My first year of freedom

I was exploring something called peace and quiet.

At only 17 years and 4 months, I had finally broken free from my abuser. With only a gymbag and a pair of worn out sailorshoes, I had walked out from my home to never move back in.

The feeling of being free from Karen’s grip was simply wonderful.

I had moved around 3 hours away, and I enjoyed something called “peace and quiet”.

As I sat on the floor in my friend Heidi’s house, I told her mother how wonderful it was to enjoy the peace and quietness around me. No more yelling and pecking day out and day in from Karen.

-I just love the peace, I told Heidi’s mother.

Peace was something I never had in my childhood. I was always waiting for the next outburst of wrath, like - when would Karen explode next time?

I had a good understanding of the saying: “To walk on eggshells.”

As I sat there on the floor - I told Heidi’s mother about Karen.

- She is not a kind person, she responded while shaking her head.

Read more here about how God helped me break free:

How I finally broke free from the psychopath's grip.

Some days later the bibleschool started. It wasn’t a deep dive into theology. It was more of a “get to know God better” school. Every day we had worship and prayer and then a bible teacher preached on different topics from the Bible.

I loved the fact that it was such an inclusive fellowship. We were all friends and I got to know a lot of youths on my age that seemed serious about following Jesus. My old Church was more of a lukewarm place, where people could walk from praising God to a disco both in the same evening. But here we were around a hundred people of different ages that had set aside a whole school year, just because we wanted to get to know God better.

Every day was good to me. Life were so much better in just an instant. To be free from a psychopath was more wonderful than I could explain. I did not miss home a bit, and I knew I would never move back.

I was on my own from now. Poor but happy.

But there was one furious Karen at home that did not accept defeat….

A few weeks after I had left home I walked into Church , my eyes quickly noticed a familiar person. There in front of me, my dad and my little sister Monica were sitting at a table in the cafeteria. I was surprised. Why are they here?, I wondered as I walked over to them.

-Hi, why are you here?, I asked my dad.

He looked at me and said:

-You must come home with us, I am under order.

I smiled to him. My dad wasn’t very authorative. So his effort to command me was more of a plea.

I sat down and explained to him;

-I can’t dad. I have no plans to go back.

-Please come with me, I am under order. I am not allowed to return without you. His eyes was begging me. Then he told me how angry she would be on him if I didn’t come home.

-No problem, I replied.

-You and Monica can stay here with me then, because I will not go back home. We can rent a house together just us three.

In my mind this was a great idea, then we all would be free from Karen.

I can’t, Torleiv said as he shook his head.

-I have to go to work tomorrow morning, and Monica has school..

So there we sat in the cafeteria of the Church. He had given up trying to get me to return with him, so we chatted for a while and then they stood up to travel home. He did not look forward to meet his wife again for sure, especially not without me..

The marriage was a torture for him, but I could not help him very much. I was only 17 and had to help myself first.

My father called me a little later:

-She was furious when I came home without you. She kept me awake with the lights on. Yelling at me all night through, and then I had to go to work in the morning without any sleep…

I felt so sorry for him. She was so evil. I could not understand this sick behavour. But I was not able to help him. All I could do was to listen and give him my sympathy.

Time flew and I thoroughly enjoyed every day. It was definitely the best year in my life so far. Just the fact that I never had to go and wait for the next explosion from Karen were enough to feel great, and it would never come either, because she was simply not there.

Oh what a wonderful peace!

It was so much easier to pray. To spend time with God every day alone was something I had not been able to do at home. But now I could !

My dad continued to call me regularly. He told me how my little sister Monica had developed an eating disorder. It was obvious that she was not handling the situation at home well.

- I‘m going to have a surgery, he told me once.

- A mole on my arm has grown rapidly so they will remove it and then do a biopsy to see if it is malicous or not.

After the surgery he told me that the lump had been bigger than expected.

-They had to cut almost down to the bone. They removed as much as they could, and now I have a large bandage on my arm.

The biopsy came back as malicious. I was glad the mole was removed and didn’t think anything more about it. And my dad didn’t speak much about it either. He probably thought everything would be just fine too…

( If you want to know what happened to him, read my memorial of him here at my son’s Substack):

In memory of Torleiv Iversen

In May as the school year came near to a close, my best friend Rebekka was going to get married, and she had asked me to be her maid of honour. We had known each other since early childhood and I was of course happy to do it.

They would get married in Haugesund, where we both had lived before the bibleschool, and this ment I had no choice but to sleep at my parents home. I dreaded it, but had no choice if I wanted to attend the wedding.

I had just turned 18, and passed the driver license test, so I drove the 3 hours home in an old car that I had borrowed from a friend.

Unfortunately for me, Karen was in an extremly bad mood. She was a bomb ready to explode any minute. We hadn’t met or talked since Christmas, yet she seemed to hate my very presence.

We were sitting in the living room and I was knitting on a sweater while she had a cup of coffee. I looked at her while I was knitting.

