Rafts

We fell out of ‘just friends’ and into love three years ago, having met at work and enjoyed each other’s kind and silly company. We moved into our first house at the end of last year, then by March we were locked down into it. We’d gone from opposite shifts to 24/7 contact and it was bliss. A holiday together in our own new home - what could be better? 

But, as the weeks turned into months, the worry of redundancy, competition for jobs, friends and family slipping out of existence to this new illness and the chaos of the outside world left us clinging to each other on an isolation raft. He sank into a sadness unlike anything I’d known him to experience before. He’s a light-up-the-room kind of guy and this was a change that tested us both by pushing at our innermost weaknesses. It was such an intense closeness to another person’s struggles, that the fear of discovering darkness in the person you love, and in yourself, began to creep in.

After a few weeks, of silence and tears, sex and understanding, hugs and apologies, the clouds parted and we emerged to find ourselves closer, happier, stronger and more inextricably in love than ever before.

Lockdown has been a refining process for our relationship, and I’m now more sure than ever that we are a team set to tackle anything life might throw at us next. He has been my lifeboat in lockdown, and I have been his.