Karin Alvtegen - Shame

As I read over what I’ve written I realise that I’ve probably offended you in this letter too. I just want you to know that I am also a believer, but my God is not as judgemental as yours. You wrote that considering the fact that I’m serving a life sentence, there is no reason to read my sick speculations. Well, that may be, but I still want to conclude by telling you my version of why I’m sitting here today .

Do you remember that I always dreamed of being a writer? In my childhood home that was just about like dreaming of becoming king, but our Swedish teacher (remember Sture Lundin?) encouraged my writing. After you and I lost contact I moved to Stockholm and there I studied to be a journalist. Not that any of my articles have become immortalised, but I made my living as a journalist for almost ten years. Then I met Örjan. If you only knew how much time I’ve spent trying to understand why I fell so crazily in love. Because looking back it’s inconceivable that I closed my eyes to all the warning signs. And there were certainly more than enough of them. The strangest thing of all is that I felt safe with him, even though everything he said and did should have made me feel exactly the opposite. Even then he was drinking far too much, and he always had money without ever telling me where it came from. Now I realise that it was because he reminded me of my own father and that the ‘security’ came from recognising my own childhood. I felt at home with him and knew exactly how to act. I never fell in love with any of those ‘kind, friendly’ men I had run into over the years, because they made me feel insecure. I never knew how I should act with them. Örjan didn’t like women to be too independent, and I didn’t have to work because he could provide for us with his money. And fool that I was, I tried to adapt myself to his wishes, and about six months after we met I quit my job. Then it was my friends he didn’t want me to see, and to avoid a fight I stopped communicating with them. Of course that made them stop calling me as well. In only a year I lost all contact with the outside world and had become more or less a slave. I won’t tire you with the details, but Örjan was a sick person. He wasn’t born that way, of course, but he had grown up in an abusive home and kept on living the way he had been taught. It began almost imperceptibly. A nasty little comment now and then that gradually became so commonplace that I got used to it. Finally I ended up believing those things, and I began to think he had a right to say them. Then he started hitting me. There were days when I could hardly move, but it served me right, he said, because then he knew where he had me. But he knew that anyway, because I wasn’t allowed to leave the house without asking his permission, which he never gave .

Now this is the hard part, telling you about my dear children. They are still in my thoughts, and so many times I’ve gone over and over all the ‘if onlys’. But 17 years and 94 days ago, I saw no other solution than to take them with me into death, to save them from the hell we lived in, and it was MY fault they were born into it. I could see no other solution. I was so bone-tired of always being afraid. Maybe only a person who has lived in constant fear for a long time can understand how it feels, and how powerless you become in the end. What happened to me was not important, but I could no longer stand watching my children suffer. I was so ashamed of myself and everything I had let happen that I didn’t dare seek help. I was guilty too, after all! I hadn’t stopped him in time! I had seen how he went after the children, and I hadn’t dared stop him then either. I desired nothing more than death, but I couldn’t leave my children with him. At that point my brain was so mixed up that there seemed no other way out. I saw it as our only salvation. I gave them sedatives and suffocated them in their beds. It was never my plan to kill Örjan, but he came home early unexpectedly, and found me in the children’s bedroom. I’ve never been so scared in all my life. I managed to get out and run to the kitchen, and when he caught up with me I had a butcher’s knife in my hand. Afterwards I emptied the petrol can that Örjan kept in the storeroom and lay down with the children and waited. What I remember most strongly about those hours was how I felt when I heard the flames crackling downstairs, slowly but surely destroying our prison. For the first time in my life I felt total peace .

The worst moment I’ve ever had was when I woke up in the hospital a couple of weeks later. I’d survived, but my children were with him on the other side. I survived, but it means nothing to me that I got my life back .

I’m not trying to make excuses for what I did, but it’s some solace to me to try to understand the reason why everything turned out the way it did. My punishment is not being locked up here. My punishment is a thousand times worse and will last the rest of my life. For every second that remains, it’s seeing my children’s eyes before me, remembering the looks they gave me when they saw what I was doing .

There is no hell after death to which your God can condemn us. We create our own hell here on earth by making the wrong choices. Life is not something that ‘happens to us’, it’s something that we create and shape ourselves .

I will follow your wishes and stop writing to you. But I must write one more thing before our paths part once again. If it’s true that you have pain somewhere, then I think you ought to have it examined, and for safety’s sake you ought to do it as soon as possible .

You know I’m here if you need me .

Your friend,

Vanja

‘Thanks for coming.’

Åse was sitting on the sofa in her cosy living room, and Börje had placed a blanket over her shoulders. Upset but exceedingly grateful, he now sat next to her with one rough fist holding her hand. He used the other hand to wipe his eyes from time to time.

Doctor Monika Lundvall had remained standing. Confident and professional on the surface, desperately holding herself together, she had made it through the past two hours despite her inner inferno. She spoke with the police and ambulance crew, asked the firemen what they were planning to do with the van, and, finally, full of information, drove Åse home and relayed all the essential facts to Börje. But there in the comfortable living room, Doctor Lundvall, for safety’s sake, had chosen to remain standing. If she sat down in one of the inviting easy chairs and permitted herself to relax, she was afraid that Monika the young girl would manage to break out. Locked in behind her rational façade young Monika was wandering about amongst the wreckage, desperate and terrified. At any moment she might escape, and in that event Doctor Lundvall would have to leave. She was just about to begin her parting comments when she heard the front door open.

‘Hello?’

It was Börje who answered. ‘Hello, we’re in here.’ He looked at Doctor Lundvall and explained, ‘It’s our daughter Ellinor. I asked her to come over.’

She appeared in the doorway, a young blonde woman with a purposeful step. She had only one goal in sight, her parents there on the sofa. She didn’t even see Doctor Lundvall as she passed her.

‘How are you feeling?’

The daughter sat next to Åse and leaned her forehead on her shoulder. In Åse’s lap all their hands met: mother, father, child. A close-knit family. They would stick together through thick and thin, all their lives.

‘There’s no danger, but she isn’t quite able to talk about it yet. They gave her a sedative.’ Börje’s voice was calm and low but his tenderness radiated from his hands as they rearranged the blanket that had slipped down from Åse’s shoulders. Then he stroked Ellinor’s hair.