Studying her face, I knew what she needed to hear. So I opened my mouth at told her:

-Karen, you need Jesus!

-Swosh.

A cup of hot coffe hit me before I could even think. I looked down at my sweater and knitting. Hot coffee was all over me. My knitting took the first hit and spared me from getting burned. Thank God my face was spared!

Then I realised - She had done it!

For the first time in my life she had crossed a red line and attacked me physically. She became so angry at me for pointing to the One that could set her free - that she responded with throwing a cup of hot coffee on me.

Nice!

I stood up. Tears were pressing on but I just about managed to keep them back. I could not let her see how hurtful it was. But I also noticed that I felt stronger than before. I wasn’t under her anymore. My strenght had increased. I think that made her even more mad, that she had lost control over me.

A little later she was in the kithcen and still her anger was clearly present.

Looking at her face again I said:

-Karen, you really need Jesus.

Now this time she got mad as a hornet. She grabbed my both hands and pushed me with full force into the wall behind me. The back of my head hit a framed picture hanging on the wall and the glass broke in my head.

- Ouch, that hurt.

I automatically lifted my hand up to my head. A painful bump appered in the back of my head, but still it was nothing compared to the pain on the inside.

In that moment the tears flowed. I could not hold it in anymore. I turned and ran out of the house with Karen in hot pursuit.

I jumped in to the car I had borrowed, but Karen positioned herself so that I could not close the door.

-Let go of the door, I dont want to be here anymore, I cried to her with tears flowing down my cheeks, as we were fighting over the door.

Her strenght was unusal strong. I wasn’t able to close the car door. Where did she get her strength from?

I put the gear in reverse and started to back the car in the graveled driveway …

Suddenly I spotted my dad walking towards the house. He had been dropped off by some of his collegues after work. When he stepped in to the driveway, he stopped while looking at Karen and she looked at him, then she ran up the stairs and back in to the house.

-What happened?, he asked me looking like a questionmark. Then he sat down in the frontseat and talked to me in his usual guiet tone.

I told him what had happened, and that I wanted to leave.

-But you have nowhere to go, he responded.

-I will drive to Rebekka’s house and tell them what happened, I am sure they will understand, and let me stay there.

You can’t do that. Rebekka is getting married tommorow. We don’t want to destroy her wedding. Stay here Liv, Torleiv said.

Rebekka was Mr. and Mrs. Larsen daughter and the Larsen family was very close to me. I had known them since I could remember, and she was at her parents house getting ready for her wedding day. If I came crying with a big bump in my head I could spoil Rebekka’s wedding. I could not do that. I didn’t want to be a burden, so I agreed to stay.

Something in me though had realised that my relationship with the one I had called mama, was completely destroyed. All trust was totally gone. I felt completely rejected and hated.

Instead I turned to God, he would help me, I knew that for sure.

Next day was Rebekka’s big day. The bump in my head was painful, but nothing compared to the pain I felt on the inside, I blinked away the tears again and again. I tried to be strong, it was a wedding and I was the maid of honour.

At the wedding dinner, my pastor who was the boss over the bibleschool and his wife sat opposite of me. He had married the couple.

I dared not to talk to him. But he looked at me and asked:

-What do you want to do in life then?

My answer came straight from my heart:

-Go all the way with God.

He nodded seriously, and continued to talk to about how good christian schools were compared to non christian. And he said that he planned to start a music school too.

I liked that. I will be the first to apply, I thought to myself.

Sunday morning, the day after the wedding I went to the local church that my pastor had started in the town. He preached there that morning before going back south to his bibleschool and his main church.

In the middle of the sermon he stopped and looked at me:

-Can I say this?

I just nodded as I had no idea what he wanted to say.

With his charismatic style and feelings, he talked about how my words from the day before had struck him straight in to his heart.

I was confused. Isn’t this something every Christian wants to do? I thought to myself.

Of course it is a price to pay, the pain from my bump in my head certainly reminded me of that, but as I was young and naive, I didn’t understand that not every one was willing to pay the price to follow Jesus.

I was to young to understand that not everyone who said Lord, Lord would enter the gates of heaven, and that not everyone who starts a race finishes it.

And little did I know then that this pastor would destroy many people’s life, because they followed him, a flawed human and not God.

After the Sunday service I hurried to the old black borrowed car, driving the 3 hour back south to the small town where the bibelschool still had a few weeks left before the summerbreak in June.

_____________________________________________________________________________

This was in 1991-1992, and I enjoyed this year so much, even though I had very little money but I didn’t care.

It was the year of freedom and a new start.

Just getting away, and to be able to think clearly without the constant yelling and just simply live a life without abuse.

I didn’t know what the future would bring, but I knew Jesus held my future and that was enough for me.

-Liv

For you that is new here, I write small stories about how it was for me to grow up with a psychopath. If you want more background info you can read my other posts and you will understand better who the people I write about are. All persons are real and I have only changed some names for privacy reasons.