VAMPIRES IN OLD TOWN
It was the end of March 2015. I had just finished my second workshop series for the year: “Five Steps to Conquering Your Inner World: How to Write Your Life’s Script.” A five-week course where I taught various communication techniques and coaching exercises. There were eight very satisfied participants, and the course was a success. The community we built during the sessions was excellent, and I truly felt that everyone there had become my true friends. In that sense, you could say this time was one of the highlights of my life. To underscore the positive feeling that was present, I’ll include some specific statements from the course participants here:
“I have just completed the ‘Inner World’ course. But it feels more like I’ve only just begun it. So incredibly much has been awakened, processed, and worked through. Make sure to create ‘space’ around it in your calendar. This course was one of the most beautiful, touching, and powerful journeys I’ve ever taken. I love the simplicity but the incredibly deep effect that the techniques had. From getting in touch with your innermost beauty (and also facing your nightmare), to bringing it out and working with it in your closest relationships. It’s like starting a new life! Not just a new page—a new book! When we let go of the old story about who we are and meet the world from who we really are, everything suddenly becomes easier, softer, and more fun! David is also incredibly professional and knowledgeable as a coach. It’s clear that he has ‘That Thing!’ His empathetic ability is brilliant—he senses, highlights, and supports the group in the most optimal way. It’s like he creates magic at every session. It doesn’t matter if I felt low, tired, or okay when I arrived—I always left with an expanded and open heart! I’ve been surprised every time. Fantastic gift and course. The support you get from the others on the journey is invaluable. As a life coach, I’ve tried all sorts of different courses and techniques in personal development, but this course is definitely at the top. This is innovative and transformative. The journey has only begun. THANK YOU David for everything!! <3."
– Jeanette Carleson
On Friday, we had a potluck dinner at Gonzalo’s place, who was one of the most active participants in the training. Everyone brought something edible to contribute to the communal feast. Guitars were played, some sang songs, everyone had dressed up. We read poems to each other, and all had brought their visions they had written about the future. I remember it was cool outside and the air was light as spring had just arrived. I myself showed up a bit late to the gathering because the printer, whose task it had been to print everyone’s diplomas, hadn’t delivered fully.
We ate, chatted, and laughed as if we had known each other our whole lives, as if we were the closest of friends, without any real reservations about each other. It was a relaxed atmosphere, like a kind of effortless and obvious shared hope, rooted in an intuitive clarity about who we were and always had been. And a casual acceptance of the future mixed with excitement for whatever life wanted to mean for us ahead.
I sat down next to Maria-Paz, tasted a bit of the salad, and took a sip of the drinks being served. Linus came and sat to my right; he was happy, I could see it in his gaze, and we had a ‘moment’ as they say in English, without saying anything special to each other. After that, I got the feeling that I wanted to gather everyone in a perspective, so I spoke up and opened with the question: “Hey everyone, what is it that we really want?”
Everyone laughed and started telling tales about their visions. I remember Jeanette in particular, how she started a solemn song in the background, stood up, and delivered her speech about how she wanted to be a representative for love in Sweden and the world. Anna stood up in the middle of the room and declared that she IS who she IS, and that was the greatest happiness she could own. Christian explained his complete desire to be a creative force in the world, and after a while, someone asked me: “What about you, David? What do you really want?”
I was silent for a moment, because I didn’t have a ready answer. I thought about it and said: “I want to be everything I can be,” whereupon Cecilia, one of the participants, interrupted and exclaimed: “I just want to show you so much love.” There was a somewhat awkward atmosphere for a couple of seconds, but then the party continued in the best way. Probably the best party I’ve ever experienced, because of the spontaneous happiness that at least I felt was shared by everyone.
Cecilia, who had said she wanted to show me love, came and sat next to me for a little while, whereupon she quickly moved again. When the party had gone on a little longer, she came up to me and commented on my shirt in a somewhat strange way that could have been perceived as questioning. After that, she said she would probably take a taxi home now because it was getting late. She soon left from there, and I remember her facial expression as somewhat sad, or that it in some way expressed some form of involuntary pain.
The day after, I got a Facebook message late in the evening. It was Cecilia:
“I’ve had such a cozy time!” she said. “It got quite late on Friday, and yesterday, but I feel unexpectedly energetic. Before our meeting: I’ve charged up with some things/questions that I’ve been thinking about by the way!”
She was going to get her diploma; I had forgotten that. We had arranged a little meeting at Gilda’s Room, a café on Nytorget, Stockholm Södermalm, which I really liked. Now I was reminded.
