Shame

we can agree that what we’ve had so far has not created a particularly pleasant world. As I read in a book the prison chaplain gave me: ‘All great inventions and advances have been made based on a willingness to admit that no one has been correct so far, and then put all correctness aside and rethink things.’
    As far as my ‘home-made heathen belief’, the simplest answer is that our beliefs are very different, but that’s completely okay by me. The Bible says quite eloquently that only God has the right to judge. Most of us have thoughts about eternity now and then. I don’t understand why we human beings, as soon as we find something to believe in, have to run out and try to convince everyone else that we’re right, as if we don’t dare believe anything by ourselves but have to do it in a group for it to count. Then it suddenly becomes important for everyone to believe the exact same thing, and how do we achieve that? Well, we set up laws and rules that fit into the framework we have erected, and to be included we have to adapt. We quite simply have to stop asking our own questions and hoping to find any answers, since the right ones have already been written down in the laws of the religion. That must be the purest coup de grâce for all types of development, don’t you think? Then it’s merely a matter of power, isn’t it? In any case, that’s what religion is about for me, because no religion was created by any God but by us humans, and history has shown us what people think they can do in religion’s name .
    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