I cannot hate you,
but I hate what you’ve done.
And I don’t know if I’ll ever be able
to forgive you.
Our family is broken now.
And I can’t find the pieces I need
to fix this.
Maybe I can try to glue whatever we had
back together,
but the picture will never look the same.
And I don’t think you understand.
We’re all hurting from a wound
that may never heal.
You cut way too deep and
the pain is way too intense to manage.
You selfishly destroyed your little sister’s peace
and there is no excuse for that,
nor is there an explanation that would make
ANY of this ok.
You helped yourself to something
that was not yours
and you changed the way my baby saw the world
forever.
You detonated a bomb
in her bedroom,
causing the most devastating explosion.
And you burnt our entire home down
in the process.
And I couldn’t have stopped this.
By the time I saw the flames,
it was way too late.
The irreversible damage had been done.
And we can’t rebuild here.
This foundation is no longer safe.
And we’ve all been misplaced,
experiencing our own versions of hell.
Your sister’s nightmares, the worst of all.
And I can’t stop replaying that day.
I can’t stop wondering
how I didn’t know,
how I couldn’t see
what you were capable of…
because I never believed
you’d be capable of any of this.
I carried you,
I birthed you,
I loved you and now
I am forced to mourn the loss of you.
Because I cannot accept
the “new” you.
I refuse.
The person I love would have never done this.
The baby I held in my arms
would have never grown up to be so…
twisted.
And I miss my son.
I really do.
But he died to me on June 17th.
And everyone knows what’s dead is gone
and there’s never any coming back
from that.
Brandy's note: Amber shared this poem in our online SST parent support group. The response from the group was overwhelming; dozens of parents thanked her for putting words to their current or past realities, in full or in part. Step parents and biological parents; parents who hope for a reunified family and those who never want to see the sibling who caused the devastation again; parents who sought criminal charges and those who fought criminal charges; parents who walked in on unthinkable sibling behavior and those who learned that their children had been carrying trauma and secrets for decades--our journeys are unique, but we all go through a grieving process. Amber captured common and vital parts of that grief: the loss of the families we dreamed of and thought we had, the torture of watching our children suffer, and the death of the image we held of children we loved and thought we knew. (For those wondering about the significance of the date given, that is the date that Amber discovered her son had assaulted her daughter, 3 years ago. It is almost universal that parents within our group carry instant recall of the date of disclosure and how much time has passed since that moment.)