“I’ve discovered some irritating traits in myself that I just have to discuss with you!” Cecilia added to what she had said earlier.
“Oh, easy to be self-critical,” I replied. “Often it doesn’t take much. Discuss whatever you want with me.” Was my answer.
“I hope so! Wonderful if you can bear to listen to my relatively simple problem,” Cecilia clarified again.
“I love listening,” I said.
“Aww, you’re sweet! I suspect you know what it’s about! ;D”
I didn’t know that. But now I began to suspect. We met at Gilda’s Room on Tuesday, March 31, 2015. She was already there when I entered the venue, and when I sat down, the first thing she said was: “I just want to see you naked. Can’t you tear off your shirt right here and now? And you should know so much shame, do you know that?” Whereupon she smiled.
Okay, I thought, this is different, but why am I not surprised? I’ve been in similar situations before. I countered by saying: “I’m flattered, but you have a partner, and I’m your teacher in a classroom context.” Cecilia said right away that with her partner, it was practically over, and it had been for a long time. And then that I was practically no longer her teacher, since she had now received her diploma.
I sighed and said: “I don’t know you, and you don’t know me.” She meant that she knew me better than I thought, and that she really wanted to get to know me even better. “You don’t understand,” I said. “The next relationship I enter into, I want to be sure that I’m willing to marry the person in question.” Cecilia replied: “But I want to marry you. I want to bear your children. I’m 36 years old. I have no time to play games.”
The evening continued. Flattery and invitations of all kinds. The whole thing was surreal, but at the same time unexpectedly fun. I didn’t completely dismiss her proposal, as she seemed like a, in many ways, serious, intelligent, and cute woman who in every way seemed interested in me. However, the whole thing didn’t feel entirely like a natural development of a normal love relationship. I suppose it was the constant flattery that made me keep the door open anyway.
The weeks after the meeting, we kept in touch, and with the written agreement that she would end things with her partner as soon as possible, we entered into a couple relationship. Cecilia turned out to be a successful, goal-oriented woman. She often pointed out that she had been together with several famous Swedish artists and cultural personalities, and that she thought I reminded her of them. She and I hung out all our free time, and when we didn’t meet physically, we talked on the phone. During our private meetings, it was basically always complete focus on sex.
One of the first projects we had together was that we arranged a shared turn-of-the-century apartment on Bondegatan on Södermalm in her name. We bought a large continental bed, decorated with 1700s mirrors, and had live candles everywhere.
She still had her own apartment with her partner on Kungsholmen, but there was constant talk that she was in the process of ending that relationship. More and more, my life became solely about her and me. The successful Bravepeople project with teaching and workshop activities was overshadowed. Likewise my friends. Both my old lifelong relationships and the new acquaintances with whom I had built such fine bonds over two years while developing the course program. But I assumed this was a natural phenomenon that took place in most beginning relationships.
Everything was largely peace and joy. We had so much fun and did such crazy things. We played with each other constantly, ate dinners at fine restaurants, made trips and day excursions to different islands, communicated about everything, and made love to each other all the time, and I really started to feel like a child again in this, to say the least, intense spring/summer romance. However, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right. Sometimes, now and then, she namely shifted tone sharply and hurled out thorny statements and reflections that didn’t at all belong in the spirit of love that she otherwise professed for me.
I remember specifically the first time this happened: We were at home in her apartment on Drottningholmsvägen on Kungsholmen in Stockholm. We were standing in the kitchen, and she started telling about some events from her earlier life, which hardly aligned with the image of her that she otherwise wanted to uphold. The events were partly about how she met her first real boyfriend, Christopher O’Regan who is now a famous TV personality, and partly about when she traveled around as a musician in a royalist bagpipe band.
“Christopher and I were completely crazy when we were out together. It often went overboard, and we treated people very badly sometimes. We wanted to seem as proper as possible but at the same time be as damn mean as possible without getting caught.” “It was probably during the band time that I learned to be unfaithful. Everyone fucked everyone. It was completely insane.” But shortly after, she smiled and said: “You probably won’t be able to sit on me.” I replied: “Sit on you? Why would I want to sit on you?” I didn’t understand what she meant by that.
It might sound strange that I still continued to be together with a person who starts expressing such things. But every strange statement she weighed up with a hundred compliments, declarations of love, and affirming words right afterward. That made all these shocking statements disappear into a soup of an otherwise quite uniform communication from her side. At least at first.
