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I think this thread illustrates that many of us carry around the burden of guilt for things we did, things we didn't do...it's not an uncommon human condition. And that it doesn't really matter if others tell us that we couldn't have prevented it, it wasn't our fault, etc., etc. When something horrible happens on your watch, it doesn't matter because you can invent a hundred different scenarios in which your intervention would have made the outcome different.
I would really like to support the things that monkie and cyn said. Forgiving yourself is paramount. You are a good person who would do anything to have had that night turn out differently. You didn't do anything wrong.
And I also agree with what noodle said: the sphere of things within which you can exert control is very limited. We can't even fully control our own minds, our own bodies. Let alone those of others - just like your friend Kate couldn't control what was happening to her own body that night. Where you can exert control in this situation is in the way you treat yourself now. The haunting, heavy feeling needs to start dispersing and talking to someone skilled in helping you accept and forgive couldn't hurt. Good luck.
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Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce
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