REMORSE
For the longest time I believed I was cursed. Not cursed by ill fate, bad luck or bad health, but cursed for what I had done in the past. I have done things that I am not proud of. By that I do not mean the typical regret that one has for bad decisions or harsh words. I have killed and taken many innocent lives. Not any human lives, but lives none the less. The lives of laboratory animals that were in my care.
Along side my University studies I took a job, cared for white albino laboratory rats, for the Natural Sciences Department of the University, which involved feeding, cleaning, breeding and testing the rats. This job paid the rent and most our expenses. It required to come in every day to feed and weekly cleaning of all cages and giving out food. But another part of the job was to prepare three different foods for three tests groups and regularly the rats hearts were removed. This was done to test the affects of foods, blended with butter, fish oil and standards food stuffs, on the rat’s heart and regular health.
The testing itself was dome by using CO2 gas to kill each animal, then decapitate them to harvest their hearts for testing, measuring the affects of fish liver oil (Omega 3) in contrast with the other foods. Now, I had to take part in this whole thing and I ended the lives of thousands of rats over those years. Rats of every age. Scared rats.
All my siblings had done this job before me, when they were at Uni. My father was the professor who oversaw the research for over 40 years, and he published many research papers based on the results of the findings. So doing this job was find of a family thing and not a stretch for me to do this at all. As a boy I had gone with my older brothers to the rat farm and helped.
But despite all that, I hated the part of the work that involved killing the animals. The animals didn’t live very long, up to a year maybe. They had known me when they were born, I fed them, bred them and I ended their lives. I did this to many generations of rats. I was the only human they knew, with total power over them. Sort of a “God like” power over other living beings. I don’t want that power over others, ever again.
As the years passed and I gradually killed more of them, I began to resent the work. Resent myself. I felt remorse for taking their lives. I literally could feel a black hole forming in my heart. It grew constantly. Horrible feeling. Then when my university studies were over, I quit the job. That was 30 years ago. The black hole is my heart since snowed over by the passing years. But under the snowflakes of time, it is there still. As does my remorse.
