Being Ill and In Love

I have been married for a year and a half, which doesn’t sound like a long time, but we have had it rough. You know how they say in the prenuptial “in sickness and in health”? Well my husband married me in sickness. A huge struggle has always been my health problems. The struggle between love and illness. Positive and negative.

I am a wife. There are duties that I want to perform around the house. My husband should come home from a long day of work and know that there will be clean clothes for the next day of work, because I actually did the laundry. He should come home and know that there will be food on the table, and he won’t have to cook, clean and do the dishes at the end of it all. This isn’t the case for my husband at all. I’m so ill that I sometimes can’t get out of bed. That means the laundry basket is overflowing, dinner isn’t readily made for his arrival, the bed is a mess and so is the room, the house, and my mental state.

These things are not easy on a marriage, and I recognise that. I want to show my husband love, through doing nice things for him around the house and by keeping things in order, but that’s not the case most of the time. I am disorganized, lazy and weak… Or you could say I am brain fogged, fatigued and chronically ill. Even though I prefer people seeing it and defining it as the latter, I know it’s often seen as the more negative side. The side that says I’m not trying, or that I don’t care. When in reality (and I say this a lot), if I could, I would, but I can’t. I physically and mentally can’t. I want to show love by being the world's best home maker, but my illness holds me to another standard.

Another way that illness affects our love is through distance. When I’m super sick, I can’t go out to a movie, go on a walk or go out for dinner. Sometimes I can’t even talk because I’m so tired, brain fogged, or in so much pain. But the other aspect is the mental side. It’s hard for me to love myself in this state, and accept that this is my reality. Plus being in bed all day with these racing, obsessive and depressive thoughts, just puts you into a deeper depression. When I’m feeling off, I can snap. I also have Borderline Personality Disorder, and that gets in the way of our love for each other. I push and push and then explode into a rage, when just one second before I was on cloud 9. Again, not good on a marriage. Paetur has had to hold me at home, and miss these incredible dates we could be having. He’s had to hold my back when I think I’m going to throw up in the middle of the night. Paetur has had to learn what all the mental illnesses look like and how to navigate them with me.

Marriage is already extremely hard because it takes two people, from two different families, coming together to make a family. Your family grows up loving and accepting you and your husband grows to love and accept you. It’s not inherited or forced, it’s chosen. When it's chosen, you go through everything together. What I go through, my husband goes through. What I experience, my husband experiences. He knows the love I have for him, but at the same time, I know he wishes for better health for me, so we could be normal. Then we could have a date, in clean clothes, and come home to have a good night's sleep. No pain, no complaining, no struggle. But that is illness and love. It’s a journey that we are on, it’s a balance, at times a struggle, and at times beautiful. My husband shows me love by caring for me, forgiving me, supporting me, listening to me, encouraging me. I show love in the ways that I can too. I give him praise, cuddles, I do what I can in the moment I can, and he sees me try, and knows I push on because I love him. I love him so I persevere. I love him so I thank him. I love him and he loves me just the way I am. He upgrades me to levels I would never put myself on, because he sees past the illness, and loves me despite.