My name is Tessa Stynes. My name used to be associated with my family, my friends, maybe my photography, or my smile.
People used to tell me I had a nice smile.
Now, my name will have a very different association in people’s minds. People think of my name and they think of murder, fear, and death. This is hatefully unwanted- but not necessarily unwarranted.
If I want to dig at the wounds and baby scars that tear open so easily, I can tell you how I was responsible for people dying. I dig a lot, and even though it hurts, it’s cathartic, like pulling six-foot weeds out of the ground.
I’m attempting to build my story – and the Hunter’s – from the ground up, reliving it, trying to make sense out of what happened, pulling strands and dark clumps out of my head so that I can hope to build something new and shiny out of the rot.
Someone once told me that there are mountains in everyone’s path. They are all different shapes and sizes, but they are all mountains, and they are all difficult to breach.
Right now, I’m counting mountains. Some I conquer, and some sit in front of me, daunting and ice covered, just like that winter.
In the beginning, we were in the winter of 2010, the coldest winter on English record and a constant reminder of how far I was from home. The start of winter brought snow and I remember everyone marvelling at the beauty of it on the streets, the soft blanket of white making everything look so pure. I relished this winter’s stark difference to the ones I’d experienced back home in Australia, but I wasn’t to know that soon that pure blanket of snow was to hide blistered, butchered bodies.
I was one of the many Australians who came to London to claim their dreams of travelling and experiencing life away from home. I had dreams of traveling the world, of becoming a successful photographer, of possibly meeting the love of my life. I had friends I adored, I lived in a messy backpacker house with a housemate I hated, I was constantly cash strapped, and I was absolutely loving life. Independent, free, and figuring out my place in the big bad world.
It was all so exciting and challenging, choosing where I would live and what pub would be my local, getting lost and knowing I was the only person to get myself found again. It was all important, all joyful.
I thought I was discovering myself- not knowing that sometimes the most important parts of yourself don’t reveal themselves until they are pushed, pried out from inside you. The Hunter opened my eyes to a world I only saw the shadows of before, shadows of pain that now sit heavy in my heart.
I think maybe The Hunter, in one form or another, comes to us all, hiding behind different masks and facades of loss and pain, and it changes everything.
It is what we do afterwards that defines us, I think. It has to be.
So I search and destroy, prying at my feelings, at the holes in my memory and the jagged pain in my heart from that winter.
The largest snow capped mountain in my path is very far away. There are many that come before it, but this is the one I’m counting down to. Once I climb this far off mountain in my mind, I might be able to see my way to deserving life after everything that happened.
Life, after my killer.