My pages used to have exactly one mention of my father. The fact speaks volumes. The entry stated: "I have a father, who's quite unlike me." Even that one obscured the matter absolutely with some shady euphemism that probably couldn't be deciphered without some deeper insight on my childhood. I have obviously tried to avoid the exposure of an overly close-by matter, which sure is counterproductive to my cause of personal non-censorship. I must have been way too close to see the obvious skew in the diagram.

So, it naturally shocked a lot of people to hear that in May 2006 I had gone and stabbed him dead out of the seemingly-perfect blue. Now, I'll go on record saying there was no acute conflict or horrible provocation from him leading to it, but the past history will no doubt provide light on the reasons that do exist.

I was born in Finnish Lapland in 1981, into a village of few people and even less people of my age. My parents were the mother Aila and the father Raimo, the latter of which was employed as a woodcutter. This is a typical Lapland occupation; however, my father had lost his father at an early age, and now in his late youth he could spend weeks at a time in the forests, wherever his job assignments took him. There was much work to be done and naturally he was paid for it, but in retrospect he probably paid for it a little too dearly in the long run.

In 1984 I became Big Brother: my kid brother Juha was born. Three years late, it may've been merciful for him not to see all of my parents' atrocity, because he shares few of my personal demons. Too young to be affected? Of course, Juha didn't get bullied at school.

On with the booze. Alcohol is the number one drug in Finland, conveniently praised by the government while all drugs other than that and tobacco are absolutely demonized. But hey, this solvent's taxable! My parents used to drink a lot of alcohol. My father in particular was absolutely, thoroughly fond with it (and was due to get even fonder), but the drink sure didn't help his mood. "Emotional issues" hit the nail on the head, but the phrase hardly describes enough. I take it my father was extremely depressed with his life in the forest, but could do nothing else than keep working. He felt bad, and alcohol made him feel worse. Yet he simply increased his intake. All contributing factors (no father, draconian upbringing by icky mother, all that time in the woods, exponential drinking binges) worked their worst on him, ultimately making him one of the least desirable dads one could ever hope to credit for one's existence. Hey, that's kind of like the Christian lord in heaven! Deterministically violent assholes still remain violent assholes.

My father would do awful and crazy things. He'd rage about irrationally, beat my mother six ways from Sunday while imagining impossible infidelity scenarios behind him (domestic violence is really funny), jump down from trees brandishing a chainsaw (I bet this one would even be funny if it wasn't your father) and once he was even forcibly placed on a closed ward for days, because he was totally out there. In short, he wasn't mentally ill, but what most people would still refer to as "nuts". Out of control and in need of serious help. But, mental illnesses are a shaming stigma. Those relatives just left it a hushed matter for the close family, because mental health was a subject untouchable those days. I think it still remains a dumb taboo in many circles despite a virtual raise of awareness worldwide. Tom Cruise probably would've given my dad some vitamins, because every human being can innately control their mind perfectly down to a neuron - it just takes will power. Maybe he wouldn't have gone so bad with some early prevention. Curse all those memetic manacles.

Of course, father wasn't the family's isolated incident. Most of his siblings had some forms of depression, and his mother would slowly degenerate through my childhood from sensible to a raving nutball to an entirely unresponsive vegetable. She finally passed away the same year I killed my father, but she'd been lost to us years before. Me and my brother really hated and feared her "nutball" stage, because she lived next door and as a neighbour she was prone to stumbling in through our door screaming hostile rants about whores, Chinese and Russian emperors and players of all musical instruments (don't ask). She used to wreck all the mailboxes in the village for reasons unknown and likely nonexistent, and she was constantly urging our fox (dog) to bite everyone. Whenever we spotted her walking down the road we'd fear she'd turn towards our house for some Manson family poetry. Nice childhood memories! It was seriously like a horror movie segment, us backing against the door to bar her access, so that she would regard our door locked. I lived in constant fear I would eventually lose my mind as well, because the hereditary stress sure existed, genetic or memetic.

One of the most horrible memories that I can think of, and one that I have kept to myself right up to this year: I recall pretending to sleep peacefully while the horrible war of my parents rages on noisily in the next room. I'm very good at pretending not to notice, not to hear, not to care: I still find myself absolutely alert while appearing completely nonchalant. In this case, with the row over, my mother decides she isn't about to sleep in the marital bed and drops to sleep next to me, crying. I still act asleep. Then my father arrives, deciding he wants sex. Mother says "no" many times, but dad forces himself upon her and rapes my mother right next to me, with me hearing e-ve-rything. I've kept my mouth shut for this long. There's so much of this rather negative clutter there in my head that it isn't convenient.

So: it should come as no surprise that all of my father's irrational behaviour, loaded-gun wrestling bouts and ever-sweet wifebeatin' would eventually lead to my mother leaving. Too little too late won't salvage a completely busted relationship with such a history, even if correct medication had now started to keep the depression-induced insanity at bay. Divorce came. But us, the children were left with the father! Nooo! This was the way it went evidently because of his house and the stable income, and yeah - he reportedly threatened suicide otherwise. I would have applauded at this, mind you. I used to dream whenever he left for drinking binges that I would find him dead in the morning in a pool of vomit. I really wanted to see him dead.

Entering seventh grade I hated my father with a burning vindiction. And then, as the school we went to changed from the minor village school to the large municipal school, the bullying started for this fat, curly kid. I lost most my motivation for living altogether somewhere between grades seven and nine, and even the old, "safe" classmates turned into ferocious enemies out for blood, like some chestburster emerging from a fleshy husk. I used to think most kids are vile animals, capable of just about anything. "Children are monsters while adults are weaklings." I felt they'd become some sort of psychopathic pack predators. Of course, adults in my life were all impotent, ignorant herd grazers with brains bleached with solvent. I had a friend with a similar situation - the principal of his school whitewashed the bullying by considering it "establishing the pecking order". Unsurprisingly, this friend of mine is still struggling to even bother with the mainstream world. It is absolutely not a wonder something like the Columbine incident happened here as well - I find it surprising it hasn't happened before. Hell, I had those thoughts at grade nine, dreaming about bringing a shotgun along and striding through our classroom and blasting away at an orderly pattern. Might've done something about it, if I hadn't been so sickly afraid things in my life could get even worse. I absolutely feel for the Jokela and Kauhajoki guys, even if it isn't a viable way to get things working.

Anyway, I finished the comprehensive school despite plummeting grades and will to live, and continued on to sixth form. The new classmates were less feral, but any appealing spark schools had had for me was long dead. At school I had next to no social circles and at home dad was to be endured. He wasn't as bad as peaked in our mutual history, but he was still ignorant, angry, stubborn, bigoted, incapable of change and totally bitter at his ex-wife, as if she was to blame. Fucking hell.

He downed at least a twelve-pack of beer each day. Our dear old dog had a litter of new puppies, though, so there was joy as well. I love dogs, and so does my brother. Puppies have traditionally been cited by us as one of the very reasons to live. Well, this seems as good a thing as any to fuck up, so I came from school one day to learn out of the blue that dad had killed all our dogs expect for one pup. Dog food's so expensive, that was the rationale. Because cigarettes and alcohol are inexpensive. My father always used to do whatever he wants right then, only to think up the rational reasons in the aftermath. I hate that kind of human "intelligence". You always have to struggle to get people to tell what they really mean. Anyway, with our reasons to live dead I had to break the news to my brother, who returned from school later. I don't think I did a very good job. The following months I think I spent in my room, gaining a lot of weight.



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