My feelings of self-loathing are very, very similar to yours. For over 20 years, I suppose, I have felt that I am truly and honestly evil, and that it is right and just and moral that I deserve punishment for my behavior. I don't 'cut' myself or contemplate self-harm but of course I punish myself – the costs of my behavior shattered me. I vacillate between thinking that my illnesses are only caused by my self-punishment or if there are other factors that I just can't understand. Factors that even my shrinks over the years have not suggested.

I don't buy into the self-pity/narcissism labels. I've told this story before but when I came home to my stepmother in 1999 and told her of my mental problems she told me that she didn't believe in depression, that it was a weakness, that I needed to go back home and pull myself together and to call her after that. I went home, was hospitalized for three years and when I called her, well, she didn't answer the phone. She couldn't answer the phone. She had blown her brains out with a .38 special six months before my release.

That's self-pity. That's depression. There is nothing narcissistic about suicide.

Do you ever think that you may reach a point where you've served your sentence and your punishment is complete? When I'm in a more than usual rational state of mind, I've thought of that. The possibility. I've tried, time and time again, to seek forgiveness (or something similar) from my primary victims but I've never had a reply, no calls are answered. If my victims won't even acknowledge me, who am I to reduce my reduce my sentence?

My 'new' pastor and confessor correctly identifies the scrupulousity in my confessions and assigns me pitifully simple penance. Unlike our 'old' pastor (who I love dearly) the new guy doesn't know my full background, only that I have mental issues but not any background.

Of course self-loathing is real... so many of us feel it, even if for wholly different reasons and in different degrees. Mental health as a science is relatively new but the symptoms are nothing new. And it seems that with each passing decade there come new disorders or existent disorders that become more predominant.

Can you point to specific actions or behaviors that made you feel evil? Have you consciously hurt others? I suppose those are a couple of questions that I had to answer before knowing that I deserved to be tried for my crimes.

I'm going to continue following this thread. I am curious to know what you've actually done that is evil (if you're willing to post that) and if you've given any thought to the "length" of your sentence.