A Generous Boy with a Great Tinder Profile

I have not experienced much generosity throughout my life. My teenage years were riddled with anxiety, loneliness, laying awake through the night wondering if I would ever be satisfied, or eventually happy.

I found refuge in boys who told me they loved me and then would use me for everything I am, taking my passion for others and making me wary of generosity, my own sensitivity and how men will treat my body as if it is owned by them.

Through the years and I found myself buried deeper and deeper in the confines of my sadness. There was light in the days when my brain shut out the unwanted hands and the nasty words, but those voices became my own over time. Nightmares and flashbacks haunted my time asleep and I could barely remember being a child, leaving just the haunting idea that this was how my life would be forever rattling around my brain.

When I lost my best friend to suicide at 19, I was sure I had been cursed to live a life without love, or warmth, or joy. I remember nights I would sit outside in the rain with my headphones on, just trying to feel something that wasn’t numbness. I would drink until I blacked out to past the time and give myself a way to explain to my friends why I feel so god damn low.

Then, I met Jack.

I was in my first year of university and had decided to raise money for cancer research by shaving my head. The boy I had been dating for three years had told me ‘I would be too ugly without hair’ and I decided I deserved more than a superficial man-child with a porn addiction (whoops). I broke up with him and after a few months, I took to the depths of tinder in search of one last stand before facing the bald.

I matched with a cheeky looking lad, who was well travelled from his photos (turns out it was a year studying in Canada that he LOVES talking about) and he also had incredibly nice teeth.

We spoke into the early hours that night and went for lunch the next day- already, this had surpassed my expectations. Over the weeks I was beginning to worry that I might fall for this guy that was sure to leave me when I shave off my locks... right?

Within a week of braving the shave, and raising almost £2000 for cancer research, we made things official. At the beginning, things were tough. I felt like a fraud, that I had tricked him into dating me without telling him that I’m broken and damaged, a lost cause. I told Jack my history of assaults, the people I was surrounded by, the awful stories and situations, that I was unfixable and broken and would only break him, too. I was also convinced he was fooling me into thinking he wasn’t a monster like the boys I had dated before. The instant strain on such a new relationship and my lack of self-love made me force myself not to get too attached. I didn’t think I could handle such hurt again and survive.

Three years later and he never gave up on me. Jack has helped me learn to love myself, taught me to have fun again, helped me every single time I have fallen down.

He made me want to confront my past; he waited outside the police station for hours when we went to report my abusers, just in case I needed him.

He made me confront how I’d learnt to argue and faced so much toxicity and venom from my tongue that he shouldn’t have stayed, but he did. He taught me how to voice my concerns and upsets with compassion and love.

He makes me want to be better every single day and has supported me through so many therapies, counselling sessions, online self-help booklets, all of the panic attacks and dissociation and pain that comes with a childhood of hurt.

Without Jack’s kindness, his patience and his willpower I would never have become the person I am today. He had held my hand through my worst days, when I’m unable to shower or eat, when I can’t get out of bed, when I’m so angry at the world for the hand I was dealt that I can barely see him there soothing me. He still persists and prevails.

Every day he comes home, to our home, and he is kind. He is understanding. He is generous. He has helped me from the deepest, darkest places in my mind- so dark I didn’t think anything else even existed- and through kindness he has made me see that I do have purpose. I do have talent, and I am pretty, and funny, and everything I’ve been told I am not. I know this because he tells me I am but also because I’m starting to see it.

If there is anyone in this world that deserves to be recognised and remembered for generosity, it’s him. He has changed my life forever and I owe him the world. Even the whole world isn’t enough. This man is my hero and he has genuinely saved my life with his never ending kindness and generosity.

We met in such a peculiar way, and I am so lucky.