To be honest, I did not expect the contents of this article. I expected a usual Medium blah, “How I killed a man and used that inspiration to start my internet business.”

Instead, I see a person with a conscience suffering terribly from an accident, and even demanding punishment for themselves.

It’s very sad, but it’s also extremely admirable. If even 20% of the world had your well-developed moral sense, it would be a much better place.

You can’t change the past. Pay it forward. You have beaten yourself up for eight years, and it speaks highly of your essential decency. If you could take that negative energy and use it to improve the world, it would be the best possible tribute to the poor guy who got killed. (And if you can’t, everyone would understand.)

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This is less important, but about fifteen years ago, I had a good friend who drove like a maniac, heavy on the acceleration. At some point, I discovered through a mutual friend who had known him a lot longer than I had that he had previously hit someone with his car, and either killed them or seriously injured them. And clearly he had learned nothing from this.

I never told him I knew, but later I picked a fight with him over another bullshit thing he was saying — how the Afghans deserved having the Afghan War wrought on them, it turned out to be, such garbage considering that 95% of Afghans were bitterly oppressed by their government and 99% of Afghans had never heard of Bin Laden before 9/11 — and I just walked out of the bar we were sitting, never to talk to him again.

If this were now, I would have just told him to his face what the problem was — that unlike you, he killed someone and it neither bothered him, nor caused him to change his behavior to the slightest degree.

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Again, you have suffered long enough. It speaks highly of you, but you have permission from some random Internet person to move on now, if that is at all helpful to you! And my very best wishes.