Page 67 - Marie Claire Australia (January 2020)

RELATIONSHIPS
BELOW RIGHT
Kayla and her partner
Zak during happier
times in Brisbane.
“MY PARTNER HAD A
PSYCHOTIC EPISODE
AND WENT MISSING”
K AY L A W R AT T E N , 21
t was a Sunday morning in
March when I rolled over in bed
to find my boyfriend missing.
He had spent the previous night
Irestlessly pacing back and forth
in my bedroom, worrying about our
safety to the point of tears. This
wasn’t Zak’s usual behaviour.
For the past two weeks he had
been jumping from one conversation
to another and drawing correlations
between events that had no logical
connection, ruminating on the idea
that he and I were both in serious
danger. A crime scene interstate
was somehow inexplicably linked
to the whirlwind of paranoia
invading his thoughts.
I reached for my phone, my
stomach churning with fear. The
person who answered wasn’t the boy
I had grown to know and love over the
past two years. On the other end of the
line, Zak was rambling incoherently,
crying and convinced he was being
watched. My 20-year-old boyfriend
had walked barefoot from my house
onto a high-speed road nearby, where
he could have been hit by the peak-
hour traffic rushing to work.
I threw on a pair of jeans and raced
out the door to get to him. My dad
came with me and we drove Zak to
an emergency department, where he
underwent a rigorous onslaught of
brain scans, blood tests and MRIs.
They revealed nothing. He was
pushed through the hospital cycle
and confined in a mental-health
care ward for 10 exhausting days.
Zak was diagnosed with brief
reactive psychosis due to acute stress,
which meant he was experiencing
paranoid delusions leading him to
believe he was being singled out for a
harmful purpose. The term psychosis
filled me with fear. I instantly felt as
though I had lost my soulmate – our
future dissolving before my eyes.
We had met in our first year of
university, both studying journalism,
and after flirting between classes for
months we soon became inseparable.
Three years later, we graduated with
not just a degree, but a partner for life.
At university, Zak was charismatic,
generous and had an infectious laugh.
In his spare time, he played Billy Joel
on piano, John Mayer on guitar and
drove me through winding mountain
ranges in his bright orange car.
After graduation, the pressure to
secure a job in our industry became
extreme. With every rejection letter,
stress stacked up like water filling
a cave, until Zak couldn’t breathe
anymore. He quit his retail job,
his beloved car was damaged by
mechanics, and his bank balance
was shrinking by the day. Any one
of these events is enough to spark
a meltdown, but combining them
ignited something else entirely.
Watching Zak suffer was
heartbreaking. On his second day
in hospital, I received a call from his
mum. In the background, I could hear
muffled voices, machines beeping, and
Zak sobbing. Terrified I was in danger,
he was calling my name and was
desperate to hear my voice. Within
20 minutes I was by his side, our
fingers interlocked, pretending
tears didn’t blur my vision and that
I hadn’t screamed at cars to get out
of my fucking way on the drive over.
Grief, confusion and anger
consumed me for the 10 days Zak was
in hospital – and the emotions didn’t
dissipate when he was released. My
family and friends were a life raft
throughout it all. The one thing that
kept me moving from day to day was
the hope that my boyfriend would
fully recover – which he has. Since
his release in April, Zak has been
taking medication to control his
anxiety, checking in with a social
worker every week and keeping
stress at bay. He now has a fresh
outlook on life, blessed he has been
given the chance to start again.
Although I am still afraid he might
have another delusion one day, I feel
like if we can endure something as
frightening as psychosis – without
losing grip of each other – we can
endure anything.
Four months after the worst
morning of my life, I am curled up
in bed next to Zak when our 7am
alarm goes off. I reach across my
boyfriend and press snooze; I’m
not letting him go anywhere.