Welcome to R slash off my chest, where OP unloads a shotgun into a home intruder.

Our next credit post is from nearby South.

A little over four years ago, while my family was asleep, an intruder broke into my home and I killed him.

I shot him, whoa my God, I shot him five times with a 12-gauge shotgun. And, geez, yo, five times with a 12-gauge shotgun, was there anything left of this dude?

And I was never charged with anything because it was a clear-cut case of self-defense.

It was a terrible experience and I think I'll always have some sort of paranoia at night from it.

But I don't regret in any way what I did to protect my family. I feel no sympathy

for the man I killed, and I would do it again in a heartbeat if given a second chance. In the months

after the event, my wife tried talking to me about it, and I was honest with her about how I felt that I did what I had to do, and his death was entirely on him for breaking into my house while armed.

Over the following months, she started acting more coldly to me and our marriage began to suffer.

After one of our increasingly frequent fights, she said that she didn't think that she could be married to a man who could kill someone and not feel anything about it.

This really pissed me off because I felt like I was being punished for saving her in our children's lives.

And we fought all night about it.

She was convinced that I was just blocking out my emotions and wanted me to go to therapy.

I didn't think that it was necessary, but finally relented and said that I would go if it would make her happy.

I found a therapist and set up an appointment and for the first couple of months we talked about the shooting and how I felt about it.

In the end he said that I seemed to be coping with it as well as could be expected,

but that he would be happy to continue seeing me for some of my

unrelated issues.

I had some trauma as a kid that he actually had a lot of experience with, so our sessions

became more focused on that.

Our sessions are much less frequent now, but I still see him semi-regarily, and my wife

...