When I was around 10 I went to a friends house and there were newborn kittens that a stray cat had birthed inside someone’s car. I asked that they be taken to the aspca in a box and the adult I spoke to said they could have disease and should not be touched. Next thing you know the men are throwing them across a fence… and I am crying. I don’t remember if I was able to voice them to stop. I feel very guilty that I couldn’t stop them. Then when I was around 13 I had a hamster that I didn’t take very good care of. It used to store food in the bedding so it was hard to tell when it needed food. So I fed it sort of irregularly bc it became a habit. The cage stank and my grandma put it on the balcony sometimes and it was cold at times. One day I came home and found it dead. Idk from starvation or coldness. I feel terrible. Then when I was 18 I had a puppy fly in from Korea. It was really small and it all of a sudden passed out so I rushed her to the vet. They saved her and said they force fed her a lot and told me to feed her every couple hours. It was nighttime when we got home and I thought she would be ok until the next morning so I put her in her area with food and water. The next morning she had passed away. I can’t help but think I took a chance with her life. Thinking she would be ok but not knowing she would be and still deciding to sleep and taking chance. Because of these 3 instances I feel unworthy of living. I don’t know how to sit with the guilt. It is too much. Why couldn’t I scream at the adults to stop throwing the kittens. Was I lazy was I too introverted was I in shock I don’t know but I don’t feel like I deserve to live at this point. Why didn’t I just feed the puppy every 3-4 hours throughout the night. Why didn’t I take very good care of the hamster and clean its cage regularly and feed it more regularly. How did I live till now without dwelling on the guilt from these instances. How can I live.

When I was a child 7-10, I had this wonderful dog. I loved him so much. However sometimes, I would hit him out of either anger or because I liked the way he would lick my hand to say 'sorry'. At age 13, my OCD sparked up badly. I had no idea what it was, but I would bully him. Badly. He was never hurt, but he was agitated. Then I found some kittens and saved them just after turning 14. I let them stay in my room with me for a few weeks to help them. One very early morning, however, they raged me so bad that I began hitting them nonstop. They didn't cry, nor do run away. Hell, all of my pets were never ever scared of me. They loved me for some reason. For so long I've been doing my best to help animals and adore my pets, and I've sworn to never EVER hurt an animal again. I love them so much. I remember though I would never hit them so hard to make them cry out, because I've been inflicting the way I hit them onto my arms and thighs to see how bad it hurt, and gladly, it didn't really hurt. Stung a bit, at most, but doesn't make what I did anymore okay. Do I deserve my babies anymore? Do I deserve to even live? I feel so ashamed and I don't want to use my OCD as an excuse, nor say that maybe I was traumatised because of it because people have been through worse than me, so I don't want to compare. Any small comment will do, thank you for reading

I genuinely feel like the worlds most horrible person deeply for my past actions in childhood and general mistakes I’ve made. I feel like I shouldn’t be here or there’s no hope for me despite doing right ( trying to do right ) I’ve wanted to open up to my mom about things from my past but when I was talking to her about a situation that happened just to share, she was like “Thank God you’ve never done anything like that” But really my past mistakes are worst. It’s like I feel like I should disappear. I don’t know how to deal with the guilt and I feel horrible. I’ve made good and bad decisions but despite this being a long time ago ( which doesn’t erase my stupid actions ) I still keep bringing back into the present and I’m filled with guilt I genuinely think it would be better if I wasn’t here. I wake up think about my past things and I’m filled with guilt and shame that maybe I am a bad person and voices don’t stop, they keep telling me a lot of things that I start to believe. It makes me upset that I did something like that in my past and I try to be understanding but I can imagine the reactions of people and being condemned so much. I literally do this to myself every single day and it’s exhausting I don’t know how you guys can treat me with so much compassion and understanding. It really doesn’t feel real or like I deserve it. Like even on nocd, it makes me feel worst because I come across comments that say “as long as it’s not —-“ or something and I compare it to my past and I feel like a horrible unacceptable person.

