something's bothering me and I can't get it out of my mind

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over twenty years ago, when I was living in poverty in a tiny rented room in a poverty neighborhood, I had mice in my room.
I was deathly scared of them, so scared that I went to the supermarket after nidmight, risking getting shot in this crazy neighborhood, and bought a trap.
I dont remember now, after all this time, if I didn't know about the non-kill trap, or if they were just more expensive. and more expensive meant either spending more hours on the job where I was threatened by gangsters coworkers, or going hungry until my next paycheck. More hungry than I usually was. Ended up eating cereal without milk and bread without butter sometimes.
so I killed several mice. and for more than twenty years, this has been bothering me and depressing me.
what would you do under the circumstances? i couldnt chase them out with a broomstick because i was too afraid, and because whenever I saw them, they'd disappear so fast. I'll never do it again. what would you do in my circumstances?

you have a good heart. what you did is understandable.

I second cathylynn, you only did what you felt able to do at the time. Don't feel badly about this; you didn't kill the mice out of glee or pleasure or cruelty.

I don't know what I would have done as I'm not afraid of mice or rats; but you did the only thing you thought practical for you. I know it's hard but try not to let it upset you all this time later. You're a good person.

my cat would hav taken care of it

Confession is good for the soul. In making the post above, I think you have already started that process, consciously or not. If this is not enough, find someone who's opinion you value and respect. If you are religious, you might consider talking to someone connected to your church. Therapy is too expensive and not warranted in this case. Getting it out and hearing someone say that you are forgiven can go a long way in letting you forgive yourself. You just need to tell it to and hear it from the right "someone."

If a penance would help, I recommend doing a small good deed in honor of each mouse.

PS: I prefer a non-kill trap, but for whatever reason that was not an option for you back then. You did what made the most sense at the time and no reasonable person would blame you.

(Please only read if you are not too squeamish.)

From personal experience, the humane traps are no so humane, either to the humans or the mice. The traps where you release the mouse outside only delay the mouse. They come back in the house. Believe me.

The ones where the mouse gets stuck on the trap are worse than the traps that snap the neck. The mice cannot get free, and you can't pull the mouse off without tearing skin and fur. The mouse will ultimately die a long death by starvation or infection from being removed (and there's still the possibility of it coming back in the house.)

We had a neighbor that used one of the sticky traps. I will say it wasn't good.

OP, you did the right thing getting a quick-death mouse trap. They are the only way to go. Mice are insidious creatures and multiply pretty rapidly. They must be kept under control. Otherwise, mouse droppings and urine end up all through the drawers and cabinets, in and on utensils and cooking tools. They can spread disease, too.

We used to live on the edge of a farm, and every spring and fall when the farm equipment when through, the mice would scurry into the house. Thankfully, we had two cats that are good at hunting, but we still had to use some quick-death traps to keep the mouse population under control. We now live in the woods, which means mice again. The cats do a good job, but when we first moved in, we had to use some traps.

I understand feeling of remorse, but I don't believe it is necessary. For your own safety, peace, and comfort, you needed to get rid of the mice. I believe you chose the best option for how to do so.

I will suggest to the OP, that writing poetry [even bad poetry] about stuff that bothers one is helpful to regain some mental peace. I had to kill a mouse because it was winter [ice and snow on the ground] and I could not reasonably go far enough away to dump a live mouse without it coming back [eventually] to my house. so I wrote this little ditty to work the yucky out of me system-

My Mouse Murder Missive
i had to kill cutesy mousey
i'm a big heel, feeling lousy
it was pooping and peeing all over the place
this wasn't something i could allow apace
so i put out a peanut-butter-laced trap
which in the wee hours stomped out its crap
in the morning i awoke, got up and saw
splattered mouse doodoo, a dead tail, a dead paw
sticking out from the machinery of automated mouse death
god help me, i'm a mouse murderer, an extinguisher of mouse breath

I felt like I failed some kind of moral test. I hope the OP can get past this.

Auntblabby, I'm not normally one to rofl, but your poem had me rofling so bad I feel awful now because the subject was a serious one.
You crack me up so much. Must be my sick and twisted sense of humour.

On another note: mice are a big problem here. We use a trap that's like a miniature crab pot. The mouse can squeeze in but can't get out. Then we take them for a nice long drive and release them.

^^^
thank you I suppose I need to figure out a way to live-trap them and dump them someplace suitably distant [over 5 miles away] undetected.

I wouldn't feel bad, you did what you had to do. A no-kill trap is a nice gesture but not a moral imperative, I don't think you should have to live with pests in your house. Think of it this way, what if you got the no-kill trap and the mouse simply came back? Maybe it would of gone and invaded some other house too.

We live in a suburban area, not a farm or out in the woods. We use a Have-a-heart trap, and it works very well. When the weather is reasonable, we hike down about a block away to an empty lot. They don't come back.
In the worst of the winter, you're probably not doing them much of a favor when you put them out, unprepared.

They shouldn't be released too far away. There's a reason they have laws about moving critters around. You don't want to spread diseases from one area to another.