Silent Assassin- Jo’s Lived Experience
This is an honest and raw, yet real and personal piece of writing that may contain triggers. Please visit our Immediate Support page if you are in need of help.
I wrote this piece on Christmas Day 2019, my first Christmas without Tim in 19yrs. I was in a place of darkness and so lonely yet didn’t want to be around people. I craved silence but also company but I just couldn’t be around people. It was very much a double edged sword moment.
I began to think just how much depression had taken Tim from me/us and how it had begun at such a young age for him, yet it hadn’t acknowledged it was there until he was in his 40’s. Because he remained silent. Stigmas and being a man were all consuming.
But I can be honest in saying that I look back on that time of writing and can say with hand on heart that we did talk openly of his illness, we didn’t hide from it, we did all we could. He didn’t hide from it, he did all he could.
If anyone can read this and resonate with the feelings of anger, desperation but also know that the love you have for your person will never die and that you must say their name loud and proud and must talk of mental health and suicide and know that it isn’t to be hidden, we stand together and be proud of our loved ones taken by mental health, we speak for them, we fight for them. Always.
You. Yes you. What name do you go by now? Black Dog? Depression? To me you go by Silent Assassin.
You came into my boyfriend's life without an invitation, you entered his brain without a sound yet made the biggest sounds once inside. Why did you choose him? Why didn’t you let him escape you? Every time he had a time of being happy you decided to yourself that was enough for now and it was time to bring him back under your control.
You invaded our relationship for 12 years, you tried to infiltrate my mind a few times but I saw you coming. I saw your plan. You weakened me a lot but I built my wall and stood as firm as I could, I tried to build one around him but you had already got in there, from such a young age you stole him. You slowly began to take hold of him, little by little, hour by hour, day by day you chipped away the smallest parts of happiness you could take until he was at an age where he could recognise you for what you were. Evil.
What powers you had to make him not be able to function on a daily basis. Empty eyes, sloth like movement, sleep for an age, grimace at every noise, recoil from affection, you insured that you were all he thought. You were like an evil jealous lover, no one could have his attention other than you and if for a fleeting moment, he wavered and escaped your grasp and felt love, you would come back with so much force he had to cut himself to release you. The deeper the cut he thought the better to free you. His arms were slashed to bits. You didn’t care. You dug in deeper and gripped his heart and mind even harder.
He was so artistic, so talented, so handsome but so shy and so scared of things that only he could see. He couldn’t take compliments because the voice in his head was from you telling him constantly how pathetic he was and that we were all lying to him when telling him the truth at how his art was just amazing, his photography stunning, his designs just beautiful. To him it was all a lie, yet we told the truth. It was you that lied.
You desperately tried to break us but we stood firm. I caught him from your relentless bullying and did my hardest to take you out. At times I got him. I got him to myself, we kept you at bay when driving through France, Spain and Switzerland. We kept you quiet but my God you were strong when he was back home.
How did you get him to be on highs? Was that your sick way of letting him see light knowing it was fake as hell? Allow him to be up there in the clouds, almost God like yet deep down inside petrified you were coming to suck him back down? He was so frightened that this massive high was going to be followed by the biggest crash of his life. He was so scared. He argued with me. He drank more. He went out more. It’s like he knew this was the last time he could experience this confidence albeit fake and wow did he go for it, at a cost for sure.
You were laughing weren’t you? You were allowing this to happen knowing you were coming back full pelt. I saw you coming, he saw and felt you coming but we couldn’t do anything. Yet he could. He did what you always whispered to him.. “this can all go away, you know what to do”; “let the noises in your head go, just do it”; “they will be so much better off without you, let them be happy”.
You got your way. You crept back in, in a stronger form and whispered to him you were taking him down and it’s going to be brutal so he should escape now and escape he did. He died by his own hand because of you. You silently assassinated him.
You have come back for me a few times since and I am doing my hardest not to let you in, you bastard. You took the love of my life away from me. You took the only love I’ve ever felt away from me. You took a father and best friend from his son. You took the most beautiful, talented and loved man and ruined his soul for your pleasure. You’ve broken us by him being gone but you haven’t broken the love I have for him. That’s something you cannot infiltrate. No one can. Not then, not now, not ever.
Written by Jo Kemp.
