The Faces of Change

tonight, over seven years after the fact, while in bed reading a very good novel by Harlan Cober ironically titled "The Innocent", I realized that I don't even remember her face. Whether her hair was blonde or darker, the color of her eyes, her fear, her features all register a blank, something fictitious and conjured by my imagination stands in mocking the truth.
I cannot remember any of their faces. Their voices have become inaudible whispers, their lives the vapors of my memories.
Not one of them knew that the gun was not real, or that I was depressed and seeking martyrdom, or that the man who's sitting in a lovely prison cell right this moment was buried so deep within the foolish monster who threatened their very existence with an empty BB gun that he is unable to recall one detail about any of them.
It was never about them. I can remember the guilt and the murmured words of apology at the scene of the crime, but none of that undoes or justifies the wrongs. not even the most sincere apology could reveal to me a true image. Maybe I blocked them out so that they would not haunt me, so that I could torture myself? Maybe I really was not in my right mind? but how? How can I explain not having any trace of these peoples faces in my mind.....the people whose lives have probably been forever impacted by the thing that I was a robber?
In their mind, can they see me? Have they forgotten my face? Have they disconnected that I am a father, that I love to cook that I'm a momma's boy....or do they even care? Most likely, I will always be the "Guy who robbed them", who made them purchase a pistol, who made them lock their car doors when they see black males near their car, who fed the stereotypes, justified the racism, and poured gasoline over the flames of torment  hatred.
Is it fair for me to have forgotten when they will never forget? is my 40 year sentence perhaps insufficient because I've put the actual events behind me and I only suffer with the harsh realities of my own life, the after,  that which never goes away, that which I long for, that which torments my soul?
I should remember, I want to remember, but I can't. All I can do is hope and pray and plead that the victims understand that people can change, and that they do, and sometimes you have to let the past go in order to embrace the present, in order to move freely into the future.