“Joep is still alive for me,” says Tionne van Halder (23). She’s talking about her sweet Joep. A sweet, caring, social boy, with a busy head. A born nurse, who sometimes extinguished his own light to give it to others. “It stuffs me that the moment I have to miss him longer than we have been together.”
The spark skips with mathematics. Or well, not literally there, but let’s say that the interest there was aroused. “We were a lot on Snapchat,” Tionne explains, like more couples in this time. The conversations start there. The every conversations.
Tionne and Joep are real Highschool Sweetheartsboth from Helmond, who together scan a early love while chatting. “I felt: you understand in some things. We found each other in our darkness, we became each other’s light,” she says. It takes a while, but a year later they finally meet. Offline. “And on July 18, 2019 we were dating.”
She falls for his lush curls, his smile, but especially the feeling that he gives her. Joep understands how her head works, and vice versa. He has a bit heavy about him, something mysterious and darkers. “That attracted me. And the more we got to know each other, the more we looked alike.” Busy heads, warmth, trust, vulnerability and tranquility. Where one sometimes had to give more. And the other person could receive more.
“I wanted to protect him and pushed my feelings aside.”
Darkte and mysticism sounds nice, but is sometimes less in practice. The young people both struggle with a kind of storm in their heads. “Joep also had ADHD. And that could express itself positively and negatively,” says Tionne. “With a negative spiral and a bad self -image, for example. I think we were both in the middle of it. I wanted to protect him and pushed my feelings aside. But I did it with love. And I wanted to do it much longer.”
Five years ago, Joep tells Tionne aloud for the first time that he doesn’t really like life anymore. He has been walking with those thoughts for years, but it is only the first time he says to her. Joep has had therapy for years and is struggling. In fact, his head always makes him tired.
“In recent months, I noticed that it went downhill quickly with his feelings and he used more ways to numb. I was sitting with it, I thought about it and always had my phone on full volume.” Because she wants to help him because it is in her character. But also because Tionne walks around for years with the fear that Joep would leave life.
That fear comes out. On Monday, December 5, 2022, Joep dies. He is 21 years old. “My whole world felt muted,” says Tionne. “I thought: it happened. I spent two hours staring out on the couch. In fact, the only urge I felt was to app him. To tell what I had just experienced.”
“I can keep talking about Joep endlessly.”
It will be her Rock Bottom. “The first year was pure shock. Depressive and suicidal thoughts, alcohol and parties. I don’t blame myself for that either, but it couldn’t go any further,” she says. She goes into trauma therapy and talks to a psychologist, but she actually finds her only comfort in meditation and spirituality.
“That is my outlet. I started sharing more and more about my personal story and about mourning, also on social media. A lot of people find support in that and that helps me. I pick things up and try to share them. I can keep talking about Joep endlessly. Mourning and loss are not something to stop. Take it and accept it.”
For example, last year Tionne shares a video in Tiktok in which she goes to a hotel in Rotterdam. “Today I have been with my friend for six years,” she says in the video. It is as if she is reliving their memories that day. By sleeping in the same place, listening to music, eating and drinking. “I also talk to him, in my head or out loud. For me he lives in the smallest, daily things. And if I go to such a hotel alone, he is just there for me.”
“They are memories that none of us take away. That Joep is no longer there does not mean that I no longer have a partner. It is a layer that I always wear with me. I get up with it and I go to bed with it.”
Talking about thoughts to suicide helps. You can call 24 hours a day with Stichting 113 Suicide Prevention via 0800 0113 or chat via EN 113.nl.
