But isn't even a temporary healing of that pain a step towards achieving closure? I apologize if this matter touches on wounds that you have from your personal experiences, but I have to ask you: have you ever thought that the death of the person who hurt you and your family would bring some comfort? You don't have to answer if it's too troubling a question. Also, I want you to know that you have my deepest sympathies for the pain you've experienced.

I suppose I just handle feelings of anger and retribution more seriously than others. Years ago, some scumbag really hurt my family, my grandmother and aunt specifically. I hated the guy, I wanted nothing more than to run him down or put a bullet through his head. But I didn't; I just avoided the S.O.B. at all costs. In the fall of 2006 he died after a bout with cancer, and while I was happy he was dead, I felt unfulfilled because I hadn't done anything to hurt him in retaliation for how he hurt my family. Is it wrong to regret not being able to obtain revenge?

I won't lie, I thought about it for years. And having to be in the same room with the person and having to confront them about the matter...it's hard. Very hard. And I'm still not all the way okay with any of it and hell, I don't forgive the bastard (sorry) either for what he did. I never will, I don't think. But I did learn to understand that it's better to heal, even slowly, in the right direction then having a moment of peace only to be brought back to misery. Confronting the person, seeing justice done to him, even if I didn't get to live out my own wild fantasies of revenge, brought closer in a sense because justice was done. But it still won't bring my mother back and it won't take away the pain of having to witness what I and my siblings did or what we went through.

It may seem odd, but I know taking my own revenge would have been beneath me, it would have made me just as sick as he was, even if it was 'justifiable' to others. It would have dishonored my mother's memory, who never would have wanted me to be that way. And just by me testifying about what happened and helping in that manner helped me get the justice she deserved so I guess I did get revenge. But I didn't have to take a person's life to do it and I think I'm better for it.

...

It's really easy to say that you'd want to kill someone that did bad things like that to you, like kill your parent(s) or someone that special to you if you had the chance, but mentally, I just don't believe I could have done it, even if I had the chance Katara did.

...If it's okay with you, I'm going to leave the subject alone. I'm sorry.

No problem. Again, I apologize if I brought up painful memories.

It's okay really. I've learned to block out the bad memories with the good but I don't like going near the bad ones if at all possible. But yeah, I don't think Katara should have killed her mother's murderer.

And what if the water tribe legal system had done slowly and methodically, after trial, imprisonment and court appeals, what Katara wanted to do when she began her journey, would that've been justice when Katara doing the same thing on her own is just considered vengeance? If so, if you believe Katara doing it is "not justice, just vengeance", how would the law doing it be any more then slow, methodical, state sponsored vengeance? The way people talk about this issue gives me a strange impression;

Killing murderers; when the individual does it, it's vigilante vengeance, when the state does it then it's fair justice

That said, I too would've had a good laugh if Katara had killed him.

He was a thug who killed a young mother in cold blood. How would murdering him have made Katara a "monster?" He wasn't innocent of anything. He deserved to die.