Don’t do that | The Press

This chronicle has been simmering somewhere in my unconscious for several years. I knew I would write it one day. I just didn’t know when I would write it.

The guy, let’s call him Martin, had written me a long e-mail after a column about a terrible story that had made headlines, that of a father who had killed his children before taking his own life.

Martin wrote to me: I almost was that father.

And he told me, in 2000 well-packed words, how the light had gone out in his life and in his head.

We wrote to each other. We had spoken.

I wanted to tell his story.

But how to describe what is going on in the head of a man who has sunk into a territory so dark that he thought of killing his children, before killing himself?

I had looked for the words, the right ones.

I hadn’t found them.

One day, his girlfriend joined him in the yard, he was cutting the flowerbeds.

” I am leaving.

“Where are you going?”

– I leave. »

She wasn’t going to Walmart to buy a Turtle pool for the upcoming summer. She was leaving, period. She left him. And the children, too.

They discussed it for a long time. Over a few days.

But her decision was made: she was leaving.

Martin therefore became the sole parental figure and the sole provider of the household. Cry ? He didn’t have time. There was too much to do, too much to plan, too much to think about: “My children saw their mother leaving, the weight of the bills had just doubled. I’m going to work even more, while including school, daycare, day camp, lunches, this class, that class. I am well surrounded: I had help and I got through the first weeks, the first months. Exhausted, but rather proud of myself, of my children, of their resilience. »

What animated him, in front of his ex, at the beginning? Funny to say, but it was the thought that she had had the courage to leave and give up a life that made her unhappy, rather than pretending. Martin wouldn’t have done that, but… he understood her. “I just wanted to be the good father. The solid guy who, in the end, stays upright. Without knowing it, I had just made a decision. »

In the evening the jar was a crutch to his own resilience. Alcohol, too. And if it took a second joint, in addition, to be even more resilient, well, he rolled a second one…

One day he learned that his girlfriend had a new boyfriend. A new life: trips, parties, restaurants.

As for him, Martin was too busy to live his life, as they say. Accounts payable, the household to run, debts, homework, lunches. The pressure, constant. Sadness, too. And, in her entourage, questions in the form of insinuation: why did she leave, coudonc?

Summer has set in.

“The more time passes, the less I talk. I isolate myself. They don’t call me anymore anyway, they don’t invite me anymore. It’s uncomfortable, someone sad, I understand. »

Martin felt a pain growing inside him. Yes, he talked about it, of course. To the doctor, to the shrink. Nothing to do, the pain was there, throbbing, growing: “Time passes, memories darken, bitterness takes more space, resentment too. It’s heavy. »

A diagnosis of major depression landed in her life.

As well as a certain jealousy.

“He is younger. Richer. He has an Audi, a Mercedes. I got fooled, I’m a loser. To flog myself like that, I come to the only conclusion: I am the victim in all this. »

And a victim, he wrote to me, can be dangerous.

“New concepts made their way into my victim’s head. Why continue? What’s the point ? Once, I spent a good half hour with the phone in one hand, the number of Suicide thing in the other. I never called, they wouldn’t understand me anyway. I have children, I would be judged for wanting to abandon them like this…”

We always say that, no, what should we talk about?

And it’s true, talking is a little freeing. You talk about it a lot, and often, it will free you up a little, each time. But for Martin, in those months when the light went out in his head and in his life, the solitude seemed absolute to him and the thoughts that were embedded in him, indescribable.

Other than telling me, those thoughts where he flirted with the idea of ​​killing himself after killing his children, he had never told anyone. And he will never tell anyone.

At first, he fantasized about a road accident that would kill him and the kids. Take them with him, end the pain: “These are abominable thoughts, which subtly slip into everyday thinking, which take shape, which come to be part of everyday life. It becomes normal. And above all, no one to share them with. The doctor told me about drugs, the shrink about theory. No matter what others will say, it is impossible to share these dark thoughts. »

Dark thoughts?

