Can you imagine what it feels like to indirectly or accidently cause permanent damage to another human being?

Could have been worse, it could have been something he could have avoided by being more careful. It’s a whole lot more difficult to forgive yourself for that.

@Fyrius The player or the coach?

My youngest sister was involved in a nearly fatal car accident due to some woman blowing a stop sign. My sister managed to swerve around her but subsequently got into a head on collision with a laden down pick up truck. She nearly died. She sustained a massive head injury that kept her in a coma for 9 months. She can never live independently, her balance is screwed up: she walks like she is drunk, her short term memory is shot and her speech is often hard to understand.

The lady who caused the accident never called to find out how my sister was even. I often wonder if she thinks about how she destroyed my sister’s life.

Having been through something like that I know I would try to establish contact, apologize profusely, and try to keep in touch with whom ever I injured.

I can’t imagine. I honestly don’t think I could handle that kind of guilt.
To some degree I have been in that type of situation. Not exactly as you described, but inaction on my part lead to some traumatic events for other people. I have a hard time even dealing with that guilt. Something worse? I don’t think I could do it.

@erichw1504
The player.

If something terrible happens that you could have avoided by being abnormally careful, but which happens so rarely that the probability isn’t even worth being careful for, then even though you still couldn’t reasonably be blamed, it would be very difficult to forgive yourself. You’ll probably keep thinking what-if-what-if, if-only-if-only, and keep beating yourself up over it. And maybe develop obsessive-compulsive tendencies.

If something terrible happens that you really can’t help – like a foul ball taking someone’s eye out – then as horrible as the consequences are, you can’t really blame yourself. It makes the situation more manageable.

@Fyrius Oooh, I gotchya now! That is true and is why I said “indirectly or accidently”.

It’s a life lesson, that’s all that can be said.
I agree with @Fyrius

I am not one to carry dysfunctional guilt, if I mess up I will own it and do my best to make amends, but, I do not believe in paying for our mistakes forever.

Thankfully I can say I have never been involved with causing any great harm to another and hopefully I will not ever have that experience.

One afternoon I was driving to the store to get a couple of things and a young boy on a bicycle steered right in front of me I tried to stop but I hit him. I couldn’t believe he had just turned right in front of me. I did swurve the car and just caught his rear end tire with the left side of my car. A policeman was sitting right there in his car and saw the whole thing. I thought I had killed him and when I got out of the car the boy was on the ground crying. I went to him and his hand had rubbed over some rock that was in the road and it was bleeding but that was the only thing I could see. The policeman pulled up and called for the paramedics to look the boy over. I was so upset I couldn’t hardly stand and I didn’t want to drive again ever. In time I was able to let it go and drive again but it was very hard to think that just like that I could have taken his life.

Does anyone watch the show “Brothers and Sisters?” One character finds out as an adult that he paralyzed another kid in an altercation but never knew. His family covered for him and paid off the other boy’s family, because they didn’t want their son having to live with what he had done.

@sliceswiththings Interesting! Would you do the same for one of your own family members?

As a novel twist of logic let me offer this:
Keep thinking, what if, what if; the victim had been a little slower, what if they failed
to arrive for the detrimental situation, at the perfect time, to participate in an injury?

Or, realize that it takes two to tangle, up our lives in such a complicated manner.

Share the the credit for being at the wrong place, at the perfect time, with others involved,
rather than greedily stealing all the responsibility for the other parties timing and actions,
give proper credit to the role the other’s life paths played in precipitating the given outcome.

What sacrifice is too great for god to ask, someone else to make?

I can imagine it but am fortunate I’ve not yet been in the spot. When we were young kids, two of my cousins were playing together on train tracks, laying coins or fireworks on the rails (I can’t remember what the items were exactly) and one of my cousins didn’t run away in time and got sucked under the train. My other cousin saw it all, they were about 8 and 9yrs old. I know my surviving cousin has had horrible dreams all his life and because he was slightly older, some of the family blame him for letting the younger one play like that.

My oldest daughter will forever live with the guilt of doing something stupid without thinking it through. Most of you will remember my posts a while back about my youngest daughter getting hurt and having a skull fracture and bleeding on the brain. Simply because my oldest tickled her little sister that was perched on her daddy’s shoulders, she fell and could have died.

Thankfully, my wee one is all healed now, and my oldest isn’t quite as melancholy, but she still quietly says, “It was my fault” when the subject is brought up. It’s awful for me, just as her mom, to know that she blames herself and carries that guilt with her. I don’t even want to imagine how she would feel if our wee one had actually died.

I was driving my then-wife and her dad home when a small truck hit us in an intersection. Both vehicles were moving fairly slowly, so only metal damage resulted. But what I remember most vividly is that immediately after the crash I looked behind me and saw that my dad-in-law had been thrown down onto the floor (he wasn’t wearing a belt), and for a short time, I didn’t know his condition. In those moments, I was afraid that I might have been responsible for his death or serious injury, and it’s a feeling I hope never to have again.

Here’s the irony: not a year later, he was t-boned in his own car and killed instantly.

I can not only imagine it I know how it feels. I used to deal Meth and caused so much damage in many peoples lives. The guilt is immense and something I live/struggle with everyday of my life. Not something I’m proud of at all!

@JustJessica: a key word in you response, “used”, past tense. You hold onto that part of your response. There aren’t many that get to the other side of that life. Consider some type of community involvement helping educate about drugs. It just might help you, in the long run.

Have you seen the story on tv about the heroic 9-year-old girl who pulled her 5-year-old sister out of the path of a truck, only to take the brunt of the force herself?
She lost a leg, suffered a broken neck and may never be able to move freely again. She cries all the time.

Her younger sister, on the television spot, came up to her, hugged her, and said “I love you.”

But what of the future? One sister’s hope of any normal life ruined forever when she aided her sister? Will bitterness eventually consume her?

And the younger sister, as she moves on in life, will guilt be her constant companion?

What will happen to the love the sisters shared?

This is tragic but things of this nature happen. We live in a world that unjustice occurs and often. I would hope that in time a better cure for the suffering sister comes along but I would hope that hate and anger is not what is in her heart. Things happen and the hero sister should be honored by the family.

It depends if I want to cause the injury or not. Of course, wanting to do it and actually doing it are two different things. I know of two fellows whose noses I would like to break every day.