NOALE – «They say he killed himself because of me but it’s not true: what I read around, those who whisper behind my back make me suffer. I looked death in the face, I stayed on that floor for ten minutes struggling to breathe, fighting for my life. We are both victims.” R., the woman attacked on Tuesday morning at home by her ex-partner, who then took his own liferecounts with tears in his eyes the minutes in which he stared death in the face.
It all happened a few steps from here, in the apartment in Mestre where you lived together. How was your relationship before last Tuesday’s violence?
«We were together for six years. He had significant emotional baggage, like everyone else. I say this because I want it to be known that I loved him, even when I stopped loving him, but life with him was not always easy, perhaps also due to suffering and traumas found in his past. He wasn’t a lively person, he loved staying at home and lived to work: I’m different, I always told him that I wanted to see the world, leave the house, but he wasn’t very involved. I told him “Aren’t you curious, get up from that sofa, life is one and passes in a breath, I don’t want to spend it at home watching television”. The differences in character made themselves felt during our cohabitation and I decided to leave him.”
But he hadn’t understood it.
«We had broken up for at least five months but he still hoped we could get back together. He told me “But how can you not suffer?”, And I told him that I had moved on, I was convinced of my choice. But I never denied him my friendship. In recent months he had become more introverted, darker than usual and what’s more he filled me with messages and calls asking me to get back together. But, before Tuesday, he had never hurt me.”
Furthermore, he had never returned the keys to the house in Mestre. Perhaps, last Tuesday morning, he was hoping to be able to recover the relationship?
«That morning he had come by the house to do some work in the garden. He insisted on coming, he did it often, I even found him upstairs making coffee. But when I saw him that morning… I don’t know, he had something in his eyes that I didn’t like. I asked him not to enter the house, he followed me and told me something about an insult that according to him I had said to him days before. I ignored him but he didn’t want to give up his prey. I heard him coming from behind and when I turned I saw that his expression had changed. He had lost control: he wrapped his hands around my neck, dragged me to the floor, in the entrance of the house, and held me like that for at least ten minutes. There I thought “I’m going to die, it’s over”.
How did you manage to survive?
«With the force of desperation. I struggled but he was stronger, so I caressed his cheek and whispered “I love you.” He must have felt a sensation of affection that brought him back to his senses, he let go and made me get up again. I had to reassure him: when he realized what he had done to me he told me “Now I’m going to kill myself”. I told him that everything was fine, that everything would be fine and I went to the emergency room.”
Alone?
“He didn’t accompany me.”
The report started automatically from the Mestre hospital, thanks to the Red Code. Did you want to report it?
“I thought about it, I was worried about the repercussions on him.”
When he didn’t show up for work that day, you called the police in Noale, where he had returned to live, who found him dead.
«I suffer from his death, I loved him until the end, I have been crying for days. I would like to let his family know that I am not the cause of what happened to him. In this story there are two victims and two destroyed lives. I never wanted this to happen to him. I had to choose and I chose to live. They say that love hurts but you can’t die for love.”
