Such a careful psychopath

Those of you who have read The Destroyer may remember that he painted my beautiful mahogany piano dark brown.

I came home to Stockholm one turn in the middle of the summer to go to Spain and would pick up passports and clothes in my home in Tornet. Sam forbade me to come in. He stood in the gate outside, blocking the road. Laughing. As if it was something fun he was doing. A surprise, sa han. I'm preparing a surprise for you. Three actually. I have said for several years that I have THREE surprises for you. Not until now, after a year and a half of promises of fun surprises, have I been able to enforce it. You must not destroy it. You should get it on your birthday.

His legs were brown-spotted. He sent pictures from my bedroom floor with rags that had brown spots. Chuffed.

That would be fun. I did not dare to ask. I did not dare to intrude. How could I? He was strong. I decided to believe him, it was something fun he was doing. But I could not understand the brown color. I was worried that he had taken down a wall between the different bedrooms and painted it brown. That was the worst thing I could think of. In that case, it would mean that he thought we should share a room. He who always insisted that we get married, though I always said no. We had not even kissed each other. I was not even interested in him as a man. No danger, sa han, you will be, for no one can love like me. No one understands LOVE like me. And I always surprise my loved ones with fun things! You will learn to love me. There is no one for you but me. We will be perfect together, you will be happier in every way than you have ever been. It's just that you do not dare to understand it yet. You have not yet freed yourself from everything old. But you will do it. I'll make sure you do.

I went my way, to Spain, where I was a week with my family and I touched as little as I could with the thought of the brown color, his surprises, at him, at my home, in the future.

When I came back a few weeks later, on my birthday, he was not in the apartment, but classical music stood on and the kitchen counter, my desk and my piano were draped in gift wrap. On them were vases with flowers and birthday cards. He had carefully sanded my beautiful kitchen counter which he had burned two years earlier. He had sanded it and oiled it, and restored it to its former condition. So normally polite when you have destroyed something. It was nice again.

He had sanded and varnished my three meter long workbench / desk. It was not needed but he had come up with it as a surprise.

But what was the brown color about?? I understood that when I lifted the gift wrap for my beautiful shimmering mahogany piano, which my grandfather purchased 1926 in the country's first piano factory. Sam knew that I was already fascinated by that mahogany when I was very little fascinated. It was the one he had used the brown color on. My piano was like killed on the surface.

Brilliant, he told me that he wanted to make my three important places in the home whole and beautiful. The kitchen counter where I cook and get strong, the workbench where I dream and write and work – and the piano – That I love, which is for my soul, for my dreams. Whole and beautiful.

Smart.

He forced me with the two ” good ” the actions to be grateful. He knew very well how bad it was with the piano which had become UGLY with an incomprehensible dumbness, death, dark brown surface instead of the shimmering enigmatic wood.

He knew I was, no matter where he went, would always live with the piano. He also knew that the workbench belonged to my ex-husband, and that one day I would be forced ( because of him) to move away from home with the kitchen counter. But the piano, I would always carry it with me and it was brown.

I have become accustomed to seeing the brown ugly surface. Men nu, nine years later, have I learned that the paint can be removed. The last week I have been working on it. It takes my time. He has taken so many years of my life. While he ” was going on” in my life and long after, to take care of everything he caused me. Så är det, when you experience another person's atrocities. It applies to everyone. People who are raped have to deal with it themselves, purely concrete, with itself, purely concrete, hela tiden. Värre.

But now when I scrape off the paint that largely lifts from the mahogany with the help of paint remover, I see how incredibly careful he has been. He has applied the brown color in many many thin layers and has been extremely careful in almost all edges. He has simply put a lot of work into destroying the piano. It's striking.

The meticulous accuracy, when it came to something that for some reason filled him with strong motivation and enjoyment, is interesting. He was careless and careless at times, and it fell on him in the barrel. But this pettiness, which must have been performed in calm, patient pace, metodiskt, fascinates me. So he did.

So did he in his processing of me.

There is a lot that did not fit in the book, among other things that I found paper after he had moved from the Tower, when my friend Tim moved in instead ( it still gives me shivers of happiness: how snopet S had to leave) in the closet among his tossed stuff. He had written questions on the papers. Simple, seemingly quite innocent questions. Then he had written alternative answers. Based on the alternative answers, he had written new questions. And so it went on for a couple of years.

I remember I froze when I saw this and held my breath. I understood, but could not bear to understand. When I later, after we reported him and my family knew how I had been exposed, I felt SAFE and dared to take in what I had understood.

That's the sad thing. When you are threatened, you can get things completely clear in front of you, but you can not afford to take it in, to act on it. You are threatened. You're scared. One's mind can not sound what one clearly sees, country.

But when I was confident, I realized that he simply prepared almost all the conversations with me. He sat in his room behind the closed door, preparing. He knew where he wanted to go. He stepped out, he knew I might be in a hurry, that I have to work – it did not matter. The better maybe, for he would make me answer faster. And he had already figured out all the alternative answers and how he would comment on them to lead the conversation to where he wanted to go.. No matter what I said. He seemed spontaneous, but everything was calculated.

Meticulous.

Just like in the brown painting of my beautiful piano.

But I dissolve the ugly color. And I scrape it off. Layer after layer. The mahogany reappears, with its vivid patterns and part of its depth. WOOD, instead of flat matte color. I probably have to sandpaper and maybe wax or varnish, jag vet inte, but the surface is already LIVING again and when I saw the mahogany looming in all the dead, matta, brown I thought”now the gods are with me again”. Så är det också. When you do violence to yourself through the works of others, no gods can be with you for real. But when you have made yourself free to follow yourself more, it is as if everything possible begins to work, small, small, everything begins to live.

It is a quiet pleasure, even though it's an ABSURD thing to do, to patiently bring out the mahogany again. But he did not think so, when he laid these layers of paint, he did not think I would be as careful, that I would remove every brushstroke, every movement. The thought of how he enjoyed covering the shimmering mahogany with his ugly and how he was sure how it would hurt me, and now; I'm removing it, I ACTUALLY remove it… that thought is…. funny.

I'm reading Gita Sereny's book about Mary Bell. The girl who killed two boys in England about fifty years ago. With that book you get insight into thinking, in the pleasure that it entails for people with psychopathic traits ( lack of affective empathy ) to inflict harm on others. And in how urgent they are to evade responsibility. How easily they can blame their best friend, without blinking. How smart they are, quick-witted, registering. How accurate and precise memory they have, how they use it to deliver the right thing at the right moment. How wordy and fearless they are. She stood in court, eleven years old, and without hesitation she confused and delayed the lawyers. She lacked fear of others. But be afraid of yourself, of course. Bara. It's interesting reading. None of this is foreign to me after becoming acquainted with the destroyer, but it is interesting that the features are so common.

You should stop calling it that ”psykopati” – it creates such a distance as if it were not about reality, but about exciting fiction. You should instead use a letter combination and you should stop being afraid to take on the problem. One should dare to approach the phenomenon early in the children's lives – before they are large enough to start doing real damage. There is so much taboo around this. It does not help anyone. No matter how scary and disgusting the thought is; psychopathic disorders must be detected already in children.

I'm been lucky.

And still readers write to me and thank you for the book. It makes me sincerely happy. It does good. That was the important thing about all this happening. A book would be written that could be useful. Even BIG benefit.

And the mahogany begins to shimmer again. Thanks to my own hands. Thank you life!