What's it like to have a good relationship with those who should be there no matter what, 
those who should love you unconditionally, because I got everything but that. 
Other kids got the “I love you’s”, but all I remember getting is hateful words and terrible memories I won’t be able to forget. 
I don’t remember the last time I told you I loved you, but I remember the day I understood my hatred for you; how I had to protect myself from you.  
I put myself in a cage, a protective barrier that only I could trust, and through the years you’ve tried to break it down, blind and confused as to why this happened. 
“What happened to my kid”, or what happened years ago, asking me who I am when you’re the person you should be asking. 
You play the victim, framing me for a crime you committed, and maybe you lied to yourself so much you actually believe you did nothing wrong, but that doesn’t mean the crime wasn’t committed. 
All these kids get the “I love you’s” and all I get is the constant reminder of how you never want to see me ever again, 
To have never received any positive feedback for all my efforts, no matter how hard I try, because I'm never good enough for you, and maybe that’s why I'm never good enough for myself either. 
As the word love rolls off my tongue it feels foreign, it feels wrong and I don’t understand it, meaning skewed by someone who should have loved me from the start. I don’t know what love is, I know lonely nights, tear stained face at 4am, I know myself, but I don’t know love. 
And as I quietly sit to the question of the absence of said “I love you’s”, a million reasons fly through my head, but you still have no idea. 
You act like you did nothing, but because of your actions I have no concept of what real love is, as if a man was stranded in the desert without water, I'm the man and the water is the love you’ve given me,  
You’ve merged the words love and hate so now they sound the same to me, 
And if love and hate are the same then, I love you.