I Will Always Live With The Guilt Of What I Did That Day.

[Deleted member 20280]

Many years ago today, when I was a serving soldier I had to take a decision that has haunted me every Dec 21st since.

Many will say "Laurie, you were just following orders" or "Laurie you had no choice, you were only doing your duty"

Regardless of the fact I was ordered, the ultimate decision to "Pull" was mine, it was MY right index finger that "Pulled" that day and I shall live with that FACT for the rest of my life.

At the end of the day I Chose to pull, consciously in the light of day and therefore only I am responsible for what happened thereafter.

There are members on this forum who know what this thread is about and I respectfully ask those members not to repeat those details.

Dec 21st will always be one of the worst days of my life because of my decision to "Pull" that day.

I may have been a soldier that day but I was also a self thinking human being who had a "Choice"

I live with this memory and what "I" inevitably decided to do, regardless of wether I was ordered or not.

 

[scout86]

Mr. Laurie, in a sense it was "your choice". In another sense, it wasn't. We change. We learn things. Our abilities and perceptions are not the same today as they were a year ago, or 10 years ago. At least for most people I think that's true, For you, I'm SURE it's true because I know you've worked very hard at coming to terms with your past. The person who made that choice that day is NOT the same person who posted here a few minutes ago. He was a younger person, making the best decision he knew how to make at the time. He may even have regretted it immediately. He may have begun to hate that he'd done it immediately. The fact is, at the time, it was the only choice he was capable of making, for a variety of reasons, most of which were beyond his control.. If YOU had the choice, today? You'd probably do differently. That's not the way things work, sadly. Let that earlier version of you off the hook a little, if you can. OK? I'm sure he was a decent fellow, doing the best he could, in bad circumstances.

 

[kona355]

Many years ago today, when I was a serving soldier I had to take a decision that has haunted me every...

Perfect hindsight is hard to bear. Without me knowing what happened, and I don't mean to take away from your experience, I do know that each one who follows orders, does so during the totality of the circumstances at that moment.

Is it possible you acted or reacted to training and the emotional toll of the moment? Whether it was a right-or-wrong act isn't the point I want to make, but just to view what happened in that one point in time happened without you being able to sit and ponder all the possibilities or even options.

Looking back with perfect hindsight is crippling if used for anything more than to learn from then to put it away. The guilt is unbearable as I'm sure you know when examining what should have happened instead of what did happen.

One other obstacle to resolving an experience like this, especially for conscientious people, is if we dare view the experience in any other way than in self-condemning guilt, it will seem as if making excuses. As conscientious people, we will beat the hell out of ourselves with guilt and punish ourselves continually instead of going back to what we knew at that instant.

 

[kona355]

@Link Removed - By the way, Scout posted as I was finishing mine, but I didn't read any of it until mine uploaded. The point is we're both encouraging you along the same lines of what happened was in a single moment of time, with a lot of incoming sensory information to process in very little time.

 

[Deleted member 12723]

I have my own regrets to live with different from yours. You are in the span of time and you are not the same person. The military training you went through prepared you to be a soldier and so I hope that you will be kind to yourself as you were trained to do what you did. I am sad that you are haunted by the memory but you are not the same person. You have grown and matured and see things from your new place in the span of time of your life.

I hope that you will consider some self forgiveness. Being trained to survive and fight is what forces propelled you. Now that you have grown and matured you see things differently.

I had EMDR and it took away the shame and being haunted by bad choices I made that got me into trouble. I think it is not for everyone but it changed my life for the better and I am no longer haunted and assaulted by bad memories.

 

[Powder]

Even with the best intentions, sometimes bad results will occur after our choices that we made.

There is no such thing as clear hindsight. There is no way to know what would have happened if you didn't do what you did. It could have ended much worse.

Anthony has commented that trying to go back in time and think about how things would be without PTSD or certain actions is termed "counter-factual" thinking. It is called that because nobody can know how things have affected the timeline or others.

I think only very conscientious people worry about the effects of their past actions. And this is easy to do for compassionate people; it is easy to dwell on perceived mistakes or actions that do not fit our values 100% or put us in conflict with mixed values.

The bullies of the world do not spend nearly enough time worrying about their actions, and they keep doing them, lying about them, and generally making the world worse every day.

Since you spend as much time as possible making it better, you are not in that category. Categorically, you are a good guy and cannot be expected to be perfect by anyone.

Anniversaries can be difficult to manage. Can you find a way to honor the meaning of that day privately to commemorate that you lived and will carry a message forward in life from the lesson of the event?

Any way you make meaning of it, is good for you and for us all.

Bless you for healing.

 

[Deleted member 20280]

@Muse thank you :hug:s