The next acidic statement that I remember clearly was after we had been together for almost a month. It was around the days of my birthday; we had shopped clothes at NK and arranged a big party in my apartment. In connection with this, we traveled home to my family and my mother who was also celebrating her birthday. My uncle, maternal uncle, and other relatives were there, so I got the chance to introduce Cecilia not only to my closest, but also my parents’ brothers, sisters, and their respective.
Right after the meeting when we left there, she turned around, fixed her gaze on me, and exclaimed: “Your mom has never loved you. That was Clear! I was offended just by looking at her.” Right afterward, she quickly changed the story and pretended as if she had never uttered anything about my mother, one of the most important reference points in my life. The joy, mischief, affirming words, and flattery were soon fully underway again. But soon after came the next strong attack.
In hindsight, it’s hard to understand that I went along with this treatment for as long as I did. It was like she gave me “ice cream with razor blades in it,” because the effect on my inner life was only noticed afterward. Gradually, this time turned more and more into a nightmare the more I hung out with this woman. After a few months, a large part of her language had shifted to constantly making different statements about what other people thought of me and how they interpreted my person. It was also as if she had mapped out, zoomed in on, and attacked all the important bonds of love, trust, and important memories that I had established and nurtured throughout my life, to all my friends and relatives—and that almost everything she said had the intention of distorting the value itself, that is, both their and my interpretation of the bond that I had connected to them.
“The drop that hollows out the mountain” is a metaphor that describes how a big change can happen and be accepted as the normal situation if it takes place slowly, in small steps here and there that are barely noticeable. The change would probably be met with strong opposition if everything it entailed would show itself at once. But when the opponent pretends to be a good friend, or perhaps more than that, and gradually takes a bite here and there, then it’s hard to uncover the change before it’s too late. (There are several in other languages that refer to the same principle: “Creeping normality” and “death by a thousand cuts” are two of them.)
Below, I list examples of specific accusations, humiliations, insults, and direct threats, which I remember she expressed during this period (usually in moments when I had my guard down the most):
“Jessica hates you. I saw that clearly.”
“Your mom has never loved you.”
“Soon I’ll stick the knife in you.”
“You are my male whore.”
“You will be completely drained of energy!!”
“All people walking on the street think you’re sick.”
“Look at you, you live in my apartment, have my clothes, and eat my food. You are completely owned by me!” “Your coaching client Anna, she needs to be properly fucked in the ass, then she’ll be healthy. And it will surely be her and you in the end.”
“You will have to pay back so much, you bastard.”
“I’m going to put you in so much damn debt.”
“It sounds so sticky when you talk about all people’s equal value.”
She had started insinuating several things about members of my family. And that different social networks tied to my life were completely disgusting and that she saw them as a disease. She also criticized several of my previous friends and said similar things about them: That they were “mediocre men”, that they were “sick,” that it was clear that that woman had a “suburban behavior,” etc. When I more forcefully started to object to her often humiliating language, she turned directly and meant that I had misunderstood her, that she expressed herself clumsily sometimes, and that she actually meant something completely different.
While all this manipulation was going on, I had, at Cecilia’s recommendation, been hired as a coach to one of Cecilia’s best friends who was feeling very bad at the time. Maria Dos Santos. We had met on several occasions, and she called me often. However, she didn’t really want to carry out the coaching exercises or follow my advice despite her condition only getting worse and worse. She had developed sleep problems and often sent worrying SMS to me with content like: “I wish I could stop breathing.” I also discovered that she started having memory lapses because she forgot several occasions when we had spoken on the phone. It was frightening for me to see what was happening to her, especially since I also didn’t experience that she was particularly genuine towards me in our conversations, this despite that I had received a large sum of money from her as payment for the coaching. Moreover, I sensed deep within me that the same thing was happening to me.
Both Cecilia and Maria belonged to a circle of friends tied together by royalist values, that is: advocating monarchy as a form of government, and the Royal House as a governance model for society. On occasions, I had hung out with both, and on other occasions briefly met Cecilia’s other friends, often in Gamla Stan. One time when I went with her to pick up her son Gustaf, we passed Christopher O’Regan’s apartment. Cecilia’s first real boyfriend who had now become an author and TV personality.
