I cannot help but hate you for what you did to my mother.

You killed her too - the day you murdered our lives.

I cannot help but love you, achingly, bitterly - with every desolate fiber of my being.

You were a part of me - a part of my daughter.  How we loved you - without hesitation - without even thinking.

How cautious you have made us now.

I cannot help but die with you - gagging on my own guilt.

How could I have missed your agony - the wounded boy exiled, years before, to a hollow, emotionless void?

How could I have been so stupid - taking your apathetic silence as cold indifference - instead of the exhausted facade of a terrified child?

I cannot help but splinter into a thousand pieces - irrevocably broken.

You crushed my faith in myself; you took my mother from me; you stole my daughter's easy smile.

I am sick with grief, sick with self-loathing, sick with bearing the unbearable.

Oh God - I am SO sorry.

My perception failed me; my knowledge of depression an impotent weapon,  I never once thought to raise in your defense.

And yet, you destroyed me too.

You took from me something too precious for words.  You took it without asking, without even a moment's thought to the devastation it would cause.

I cannot help but hate you.

I cannot help but love you.

I cannot help but die with you - each day - every day - again and again - and then again.

This is what you have done.

And each day I must wonder - "Dear God, what is it that I have done?"