So I have a really difficult story to share. It's about one of my kitty cats. My girlfriend and I found her in a parking garage around 6 years ago, and we initially took her in as a foster. We did everything we could to try to find her original owners before moving on to trying to get her taken in at a no-kill shelter. Nobody would take her, so she ended up becoming our cat. This probably wasn't the most wise idea considering I also have a senior cat (10-11 at the time) that had a urinary tract disease that was super sensitive to stress. I stupidly thought that we would be able to introduce them and that they might live in harmony. This was a pipe dream, and they absolutely hated each other. We continued to try. About 6 months into having her, we moved across the country and then Covid happened. We ended up having to move from our original planned apartment into a studio due to a change in roommate plans, so we had 2 cats that didn't get along in a studio. We tried to make due with what we could, and we got a pet gate to separate the bathroom/small hallway/laundry closet from the living/bedroom area. Our new kitty was living in that hallway bathroom area, which looking back was entirely too small for a cat. We didn't have room for a cat tree, but I believe I tried to do my best to let her into the main area to hang out and explore when my old man cat was sleeping. We also occasionally would take her to our building's outdoor area on a leash, but she was not a fan. Still, I know this wasn't enough. It's already bad enough, but there are a few things that made this a lot worse. First, whenever we left the apartment we had to put our young girl in the bathroom to keep her from climbing the gate and fighting our other kitty while we were away. This led to her being in that bathroom for quite a few hours at a time, which I feel insanely guilty about. It was not a large bathroom, and I would never do the same now. Second, my girlfriend and I did not do a good job at keeping a clean house. We both struggle with mental illness (my OCD was very severe at this time and I was going through a multi-year real event fixation that ate almost every waking moment. I ended up coping with a lot of weed and alcohol). So the already small area was messy a lot of the time. The third and worst part of it all is that we lived like this for around 3 years. So for about 3 years of this sweet young girl's life, she knew confinement and understimulation. I tried to spend a lot of time with her and to make sure she could explore the rest of the apartment when the old man was sleeping, but I feel I still didn't do this enough. I can't believe I let her live in such a small messy place for so long. I don't know how I even justified this. I feel like a neglectful monster. I feel so guilty for giving my senior cat priority when it came to his space. I had no idea how long he would be with us, and I've had him since I was 10 so I didn't want to completely uproot and change his lifestyle. But this came at the expense of our younger girl, and I feel it's impossible to forgive myself. I let her down. I neglected her. What I did was considered animal abuse. I know she probably should have gone to live with someone else at that point, I feel like I couldn't see just how bad things had gotten. Well we've been living in a new place for about 2 years now. Both kitties are alive and well, and we now live in a 2 bedroom (the old man lives in our room and our girl roams the kitchen/living room area). We utilize a cardboard gate to let them explore parts of each other's areas when we can. We still struggle with cleanliness, but we're working on it and we make sure she always has clean water, food, and litter. I admittedly still struggled with keeping the litterboxes clean until recently due to the sensory problems of it all, but I've been doing much better than I used to. Our young girl now enjoys laying in the windowsill and hanging out on our couches and chairs. She always greets me in the mornings with a trill, and she frequently approaches with that happy upright question mark tail. Just yesterday she was making biscuits on my stomach. She still likes to play a lot, and I really need to get better at doing that every single day (still struggling with mental health and depression, partially because my old man cat has been going through it recently). So I feel like she probably isn't too traumatized, but there's no way of knowing. She is very loving and social, but also skittish. I feel like it doesn't matter. I feel like I don't deserve to still care for her because of what I put her through. I was 20 when I got her, and that was old enough to know and do better. I'm so sad that she spent nearly half her life like that. It makes me hate myself so much. I feel like she should have been taken away from me for all of that. I feel so guilty that she is still the sweetest girl after going through all of this. I just can't believe I put this darling girl, a sentient living creature, through that hell for 3 years. I don't know what to do or how to proceed. I just know that I am deeply, deeply sorry and regretful. I wish I could do it all again. I feel like it doesn't matter how hard I try now. I don't deserve her.