Guilt, guilt, guilt

Generaly I feel that humans are basically an evil lot, and I am no exception.
Though most of the time my intentions are good, they are what the road to Hell is supposed to be paved with, are they not?

So I ask, are you feeling guilty about anything? Confess here.

~~~
I'll offer my own, for starters, something I've been wanting to get off my chest for a while.

Way back when I was in college (I was about 20) I was in an on-again off-again relationship with a fellow student. He was attractive and witty, and I loved him very much; I still miss him, sometimes. But the relationship was rocky. He would dump me periodically, but I was ever faithful, though I would flirt a lot to feed my ego. And so it was that I went on a field course and met Prof. R. I don't think I ever consciously flirted with him, but I did talk to him quite a bit and managed to pour out all the icky details of my relationship problems in a gratuitous, self-absorbed manner. I was a pretty girl, not a great beauty, but that seemed to be enough, Prof. R. became hopelessly infatuated. I just laughed off his advances, I really did think he was just joking. After all, what real interest would he have in me? He was brilliant, I'm not kidding. He had a stunning list of publications. He was both a scientist and a philosopher. I would often go to talk to him about his views on the philosophy of science, which ran contrary to the mainstream but were nonetheless respected. He was respected, but not loved by his peers. His students and technicians were another matter; they were all quite fond of him. One even stopped me in the hall one evening to say 'Yo'u're not going to hurt him, I hope'. I really had no intention of doing so. Once he asked me if I would sleep with him if he were dying, my answer was 'uhh, maybe, I don't know' I still wasn't taking him seriously, and did not even when he told me about swallowing some ethidium bromide. Not having much bench experience at the time, I had to ask him what it was... I didn't really believe he'd do such a thing. I stopped seeing him because he asked me to.

Several years later I was working on a masters in completely unrelated subject and ran across a professor I had for sociology of science. He had been good friends with Prof. R. He seemed a little distraught and asked me if I knew that Prof R was ill. I had been unaware. I said I'd consider trying to visit Priof R, but I never did.

A couple of years after that I read his obit in a prominent journal.

To be sure, he was depressed and going through a mid-life crisis. But perhaps if I had just slept with him, he would have gotten over the infatuation thing and moved on.