I was raised feral, on an island in Alaska. As a child it was a matter of course to kill to eat, and children aren't competent to wax philosophical on the souls they dispatch, for the most part. At some point, they become competent to do so, and begin a process of self-examination.

I later raised my sons in the woods, teaching them to hunt and fish as I had been, because that process of self-examination is necessary to men, and the cure for snowflakitis. People who have not undertaken it are like the old man with the dying cat, personally incompetent to do what is best for those they love; to end cruel suffering and give the gift of peace.

After I came of age and continued hunting, I discovered that the self-examination never ends. You can keep wrassling demons until they are vanquished, and unless you have been perfect, some demons cannot be killed. No one is perfect.

"...all of the emotions and memories return into your mind, but the grit has retreated back into your depths; you're defenseless against your emotions. You feel every drop of that pain, over and over, each time you're reminded of the event."

I learned that when I allowed myself to fully reckon at the time the import of my acts as a hunter, though I wept by the side of the deer and elk I loved so, the tears would wash the blood from my hands in my spirit as well as my flesh. Those stealth regrets, if not allowed their complete expression at the time of their cause, can pile up. As you note, when you practice repression of them in the moment, you can also later depend on suppression of those realizations to maintain the fiction you write of yourself in your mind, and the pressure builds. It keeps building if it isn't released. Some folks have psychotic breaks, or become sado-masochists, or crack addicts, to allow the pressure to bleed off, but doing so never gains the treasure of proper self-examination: peace and understanding of one's place in the world, proper valuation of life and freedom, and intimate knowledge of the self that is a foundation on which very solid men are built.

I cannot count the things that have died at my hands in the course of my life. No one can, because we do not even know of the bugs we step on when we walk, or the microbes we inhale when we breathe, and everyone that eats food prepared by others, or bought at stores, has never known the creatures they have killed to eat. Those are terrible deficits in our self-knowledge, our brotherhood with life, and a tax on the real treasure we accrue by living.

When hunters mount trophies on their walls, it is highly rewarding that they are reminded of their brotherhood with their game, and their true wealth of spirit made more substantial by their being reminded of their own fragile flesh in the act of revering their prey. Overall, I find hunters far less prone to predatory sociopathy that so sadly infests city folk.

Perhaps you would benefit from mounting a grimy pipe collar, or fan belt, on your wall, to free you from the desperate suppression of the facts of your existence. I would bid you peace.

Thanks!

Edit: I note upon rereading this comment that it strikes an unintended tone of moral superiority I do not feel, nor seek to afflict you with. I have PTSD, and am incapable of wrassling demons immortal and inviolate more so than anyone I know. The recovery process in PTSD is acceptance of these demons, and growth of humility that, for obvious reasons, I dare not be proud of achieving.

Benjamin Franklin was a father, and wrote his son a letter once that discussed his desire to attain to seven noble virtues. He confessed in the letter that he had given up on humility completely, because he had realized that should he ever attain it, he would be proud of it. I have learned what I know by living it, and am not as proud of my edumacation as my tone implies.

Writing words is but a faint shadow of meaning, and I hope you are able to grasp useful blessings from the reality of the shadow I write so poorly.