Behind the facade

april 27, 2018 0 av Ronja

Quite catchy headline, huh? I think I have known for about 10+ years now that this would be the name of my first book if I ever got the courage and energy to write it. Anyway, people have been pressuring me a lot about it being the time to start with this book now. And recent event has inspired me to go digging for some good old unresolved feelings to vomit out here. See it as a small preview of what is to come, the day my book might be finished…

”She likes to imagine that she played a part in my accomplishments. She has pictures of me all over her office. She tells her coworkers all about me as if she’d been part of my life. And I don’t want her to have that satisfaction. Because it was all in spite of her. Not because of her.”

2 years ago I read this quote from a picture the photographer of Humans of New york posted and to this day it has stuck with me. It really put into words these feelings I always get when a certain person from my family line speak of me with good confidence to other people and I start to get this angry burning inside my chest. As if this person know anything at all about me even though it has been more than 6 years since we last spoke. I feel like it is a privilege that has been abused and a boundary that is being ignored.

The greatest challenge of dealing with a person like this is how few people actually wants to believe you, especially after they’ve heard the other very convincing and manipulative side of the story. I can feel the itching feeling of how they want to say ”oh come on now, it can’t be that bad”. With time even the people closest to you can end up choosing sides, and it being on the opposite of your own. And I stand very firmly on my side, as I’ve had since that day I finally managed to get out of this very abusive and destructive relationship. When it comes down to it, close blood relations to a person actually doesn’t mean a thing if you lack the basics of how to humanely treat people. What matter the most is trust, support, emotional attunement and genuinely caring of something outside of yourself. If these things are lacking you do not even have a foundation to build on for a healthy relationship. And if you are striving for a somewhat healthy life, you really do need healthy boundaries with respectful and somewhat sane people there.

So what’s the point of my sudden deepening of words in this so far very shallow blog you might wonder. Well, it is named journey inside and out, and I have been keeping a tight lid on the inside journey… I always knew I wanted to be more open and authentic but damn the balance is hard when it affects people outside of yourself that you really care about. I have always been showing a lot of consideration to my sisters and brothers and the outer circle of family because I never want to throw anyone of them ”under the bus”. You know I had this kind of ”big” blog once a really long time ago, when I got known for being this teenage mother in the northern Sweden. I realized only after I was in way too deep that a lot of people got affected with my decision of being public and it really struck me that I don’t want to ever do this again to anyone I care about. So I have kept quiet in the social media for a lot of years now, with some really good excuses. Family members being dragged into gossip scandals and fear of ”outing” my growing daughter made the decision easy, and so I closed down my old blog (mammamarlie93) about 6 years ago now.  

But lately I have been feeling… Is being quite forever really the best thing for everyone, always? I know I sometimes just want to scream out to the whole world every childhood trauma that ever happened to me, just because I want to stop it happening to anyone after me. And honestly just to experience the sensation of getting something really heavy and ugly of my chest, that would be a game changer… Right now it feels like I am only speaking in riddles though but hey, it’s a first step at least. But the wisdom I would like to end this post with is; please always listen to children who speak up about abusive home situations. It demands a huge amount of courage and any lack of support will make it so easy to take it all back and just keep living in your own hell, quietly. I speak from own experience.

This is another very good quote that puts the words in the exact way I sometimes do not manage to do myself. 

But the reality is, if you are dealing with a master of disguise, you will not have any proof. You will not have anything other than your own experience with the person who is very different behind closed doors than they are in public view. It’s the age-old Jekyll and Hyde conundrum. All you have to back up your truth are the things you and you alone have seen, heard and encountered. In court, they call this ‘hearsay’. And when you are dealing with a master of disguises, they will make sure there are no witnesses other than you. The despair and terror and desperation that comes as a result of being in this situation where the consensus is in direct opposition to something that you, yourself have witnessed or experienced is crazy making.” Source.