my punishment

When you went, you left a great void in my life that can never be filled. My life is just not the same and never will be. My heart aches for you like a pain that can never be cured. I feel your pain the same way you felt mine, but how deep your pain went I never knew. Little was I to realise I would soon find out and how it was to change our lives for ever.

With sadness in my very soul I look at the photograph, with your smile that lights up your baby blue eyes and wonder if I could have prevented what had happened on that terrible night. Could I have done something to change the tragic events that came about?. Yes I could have prevented it I know I could if I had tried. I try to erase it from my mind, but it overtakes me with a vengeance that leaves me feeling helpless. Even In my sleep I find no peace, because that night comes back to haunt and torment me, bringing with it the pain and horror of that night two years ago.

If only I had read the signs and acted on them, you would still be here, but I choose to ignore it, which makes me just as guilty. I ask myself that same question every single day and night and will continue to do so for the rest of my life. If only I had been stronger none of this would have happened. You would still have been here living your life to the full. Instead your life has been cruelly taken from you and never to return.

My lonely existence without you is my punishment for what has happened to you, It's become my life sentence with no time off for good behavior, because I don't deserve it and that's how it should be until I meet my maker and be answerable for what I have done to you.

If only I had the courage I would end it all right now, but being the coward that I have always been I can't. and never will. You had courage like I never had and used it as you saw fit, but your courage robbed me of you and that I can never forgive or forget.

You were my strength, my reason to carry on and act as if nothing was wrong. You seen through my act which I thought I hid so well. You knew when I was hurting and when I was well. You knew me better than I knew myself. If only I had known you the same way, then I would have seen it coming and prevented what was to happen.

You said you would do it again if you had to, and that's what got you a guilty verdict. The judge said you showed no remorse for your crime and you didn't. You stabbed him twenty times and never blinked an eye. You hated him so much for what he put me through. Your lawyer said If you had only stabbed him just the once and tried to show some remorse, the judge may have relented. The judge sympathized with my predicament but at the same time he had to set an example. He said I could have got help from organizations, that deal with domestic violence. There was no need for retaliation of this kind. The judge felt the sentence he imposed on you was befitting to the crime and sentenced you to ten years.

If only you had not come home early that night you wouldn't have seen your father beating me up. I had never seen you so angry as you shouted to your father that he had beat me for the last time. You grabbed a knife from the kitchen drawer and lunged it into him with such a frenzy and you just kept plunging the knife in and out of his bloody body. That was when I realised that you knew about the beatings that I had to put up with over the years. I tried so hard to hide it from you. I thought I had done well in keeping up with appearances in front of you, pretending everything was all right, but you were never fooled for a minute, were you?

I should have left your father years ago, but I was to scared to leave in case he found me. Now I regret that with all my heart. If only I had left him you would still be here instead of being locked up in a cell.

You freed me from a prison only to exchange it for another kind of prison and this one is even harder than the last.

I often wished your Father dead over the years, and used to plan how I would kill him. I never thought for a minute it would be your hands alone that would do it. Never could I have foreseen that in a life time.