It was a rather condescending first meeting. Christopher leaned out through his window on Ankargränd and said: “Yes, you David, you’ll have to wait a bit to marry Cecilia. It’s no longer like in elementary school when you can just ask someone out one week and break up the next.” I didn’t respond to the address as I thought it was both petty and unpleasant, like most of what I’ve experienced from that guy. It was Cecilia who had taken the initiative to discuss marriage, and now they would collectively turn it into my idea and at the same time insinuate that I had the worldview of an elementary school student. It became more and more clear to me that they were playing some kind of game. However, I couldn’t imagine that they wanted me as badly as it later turned out.
When I, Cecilia, and Maria hung out, it became clear that they had different nicknames or epithets for each other. Christopher was called “Kritan.” Maria was called “Fimpen” if I remember correctly. On an earlier occasion when Cecilia and I had coffee at a café near Odenplan, she had described how when she and Christopher started “hanging out” 10 years ago, “a little sect also arose.” I assume she said “also” because she was alluding to my upbringing in a religious home, which was also a theme for ceaseless criticism from her side. Cecilia often talked about Christopher; how she had trained him for ten years to become who he became, and that she got to choose and approve all women he got to have sex with. At the moment, they were devising strategies for meetings with Erika Åberg who was a building antiquarian and the intended program co-host with Christopher in the new TV program “Det sitter i väggarna.” Cecilia often talked about Christopher’s infidelity and said it was lucky she hadn’t married him considering how he constantly cheated on Sara who was his then-wife.
Another theme that Cecilia liked to talk about was religion. Partly, she expressed her constant disgust for the phenomenon and that she considered it a disease. Partly, she also expressed that there was much wisdom there about how people, peoples, and societies functioned. Cecilia had expressed the perspective that men who grow up in a religious home more easily accept criticism because of their background, because from childhood they have been motivated by guilt, and therefore are prepared to do a lot to prove themselves as a better, or in some cases only as an “acceptable” person. This was the case with her partner David Lindberg, she meant, who had grown up in a tradition of Laestadians. She had tired of him because he couldn’t stand up for himself against her, at the same time she expressed that she felt sorry for him, and phrased herself as if he wouldn’t manage if she left him, this as a result of how she had treated him over a longer period.
Often, Cecilia suggested that I should come to her workplace because “there were good places to have sex there,” including a massage room. It sounded like she had used that room many times and that it had almost become a habit for her. When I finally went with her once to WSP where she worked, I met one of her male colleagues who was a landscape architect. It was obvious that the man entered a very emotional state as soon as Cecilia addressed him; his whole body quickly turned towards her, at the same time as his gaze became somewhat dreamy and glossy. From the dynamic that arose between them, it wouldn’t have been hard to guess that they were either currently or previously engaged in some kind of charged sexual relationship. But I didn’t ask the question.
The same happened with Maria Dos Santos every time one mentioned the name “Kritan” or Christopher. She couldn’t ward off the feelings that welled up; she started blushing and at times she became almost unreachable in a kind of unconscious fog. During the coaching sessions that took place between her and me, it emerged that she had been subjected to some type of abuse, and that she was in a relationship at the moment. This made me quite worried because I knew that Christopher was married, had a wife and child. But I didn’t want to interfere in these affairs.
All this was puzzle pieces that became clearer the more I entered this unpleasant network. I thought, of course, that I was strong enough to say no and stand up to the attacks and pettiness that came from Cecilia. I wanted to show myself to be more stable than the other people she constantly humiliated. The whole relationship had become something cold and strange by this time, and I suggested on several occasions that we should break up. Partly because she hadn’t kept her part of the agreement and broken up with her partner, and partly because I experienced her as very unserious, manipulative, and surprisingly mean under her otherwise very amiable exterior.
The answers to all my suggestions to break up were met with several long SMS where she professed how she cried rivers, loved me more than anyone else, and that her hard facade really only hid an anxious heart that so wanted to trust me. Part of me wanted to believe that it was true, but at the same time I remembered how she had questioned me about my possible “weaknesses” in the relationship to previous partners, and where I had answered what I was weak for, I noticed clearly how she used just those grips to get me back as soon as she realized she had made too big a transgression. I finally didn’t feel that she showed me any sincere love at all, but she did everything to motivate, or demand from me that I showed her love instead. She often pointed out anything about me that could be interpreted as a flaw, so that I would then start compensating for that flaw, and often after that she started to devalue, or outright attack the attempts I then made to please her.
She could make her words into weapons like no one else. Either she flattered, humiliated, or explained away. But at the same time, she seemed to really want me in her life for some reason. I didn’t know why. I had, as I said, in the beginning really believed in her flattery and declarations of love, and that was perhaps why I let it go as far as it did, but everything has its limit, and I should have drawn it much earlier.
