I mean, I felt terrible. And in the beginning, I mean, I was completely devastated. I mean, can you imagine the kind of guilt that you would feel, and the responsibility?
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I was tormented with guilt for years and years. In fact, it was so bad that if I didn't feel wrong, I didn't feel right!
I felt ashamed for what I had done. I don't have any excuses. I did what I did. I take full responsibility for myself and my actions. I wouldn't pawn this off on anybody. I'm sorry it happened. And I hurt people.
Besides that, I felt guilty. I thought for some reason... I was alive, and Buddy and those boys were dead, and I didn't know how, but somehow I'd caused it.
And I felt sorry, and I have felt bad about what happened.
The guilt I felt for having a mental illness was horrible. I prayed for a broken bone that would heal in six weeks. But that never happened. I was cursed with an illness that nobody could see and nobody knew much about.
I would find myself getting deeply distressed if I lived in hindsight all the time.
We all feel the urge to condemn ourselves out of guilt, to blame others for our misfortunes and to fantasize about total disaster.
I wasn't prepared for the fact that grief is so unpredictable. It wasn't just sadness, and it wasn't linear. Somehow I'd thought that the first days would be the worst and then it would get steadily better - like getting over the flu. That's not how it was.
What upset me the most was not that I would die, but that I was letting down my parents. I felt very guilty for chasing this dream career of mine, at the expense of my parents.
Even with my father and brother dying, I didn't quite process the grief.
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