“A kind of vicious thought, which takes shape like that, without warning, at a given moment, on a bicycle. Which develops, which comes back more and more often. And who deforms. The idea becomes less gloomy: it’s for their good, it’s to protect them. It will be better that way for them. In fact, I would even do them a favor…”

I point out here that this thought—false, of course—of altruistic filicide is one of the five leading causes of child murder by a parent, according to research by one of America’s scholars of such tragedies, Philip J. Resnick.¹.

That summer, in his head, in his life, it was pitch black.

Martin interrupted his story, mid-email:

” This is rough, eh ? »

I remember thinking: this is perhaps the most rough that it was given to me to read, yes.

I spoke to Martin again recently. I told him that the tragedy in Laval this week—two children killed, presumably by their father—made me think of him. I told him that I would try to find the words to turn his old email into a column.

When he wrote to me a few years ago, Martin had emerged from the darkness, but he was still closer to it than today.

Today, he has a perspective that he didn’t have the first time he confided in me: “It’s not concrete like: I will kill them. This idea mingled with others, in a gibberish of darkness, in an emotional chaos, this idea mingled with others and it inhabited me, yes. Disappear, take them with me, do them a favor, put an end to the suffering. It was a solution, not a punishment, in my twisted mind. A kind of way to protect me from their judgement, from my failure. I didn’t ‘wish’ them dead, just make them bear the brunt of mine, I guess…”

Today, this version of himself seems unreal to Martin, but yet it did exist: I did read his words, when he was closer to the worst time of his life.

When I tell him that his message, when he wrote to me a few years ago, was I almost was that father…

Today, it’s as if he didn’t believe it.

Here, I know there are probably screaming readers wondering why I gave Martin the floor. Legit question. The answer is simple: no one ever admits having thought of killing their children, it’s an absolute taboo.

I think it is useful to talk about what goes through the mind of a person who has flirted with this idea.

I say “no one” on purpose, because filicide is committed by both men and women: 54% of filicides committed in Canada between 1998 and 2007 were committed by men, 34% by women and the remaining 12 % is made by other family members.

Why give the floor to this guy?

To give a buoy to a person who has unmentionable thoughts: the light can come back, will come back…

Do not do that.

Back to a sentence from Martin that you may have already forgotten, at this stage of the story: “Without knowing it, he said to me about the day when the departure of his girlfriend marked the beginning of the end of the light in his life, I had just made a decision. »

The decision to stay up, he said, despite everything, when she left.

And there, in the darkest of his life, he remembered that decision.

“This brief feeling that had lived in me the day of my breakup came back to me. I clung to it like my life depended on it. In fact, my life depended on it. I haven’t let go since, I just can’t. If the idea of ​​killing my own children is able to find its way into my head, the equally incongruous idea of ​​continuing to live despite the pitfalls can also find its place. She has to find her place. »

Young, Martin often fought. He remembered: drunk, frozen, I never won a fight, I just ate volleys.

Exit on weedexit the bottle.

He said to himself: we’ll have to walk without a crutch.

It was the first step.

He made others, uncertain, clumsy.

The light finally came back, quietly.

And the pain started to lessen.

I’m not saying it would be enough for people at risk of killing their child to drop the crutches of booze and dope to get back into the light, life is not a Hallmark movie. No, I’m telling Martin’s story to say that to anyone who would be tempted to believe that there will never be any light in his head and in his life: it’s not true.

The light returns, can return.

It can be through sobriety, through therapy, through volunteering, through bankruptcy to start fresh, through jogging, through writing, through love or through the slow and relentless passage of time, but whatever : the light returns, can return. It’s not true that darkness is eternal.

That’s the pretext for this column: the light is coming back.

When he wrote to me a few years ago, Martin had come back into the light.

“I can walk without crutches,” he told me. The only thing I need is my daughter’s hand in mine when I walk. I am a father. And I think I’m a good one. I am proud to be it. In the end, I know I’ll still be standing. Poqué, tired, in debt, damaged, but upright. And my children will be next to me. »