Sintemalen (3)

As already mentioned, Susanna grew up  in that very strict family and due to her father’s position in church, this made her stand out as privileged daughter of one of the strictest and most dedicated religious leaders. She was feared and loved by her peers. Yes, she was Sintemalen’s daughter.

On the one hand, Susanna was very fond of the various church services, especially when on certain occasions hundreds of pious believers expressed their commitment to Jesus/God in deeply emotional singing and praying, joint meals (like good-smelling peppermint tea, self-baked bread and marvelous  Suisse cheese for in-between meals, or a healthy stew). She very much loved that atmosphere of holiness, sincerity and unreserved commitment.

On the other hand, she loathed these gatherings as she knew much about the inner dealings of the leadership. She had experienced the rigorous enforcement of religious beliefs and the demanding and psychosocially debilitating set of rules.

Finally, after a long, painful struggle, she broke free (cut her hair and was pushed out by her father). This enforced great pain on her. She started cutting herself and - as final remedy -   even tried to take her life (obviously without success). She never told anyone about this - not even her partner Till.

When she met Till, it took a long time for her to open up, and it took even greater efforts by Till to bring her back to normal life. Susanna continued smoking a lot.

Back to their current situation:

Ilona, the oldest daughter was very much ‘entangled’ with a more modern ‘new life church’ and she always tried to enthusiastically defend her belief system against the anti-religious or religion-despising mindset of her parents.

All this means that Susanna was thrown into a situation where she was ‘surrounded’ by her super-religious daughter, by a (somewhat pushy) protestant pastor and his family, but more dangerously right next door by a couple that she knew very well from her old church. Soon, banners appeared in front of their house proclaimed the eternal invitation to Jesus/God and soon after, church services started. Through the open windows, Susanna could hear all the well-known old church songs that again stirred her up: on the one side the desire to again be part of this all-encompassing church family and to re-live all the warm feelings of belonging to a holy community, but on the other side also the insuppressible loathing of such disabling religious indoctrination and church cult.

One day, her neighbor gave Susanna a framed picture of one of those ‘The Broad and Narrow Way’ paintings.  Strangely, she was almost magically drawn to look at this picture over and over again – always provoking mixed feelings in her. Until one day, those feelings overwhelmed her and Susanna experienced a very strong panic attack (today we would probably call it Post-traumatic Stress Disorder PTSD). In order to find back to herself and to release some of the tension, she starting cutting herself with a knife and several times burned her skin with a cigarette, .. and barely escaped from the dark, dangerous abyss of her youth. Out of shame, she told no one about this ‘accident’ and carefully hid her wounds – even from Till.