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Johannesburg - Oscar Pistorius has said he often dreams of waking up next to Reeva Steenkamp, his girlfriend that he killed by shooting four times through a locked toilet door.
"I wake up sometimes ill. I wake up sometimes crying. I wake up sometimes scared. I wake up sometimes with vivid recollections of what happened that night, being unable to calm myself," the former paralympian said in his first television interview since the incident, with ITV's Mark Williams-Thomas.
"I wake some days just naturally worse, worse, worse than any nightmare, and you wake up and you dream, you dream good dreams, and you dream dreams of waking up next to her, and then you wake up... and you realise, uh uh - you just want to go back to sleep and you realise it is not the truth. Whatever you are dreaming is worse than a nightmare.
"When I dream about her.. a soft memory, a good memory from the past and it is just not true," he said while sobbing.
The interview was carried in South Africa on M-Net's Carte Blanche on Friday night.
Pistorius said that when people say that he deserves to spend time in jail for killing Steenkamp, he cannot disagree with that.
"At times I don't feel I should have the right to live for taking someone's life.
"What is difficult is dealing with this charge of murder. The day before we started the trial... I sat with my lawyers and said to them, whatever happens I will spend the maximum for culpable homicide... I will spent 10 years in jail for taking Reeva's life for culpable homicide, but I won't spend a day in jail for murdering anyone," he said.
"I don't want to go back to jail. I don't want to have to waste my life sitting there. If I were afforded the opportunity of redemption I would like to help the less fortunate, like I had in the past. I would like to believe if Reeva could look down upon me that she would want me to live that life."
Pistorius said he was trying to integrate himself back into society as much as he could, but that "being infamous and famous is a difficult thing".
He said some people were very caring and others were not.
"I just quickly went to go do some grocery shopping the other day and a woman came in and she started screaming at the security [guard] like how can you allow a murderer to shop in his shop, and I am not going to support you," Pistorius said.
"She made such a scene that I literally put the basket down and walked out."
Pretoria High Court Judge Thokozile Masipa is expected to hand down a murder sentence for Pistorius on July 6.
The Supreme Court of Appeal previously overturned her verdict of culpable homicide for Pistorius, and replaced it with one of murder.
