Booze helped ease the pain I felt inside. In my state of mind, I didn’t understand how the pain came to be but only that it clung to my life like a millstone around my neck ever pulling me down deeper into darkness.
Over the years, the pain I once felt inside subsided. It moved from a hole inside where it once hid to a place of open sorrow for what happened. Time heals most things – they say – but I’m not convinced of that because an innocent man still lost his life and that cannot be given back. Later, the Veteran’s Administration diagnosed me as suffering full-blown, chronic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from the War at the time of the crime. Even so, I will spend the rest of my life being sorry not only because I let humanity down, but also because of the loss of innocent life.
