By Nicole Grant Kriege
Okay, the couple above makes you want to throw up, right? They’re young, super attractive, totally in love, and probably have an adorable dog to boot. It’s easy to imagine them tromping around Ocean Beach, him maybe catching some surf and her sitting on a blanket reading a book.
The guy pictured above is one of our Bold Locals — Mark Lukach — and when an excerpt of his upcoming book Where The Road Meets The Sun appeared in the Modern Love column in the New York Times over Thanksgiving, it reminded me that things aren’t always as they seem. Especially when it comes to relationships. This paragraph stopped me cold.
When Giulia and I were 27 and in our third year of marriage, she suffered a psychotic break. She had no history of mental illness preceding the abrupt arrival of delusions and paranoia. It was a bewildering decline that snowballed from typical work stress to mild depression to sleeplessness to voices speaking to her in the night.
And things just got worse from there. Two years later, Giulia is totally off medication and back to her happy self, but the journey they went through as a couple to get to where they are today is one of the most touching stories I’ve read in a long while. If you think true love doesn’t exist, Mark’s story might make you think twice.
