In a lengthy video today shared on Instagram and Twitter, Danny Cipriani spoke out about the death of his former girlfriend Caroline Flack. The former rugby player said the pair had always been in contact, following her call to him the day before she died last weekend, aged 40.
The tearful 32-year-old told his 210,000 Instagram followers: “I have to tell this story… oh my god… I have rehearsed this so much in my mind.
“So someone that I loved as a person very dearly and someone I was very close to has decided to take her own life as everyone knows.”
Danny continued: “We’ve always been in contact since we were together, since we weren’t, and it’s always been a loving friendship.
“I was so vulnerable with her in my moments, when we first met and I told her everything about me because I felt safe with her.”
READ MORE: BBC Question Time LIVE: Audience enraged as Caroline Flack debated
In the raw 18-minute upload he addressed missing Caroline’s call and shared his “most shameful” moment in bid to help others suffering like her.
He said: “The ritual is I sit at home crying and the ritual is I have a lot of guilt, and the ritual at the moment is I have a lot of anger.
“But if I stay on to that it will break me, so I have to see the meaning she decided to call me in her last moments, when she was with her two best friends.”(sic)
Danny said the pair had been “vulnerable” together and thanked her for finding a “safe space” with him.
He detailed how he attempted to purchase a gun from a man at a nightclub in London when he was suffering with severe depression at 22.
He added: “I see clearly now and I hate the fact that it’s taken someone so kind and so beautiful, and had just as many faults as me and you, but never malicious…
“She was kind, she was loving… the voice note she sent me when she was broken and she was moved on, she spent the last 20 seconds asking how I am and how’s rugby.”(sic)
Danny claimed it was “embarrassment and shame that killed” Caroline, who knew “everything” about him.
He said that he hoped that his own honesty about his mental health with Caroline would “give her some light”.
“Ultimately it wasn’t enough,” he added. “I’m not saying it was my fault in terms of I hadn’t given her the information but I tried.
“Some people don’t have the fight in them – she was dealing with it for 20 years. I had 12 in me and this is me broken – I’m not doing what she decided to do because I’m doing this for her.”
During the upload, Danny urged people to know “it’s OK to be vulnerable” and not to worry about what others think.
Danny ended by saying: “I just want to thank everyone that has been kind to her, to me, her boyfriend, to her family, to whoever. Continue. Continue!
“Don’t make it take for an artist to die before you buy their painting… It’s not easy sometimes to get out of bed, that’s what my mum taught me, but you’ve got to get up and do it. Overtime I get knocked back, I get up and do it.
“… I haven’t cried in 20 years because I’ve bottled up everything. And I haven’t stopped. I’m done, that’s it.”
For confidential support call the Samaritans in the UK on 116 123 or visit a local Samaritans branch.
