Animal Abuse

I guess I will keep this short. I tried writing it all out but it was way too complicated. This is attempt #2

I am 20 years old, female. When I was 14 I was diagnosed with a personality disorder after a long history of social awkwardness, and low self-esteem. This diagnoses was made after 2 halfhearted suicide attempts and two brief hospitalizations. I was started on medication but became violently angry often, tried to run away twice, and began cutting myself.

During these few turbulent years I began abusing my animals badly. I love animals, I always have, and I always will. I didn't wonder at the time why I was abusing them, I just knew it felt satisfying. I had mostly guinea pigs. I nearly drowned the first one several times. It felt good to watch him struggle and shiver, then I would pull him out and pretend it was someone else, wrap him in a blanket, hold him close, and give him treats and love. Sometimes I hit them. They would squeal and try to run, and be cornered. I would smack the ground next to them so that they would jump and shy away. Then I would be violently sick, and hurt myself. I had a gerbil who I spun around in his ball until he was so dizzy that he would run in circles.
I remember these things, but it is like another person, like I was watching some crazy sick demented piece of trash torture these babies that I loved, that meant more to me than any friend. Someone else, and then I would come back to myself and rescue them. But I know it was me that hurt them.

In the last 2 years of high school, after nearly being expelled, I became stable. I graduated a special ed high school as valedictorian, and won the annual "most improved" award, as well as various other scholarships. I never hit my pets again. I swore I never will. My pets are a huge life now. I dorm at college but I look foward every weekend to spend time with my babies. They have their own personalities, and their own talents. I teach them tricks and buy them lots of toys and play with them for hours until they fall alseep in my lap.

Sometimes, mostly at night I feel lightheaded and weird for a moment, and I look at my pets and want to hit them, to make them scared and hurt, then rescue them again. I never act on these impulses. I swore I never would again, because they deserve better. No one. man or animal, deserves that kind of treatment.

I have huge amounts of guilt now. It has become a part of me, this burden of knowing that I am a sick freak. I can have all the pets in the world for the rest of my life, and I can shower them with attention, love, food, and play, and I would still be labeled as a criminal by most animal lovers just for having these thoughts.

I guess what I am trying to get out of this is advice, assurance, anger, anything. I have never told anyone about this before. So, am I sick? Am I a bad person? Should I be locked up?