Vale of tears

All this time I haven't allowed myself to think of how this affects me. I've been thinking of how you lived, how you died, how you suffered, and the joy you had. All the rest is self-pity, I told myself. I cannot allow myself to wallow in it. My first duty is to you. I had to take it, for you. But now as I survey the remains of my life, it is a desolate landscape, indeed. How will I trudge through it? You were the only being I felt bound to live for. (In anger you told me once you were the contract I couldn't break - that much was true, although you were wrong that it was just duty that bound me to you.) As you did for me, I hoped. What now? Why continue to suffer through this vale of tears, when you have shown me how easy it is to leave it? Sure, I can tell myself it's still for you, but you don't exist anymore. And I don't know how to live for myself. We are mere animals, after all. If we cannot procreate, what sense is there in our existence. And it seems I got the terminator gene.