43 days.

Every morning I miss this. I miss the weird things we would talk about in the early hours. I miss the way you challenged and taxed my brain at all hours. I miss the way you got my humour and I got yours, anyone else would’ve been shocked or offended but we could just let go, crack those jokes and make those remarks. I wish I’d have told you how much I enjoyed this and how this was the part of my day that I always enjoyed. I miss the way I could ask you anything and you’d just know. I wish I’d have said so many things. I wish I’d have done so many things differently.

It’s hard to grasp how you can be so close to someone and talk about so much, day in day out, and think you know them, really know them, but not know this. It’s hard to get your head around having this person who you feel so close to and want to protect for always, feel they can’t tell you something, when you think that they know that you’d go to any lengths to help and support them. I would like to think you know, you always told me to stop mithering and that I worried too much.

In this past 43 days, I’ve discovered this awful world of families filled with anguish and despair after they’ve lost someone to suicide. Someone they saw every day, someone they lived with for years and who they thought was ‘fine’, had children with, had a ‘happy’ life with, who was doing well at school, or had a good job, great friends, lots of plans…What is this? Why? What happened? What did I do? What did I not do? What didn’t I say? What did I say? What did I miss? How did I miss this? Why? This is what is left behind. Just absolute devastation with no answers.

Suicide is the single biggest killer of men under the age of 45 in the country. I didn’t really take notice before but this is massive, so much bigger than people realise. We really need to talk about this more.