly the reasoning presented to me. Instead I was told ‘if I leave this marriage, I want to do so knowing that I tried everything before ending it’. I didn’t really know how to perceive this view. Nonetheless, we went into therapy and we began to work through the trauma we had both experienced throughout the previous years. 

We explored new ways of communicating, we started to date again, and we paid each other attention and made effort to identify our individual needs. We worked on our intimacy that had so long been low priority for us both. I gave my husband permission to speak about me and my condition with his friends and family. We laughed and reacquainted ourselves with the things we enjoyed doing together; hockey games, camping, cooking classes, cinema trips, bowling and dog walking. 

Slowly, I started to work through the grief I felt for myself and all that I wanted to achieve in life. With everything now feeling unobtainable. We were gentle with each other as we learnt new ways of expression, new ways of saying hello, new ways to meet each-other’s needs. We wrote lists of all the things we used to love about each other. We wrote lists of all the things we had come to resent about each other. We cried. We laughed. We cried some more. We remembered things that had fell to the bottom of the memory box. 

We promised each other that we would go to therapy and on the drive home we would debrief before going back into the house. We agreed that we wouldn’t carry any unresolved issues from our sessions into the home. We would iron them out in the car beforehand. Safe to say, we spent more time sat in that vehicle debriefing after therapy sessions than we actually did driving it. But it was worth all the cold evenings chatting into the night about how we were feeling and what new discoveries we were making about ourselves, each other and our relationship. 

We were making progress, moving through the process of re-learning how to love each other and together we were able to save our marriage and develop our connectedness through meaningful communication, greater understanding of each other and most importantly, the recognition of the third wheel and its complex needs. 

We re-learned how to love. And it’s been really fucking hard. No one tells you how challenging marriage is. You don’t really know till you’re in it just how much effort it requires. Just how important consistency is. Just how demanding it can be. Add to this a diagnosis of Bipolar and there you have it, a shit storm in a tea cup that actually feels like a triple tubed cyclone ripping through your entire existence. 

It’s still unwelcomed, the Bipolar, and it will remain unwelcomed for a long time to come. I am not ok with it. I am not at peace with my diagnosis. I have not learned to accept it. I am still angry and resentful. I am exhausted. Try achieving consistency in your life with a Bi-polar diagnosis. 

Go on. I dare you…

Waking up each day not knowing which version of yourself you will be isn’t fun. I have trouble with the unpredictable nature of the condition. It bothers me that I make a plan and then BAM incomes the third wheel and I am in bed for days on end, unable to function in the world. 

I often wonder, how does he do it? How has he managed to see through all of the horrible things I did, and the wicked person I became, to get to this point where he wakes up next to me every day and just rolls with the ebb and flow of the condition? How does he reconcile with himself that his wife has a chronic mental illness that will go on to affect every aspect of his life?

He explained to me once, that when I got my diagnosis he was relieved. He could rationalise my behaviour now and attribute my emotional outbursts to something scientific. In short, my diagnosis confirmed I wasn’t just an arsehole, I was in fact unwell and in need of treatment. He said “I married you and in turn I married your mental illness. So that’s it isn’t it?”

I don’t know, love. 

Is it? 

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