I'VEmet and interviewed what must be hundreds of victims of the north's lengthy and bitter conflict.
While there are similarities in their experiences each one has lived through events that are personal to them and each has dealt with their injuries or loss in different ways.
Some are broken with a sadness in their eyes that never leaves despite the passage of time, others are angry at how they've been treated, denied truth and justice.
And let's be honest there are a small number who use their experience in a destructive way. I don't judge - who knows how we would react if faced with a similar loss.
Others are motivated to fight for the truth and in doing so have inspired and helped others to get answers and uncover uncomfortable truths that would otherwise have remained hidden.
None of the participants in the conflict can hold the moral high ground, all carried out horrendous acts many of which at the time attracted little more than a few column inches in a newspaper.
I've spent the better part of the last seven days reporting and investigating the circumstances of the Kingsmill massacre.
The shock news last week that a random check had linked the palm print to a suspect was met with a guarded welcome by victims who have waited decades for answers.
They are also rightly concerned that this 'new' evidence will lead to the collapse of an inquest they've waited 40 years for.
No inquest can deliver a verdict while a criminal investigation is ongoing, a criminal investigation will always take primacy.
The fact the palm print wasn't linked to a lowly unknown IRA man but one of the most notorious republicans in Ireland was and is of huge public interest.
Colm Murphy has been arrested countless times on both sides of the border since 1976, his prints taken each time. The fact that he has now been linked to a palm print discovered on a van abandoned by the IRA gang in Co Louth of course raises questions.
Murphy, in an interview with this newspaper, says he believes he is being made a scapegoat to protect others who were involved in IRA activity at that time and who remain close to Sinn Féin.
People who now form part of a coalition with unionists that he says they at one time planned to 'ethnically cleanse' from South Armagh.
Regardless of what you make of the veteran republican as a person, he is well placed to give an insight into events of that time.
That this paper had the courage to print the interview with Murphy despite a challenge from the PSNI who tried to get an emergency injunction to stop publication is a matter of great pride to me as a reporter.
It shows the important role newspapers continue to play in investigating such matters, even in this age of 24-hour rolling news and mindless online click bait.
There are thousands of victims out there who I have admired over the years: Pat Finucane's wife and sons who campaign with stoic dignity; Patricia McVeigh, whose father was murdered by undercover soldiers, is a woman with a huge heart full of warmth and compassion; Gina and Gary Murray, the mother and brother of 13-year-old Shankill bomb victim Leanne Murray, the most welcoming people you're ever likely to meet despite carrying their grief with them like a stone.
And after the last seven days I am filled with respect for two men of similar age, who have suffered greatly at the hands of two different sides of the conflict.
Alan Black, the sole survivor of Kingsmill, is a gentleman in the true sense of the word. Shot 18 times, forced to play dead among the bodies of his friends, he is untouched by bitterness and full of human kindness for his Co Armagh neighbours, regardless of what side of the religious divide they come from.
And Eugene Reavey, who while grieving the loss of his three brothers, shot dead in a sectarian attack by a loyalist gang that included UDR members, had his name blackened when Ian Paisley read from a doctored dossier linking him to Kingsmill.
Eugene had to wait until a HET investigation cleared his name to right this wrong but he remains a man of deep conviction who has handled the huge injustice visited upon his family not with bitterness but by campaigning for the truth.
Both men show the resilience of the human spirit and provide hope, even when faced with a terrible darkness.
