Before I started school, unless we worked around the farm, we consumed the days sitting with our backs straight at coffee tables, drinking sour currant juice, eating dry rusks, and listening to war stories. In the evenings, villagers came to our house, and more stories were told at those gatherings. Everyone had heard most of them but no one was bored listening to them again, not when they were being told by people who had experienced them first-hand. We gathered around the fireplace; more often than not, there wasn't a dry eye in the room. On rare occasions when the house was empty of visitors, we watched the fire and read books about the war until my brother and I fell asleep.

A tall church rose on top of a small hill at the centre of our village. The churchyard was covered in square grey stones in a perfect line, much like the soldiers buried there before they fell in the war. On the opposite side of the road was a slope leading down to a shimmering lake. My father told me the villagers buried the soldiers in the winter, and when the spring eventually melted the snow on the icy graveyard, the water of the nearby lake turned red. Every time we drove past the lake in the village, I pictured it red from the melted blood and quiet villagers around it. My great-uncles were among the fallen.

When I grew up, the concept of sisu was strongly present in everyday life. Sisu in Finnish means resilience and determination in an assignment that may seem absurd, almost hopeless for some. The people of Finland take pride in having sisu, pushing through even unnecessary times of hardship to make their ancestors, the war heroes, proud. They want to feel equal to the older generations - the ones responsible for us not living in the woods eating only tree bark for dinner and speaking another language to our mother tongue. Where pushing through tough times is national pride, failing is not taken lightly, whether in an international sports competition like ice hockey or between neighbours. Losing face can lead to depression and even suicide.

I learned the Finnish way of withstanding, the sisu - the resilience, which kept collecting my friends to an early grave. When life got too challenging, emotions were bottled inside. It made people, including myself, burn out. Panic attacks followed, and I felt I was going crazy like many others before me. If my partner strangled me until I couldn't get air, I shrugged my shoulders, swallowed my tears and moved on. Eyes wide open in the middle of the night when my partner snored next to me, I gave him a hidden middle finger under the blanket and swore I would leave one day. However, in the morning, I had prepared him sandwiches for breakfast and ironed his shirt before he had even woken up. The concept of sisu was omnipresent in my daily life. I learned to fake smile and had secret fantasies about leaving my partner. I also learned to lie and forgot who I was underneath my mask. Whenever I encountered violence at home, I slept with a colleague. I didn't love him and only used him. I was giving my partner a taste of his own medicine.

I jumped from one violent relationship to another until it cost me estrangement from my older daughter. At that point, I knew that something had to change permanently, whether or not I would ever see my daughter again. That something was the entire foundation of my life. I stopped lying and cheating once and for all. I thought about wanting to be genuine if I ever entered another relationship. After all, betrayal often results in even more severe problems. Though I was able to stop disloyalty, sisu ran in my blood and was more potent than ever before.

I started making YouTube videos in between my relationships. I did not know what to expect and was naive and excited to heal the world with my confessions. YouTube taught me a lot I only later understood. Though I put myself out there, made myself vulnerable, and embarrassed myself entirely, I don't regret it. The topics I spoke about: abuse and violence made me a bleeding prey in a shark tank of great whites. Many, if not all, of the people criticising me, thought they had it all correct and let it out on me, and the channel grew fast in popularity. Everyone wanted their share of the face of a woman who came out as a cheater and a liar. I knew I was a substitute target for their anger. Their stories had nothing to do with me. However, to those who attacked me, I represented that person who had hurt them. Admitting the mistakes I had made in life, even to an unnecessary extent, was an important milestone towards a more authentic life. I felt stupid but found confessing to complete strangers comforting. I thought it was the only honourable thing to do. And if I couldn't apologise to my daughter, at least I could apologise to everyone else in the world. It was my way of jumping from an aircraft without a parachute, weights on my ankles, and without caring if I'd survive the impact. I sought torture and thought it was the only way of making up for my mistakes in life.

After the YouTube experience, I wasn't afraid to put myself out there again, show my failings and vulnerability, and disclose my past to random strangers. I didn't care how often I would be beaten up if one of those times would bring my child back. And if she did not return, I would rather die trying. No matter what anyone said, they were only words and opinions and did not define me unless I used their words against myself. And that, indeed, I did. I hated myself and could not see a way out. During my weak times, I ended up having another abusive relationship. Though I got away from one abusive partner, the following relationship's abuse began so gradually that it took me entirely by surprise. At one point, I gave away my credit cards and passwords to every platform. I had entered the trap. Mocking myself became almost self-soothing.

Telling my story to my fellow "mistake-makers" accidentally turned out to be the path I had sought all along. I told others what I had wanted to hear myself and no longer strived for recognition or forgiveness. I noticed that not only did people need someone, anyone, ultimately even themselves, to blame, but I also let them blame me if they wished to do so. What I thought initially worked well for me was soon going entirely overboard. When the hate speech increased, I locked myself in the martyrium of my abusive relationship. I smashed myself down and handed all those self-hate knives to my partner to use them on me, which he gladly did. Like my audience on YouTube, he also needed someone to blame - and we both needed to beat the crap out of me. Suffering to me had replaced the original meaning of sisu. Where sisu meant pushing through hard times with perseverance, to me, the purpose had twisted into deliberately seeking hard times and staying in them to find more value in myself through torture. Like some people crave adrenalin or others admiration, I longed to suffer, believing I deserved it.

One day, when enough was enough, I left the abusive home, but only because my relationship's abusive nature had suddenly been exposed to daylight. Several people came to lift me from the dirt, forcing me to leave. My first days out of the house were overwhelming. I could not believe I was not inside the house anymore, and though I understood I was safe, I missed the prison to which I had grown so accustomed. Life outside was surreal. I had learned to cope inside the house, and the outer world scared me. I didn't know how to be or talk to people, and though I was offered money, food, and a place to be, I felt a nuisance, a bother, and an inconvenience like I had been in the house. However, no one mocked me, and no one liked when I mocked myself, the very thing I had learned to do to stay safe. I constantly expected someone to get angry with me, yet no one ever did.

My ex-partner and I served each other well. I was his voodoo doll because his parents and ex-spouses had mistreated him. It took me a long time to understand how twisted a human mind can be after I was out of the house. Not only his, mine too. After being out, I regretted escaping because the prison had become my familiar place. I didn't know how to be me anymore when I had only existed for him. 

After leaving the abusive relationship, I cleaned as much as possible in the safe house to make myself useful. I could not stop cleaning; I had to do something. Cleaning, cooking, and having a familiar routine helped me adapt to the new life. I slowly took the sisu gloves off and admitted that not all bravery is for good. Still not knowing what I did wrong and how I could have avoided the abuse, I continued attending therapy and speaking with other survivors of domestic violence. Like many who have walked in my shoes, I initially believed that I could have done something different to stop the abuse. 

Resilience did not cause me to be abused.

And again, one of my favourites from Anne Lamott:

"Forgiveness means it finally becomes unimportant that you hit back. You're done. It doesn't necessarily mean that you want to have lunch with the person. If you keep hitting back, you stay trapped in the nightmare..." 

 ― Anne Lamott,   Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith