Why do I feel like I have survivor’s guilt? It’s not like you’re dead—as far as I know—but you are dead to me.

I had to get out. I didn’t have the resources to help you and you wouldn’t help yourself. Everything is my fault…my fault…my fault. Always my fault, never yours.

I did my share of sabotage—but only at the end. I knew it was the end. There was just tears—and fear. I was afraid of you. I’ve known you most of my life (30 years.)  I was your best friend, but at the end, you told your parents that you didn’t like me as a person. I was afraid of you. I couldn’t sleep in peace. There was no peace at breakfast. No peace in taking a shower. No peace ever, around you.

I was too fat. Too ugly. Too stupid. A Bitch. A Whore. A Cunt. I couldn’t get through a week where I didn’t hear those insults. I know. I counted the days—I never got to seven.

You sucked the joy out of every room you entered. And then you started sucking my energy. You became my incubus—sucking the life out of me until I was mostly a crinkled, collapsed shell.

You pleaded with me not to leave you, but you gave me no reason to stay. Your pleas felt like a downward spiral that was slowly killing me, like suction in a drain, circling a dark, dank black hole towards my doom. Sucked into the drain, I had no legs left–I was crippled; I couldn’t support my own weight until I had to become a separate person from you.  You told me that what I did made you not want to go on. But I will go on, I have no choice. You turned your family against me–you left me a long time ago with your betrayal. So, why do I have guilt? But I do. I do. I do.

I had to get out. I couldn’t help you. I knew you were sick, but it became about survival. It was you or me. I have survivor’s guilt.  “You did everything you could.  There is nothing for you to feel guilty about.  You stayed a lot longer than you should’ve.”  That was supposed to make me feel better–but it didn’t.

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I have survivor’s guilt. I couldn’t save you. You were so sick, you were wasting away in front of me. I didn’t have the resources to help you. Nothing was working. I have survivor’s guilt because I couldn’t afford to save you.

I know you loved me. I hope you know I loved you. I cared for you for 12 years. I saved you in the beginning and gave you a happy home, but it still crushed me to have to kill you. I have so much guilt about having to end your life.

“It was for the best. You can’t save him. You put him out of his suffering.” That was supposed to comfort me, to relieve my suffering. But I still have survivor’s guilt. It was you or me. You or me. You or me. I have to survive with my guilt.