I was watching you.  If you could read this now, I'm sure you'd like to know who I am, and why I was watching you, and on what day, for how long.  Of course, you should already know who I am:  You've always been so smart.  Unfortunately, the answers to those, as well as any other questions you might have thought up, will never come to you.

I was standing in the shadows on that day.  Again, if you could hear me, I'm sure you'd know of which day I speak.  I watched you as you sat with your head in your hands on your favourite bench in the park, into which we had once carved our initials inside the shape of a heart.  I could hear you mumbling on about how I must be right, how worthless and disgusting you were to me, how you could never give me what I wanted—at least not yet.  My eyes never strayed from your little corner of the world as finally, while sobbing uncontrollably, you made the decision I'd been hoping you'd make, stuffing your pockets with whatever small rocks you could find in the hopes that they would help you sink when your body met the cold, cold sea.  As I'm sure you discovered as your plan crumbled around you, as you floundered helplessly in the icy water, the rocks did little.  But how could you have known?  You were so young, so naive. . . .

Just the thing I loved and, subsequently, hated about you.  I feel no compulsion to explain what I did, but some part of my emotionless mind knows that I stopped being reasonable long ago.  When you wouldn't give me what I wanted, the thoughts swarming into my head, about how I was going to punish you, scared me.

You wouldn't understand.  You see, the only way I could protect you from my inevitable wrath was to have you removed from the earth.  I couldn't kill you; I realized that.  Nor could I hold you down and satisfy my desire, as much as I wanted to.  My head knew so, but didn't want to believe or accept that I was powerless over you.

Which is why I said all those things, why I called you worthless and disgusting.  Not because I believed them, but because I had to somehow convince myself that your love wasn't worth all of my trouble while at the same time pushing you toward a decision.  The decision was necessary.  Soon, I knew, you might have realized that I was the one pulling all the wrongs in our relationship, and that you were better off without me.  I couldn't take that chance.  I wanted you to feel the guilt, wanted you to make my decision for me.  Losing the physical you would be far easier than losing your emotional dependence on me.  I couldn't let you get away from me, couldn't stand to see you with someone else, knowing that you were no longer mine.  I could stand to lose you, but not your love.

I feel no sorrow for what I did to you—or rather, caused you to do to yourself.  Although those intentions were clear to me, I never dropped a hint to make you think of ending your life; as far as anybody knows, you thought that up all on your own.  Therefore, not only could you not blame me—because it was your decision—but nobody else can pin it on me either.  You loved me, after all.  Your note confirmed that.

From only sheer luck and coincidence did this turn out to be the perfect crime, because I wasn't intending for it to be a crime at all.  God knows, I loved you dearly.  But the only two ways I saw of solving my problem were to rob you of the one thing of which you deprived me, or to make it so you would never be able to tempt me again.  And you know I'm not a violent person.

What you don't understand is that I did this for you to protect you from a fate worse than death.  You couldn't understand, because you're no longer able to understand.  But were you, I'm sure you would agree:  I did what was best for you.  I did the right thing.