Troopers weren't meant to feel regret, or pain, or loss. That's what he was taught to believe. His duty was to the First Order, steadfast, and without question. Questions lead to conversations. Conversations lead to thinking. Thinking lead to hesitation.
Hesitation, lead to death. All he had been trained to do was to fight follow orders, to kill when necessary, and to burn whenever he was ordered to.
But his orders never reached his dreams. Captain Phasma never saw the terror stricken faces that paraded past him in his nightmares. His commanding officers never heard the screams of children as Finn carried them from their families…off to serve in a war that they were too young to understand.
Those kinds of memories don't just fade away because a soldier wills them to, and anyone who says different is nothing but a stone cold liar.
Troopers weren't meant to enjoy the sound of June-cadas on the cold nights, but he did so anyway. He listened to the songs of Jakku, and wiped the blood from his eyes. He was tired, and his whole body stunk of failed duty. He was following orders, marching with his fellow Troopers, fulfilling the desires of his superiors. Everything a Trooper was bred to do.
So then why did sleep always allude him? Why did the apparitions of grieving parents grab his heart when night fell? Why did his fingers scar whenever he took up arms, and continued marching in the name of The First Order.
"I'm a soldier," he told himself, "And I was raised to do one thing." He whispered that to himself while he polished his blaster, had chow with the other Troopers, told jokes about crappy fighter pilots, how they would call him Finn and for a while, he would feel almost human.
"I was raised to do one thing."
But even in his dreams, as he marched towards the villages of unnamed planets and systems, as he and his platoon sailed through the stars past the cold darkness, he still could not escape the rudiments of unease that filled him every time he placed his gun away, and removed his helmet.
Deep down he knew, something was not right.
