Wow… thank you everyone for such kind responses.
I hear the subject come up about forgiving myself again and again. I don’t suppose gobbling down one’s meds is exactly a sign of self forgiveness – but that was really desperation and pain – not self hatred or desire to harm so much.

I think I actually have forgiven myself. I think I know how it happened. I think I know how my ethics and feelings were shaped by my own relationships as a child. I won’t explain, but they were bizarre to say the least. I don’t excuse my choices or actions, but I understand how I could get to that place.

What is very, very difficult for me is constantly facing new people. I just get to a level of trust and familiarity with my probation officer and they change it on me. Then I have to start with a new one, from square one – them assuming the worst and treating me like public enemy number one until they get to know me. Then as soon as I feel like we understand each other it starts all over again.

Then, my recent hospital experience. Regardless of the growth, responsibility, maturity and stability I’ve established in the past six years - it seems like every new person I have to face with this feels a PERSONAL OBLIGATION to make me understand what a horrible thing I did. I already know that, I understand - you know? So no matter how much I forgive myself I am constantly facing this over and over again. It has to go beyond forgiving myself and I have to learn how to not let this get to me. Then there is the media and popular notion of basing the statistics for repeat behavior and risk on the 2% or 3% who are truly dangerous. As I’ve said before, the offenders who are in therapy, who are compliant with probation, who are compliant with drug testing, who keep a job, who follow all the rules – and this is most – are not dangerous. None the less, I often have to face that hysteria – such as when my wife and I moved from the 4th floor (where I owned my apt for 17 years) to the 2nd floor – and the co-op board felt required to leave letters about me with the entire population of my building.
You see, it really has nothing to do with forgiving myself. It has everything to do with trying to make sure my wife and I are safe from vigilantes in the neighborhood. It has everything to do with making sure the authorities aren’t going to make me move because a new day care opens up down the block. This is real stuff. It isn’t obsessive. It isn’t narcissistic.

So combine all of this with the issues my daughter and son are going through. Combine it with the problems between my mother and my wife. It is a bit difficult to say the least. So it IS a miracle that I’m here to write about it. If you really look at it, is it hard to fathom I *might* think I’d be better off dead?

Religion is dangerous topic. But for me, I like Genesis and I like science. We are all comprised of the same atoms that existed at the beginning of time. We are made of stardust. In this sense quite literally we are a chip off the same block. Whatever was before the Big Bang, whatever existed prior to that primordial soup – whatever made that – wherever the energy that makes light and mass and space and time – that is God to me. I’m part of that. You are part of that. Even Hitler was part of that. Mother Theresa was part of that. We all came from the same place. So forgiveness for me is simply remembering that. My personal suffering doesn’t mean anything. Coming to fully understand the fellowship I share with All the Is – does mean something. This is tremendously difficult to maintain when all this ‘realistic’ life crap keeps getting in the way!