One of the most clear humiliations came during my cousin’s wedding dinner down in Båstad. We were sitting and eating dinner at our table together with some relatives, and suddenly she exclaimed right in my face: “The bride has cried because she thinks you have cancer and will die, and now it has spread as a rumor to all your relatives!” Three years later, information has emerged that she herself went around at the wedding, presented herself as my “caretaker” or personal assistant, and spread just that rumor on her own.
By this time in the relationship, I also started hearing stories from several of my friends that I was “controlling” towards Cecilia and that I had difficulty letting go of her. “If you love her, let her go” was a phrase that I got repeated to me several times. This was extremely disturbing to hear, precisely because it was I, and only I who during this time on numerous occasions suggested that she and I should break up and leave each other. It was, as said, she who constantly said and did everything possible to get me back again and again.
I realized now that she in some way had started taking over the story about me in my circle of friends, and things started to feel extremely unpleasant. Much more unpleasant than before. I remember the nights when the nightmares came, and in connection with that also the breathing problems. My natural security that I had lived with throughout my life started to be very challenged. In all this, however, there were certain people that she hadn’t managed to influence, so I started contacting them, told about the pains and what was happening. These people were of course supportive on my side, but I noticed that it was very challenging for me to tell about everything in an objective way, because it was so many small details which over such a long time had constructed the entire situation I found myself in.
In mid-August, a little more than four months after the relationship had begun, I got an SMS from Cecilia where she wrote that she was on Djurgården together with Maria Dos Santos, and that Maria apparently was suicidal. She asked me to come there to help them in some way.
I cycled there as fast as I could to meet them, but Maria was hardly suicidal; the whole thing was about something else. They both sat and ate by a pier. Cecilia smiled smugly at me when I sat down and soon exclaimed: “Hah! Look at you how sick you are! I do NOT feel sorry for you! ‘Cut your nails for fuck’s sake, or are you going to grow guitar nails like Gonzalo?'” “And that apartment on Sågargatan, you GET that!” she said laughing, as if she had already stolen something from me in exchange. I don’t know what I would say so I was silent. After that, she pulled out her mobile: “Wait a bit, you’re going to see a picture!” whereupon she showed a photograph in front of me and Maria where she laughing stands on a meadow in front of about eight men holding their genitals as if they are masturbating with their gaze towards her, all wearing kilts. After that, she said: “We’ve broken up now. You have way too low social status for me.” and presented herself as completely unconcerned.
I thought the whole situation was extreme. I started walking away from there but Cecilia followed me while glaring at me with a big smile. “What is this for a disgusting person?” I thought to myself. I heard her shout the words “stalker” and “sick” together with other insults. Finally, when I had come to Kungsträdgården, I managed to shake her off. The days after, I feel worse and worse. I understood then that what she had done would affect me much more than I thought it would. My home at that time was also in an apartment that was in her name.
I realized that the whole situation was extremely negative. I also realized that I should write down and document everything that had happened, but I experienced it at that time as very complex to be able to create a comprehensive overview of the course of events. The situation was somewhat overwhelming and consisted of so incredibly many small details. This at the same time as I experienced that the part of my mind whose function it was to objectify and create context of all events had been stressed to a very high level. I started getting extreme headaches and many other pains. I did, however, write down a list of several of the statements and insults that she had made during the course of the relationship, a list that largely corresponds to the one I attached above. These attacks and humiliations were the clearest, purely objectively speaking. I drew the conclusion that a more comprehensive specification of the entire course of events for her and my relationship I could write later.
I felt a need to confront Cecilia with the list and get a clear answer on what she had really been up to. This because the state I was in only got worse and worse. I considered that she had created a new very negative “frame” and “story” about my life—a story that she wanted me and everyone else to believe in. As tools, she had used a lot of sex as well as affirmation and then started attacking my relationships, my family, my values, and together with countless humiliations and guilting, spread several terrible and untrue rumors about me.
Cecilia’s way of abruptly ending the relationship on Djurgården (after four months of extremely intimate intercourse) seemed to be her attempt to solidify the humiliation. “Soon I’ll stick the knife in you” she had expressed with a smile a few weeks before this point. I now saw clearly how she had planned the entire seduction and its transition to total humiliation from the very beginning, and that this behavior unfortunately was something she had systematized.
Despite what happened, I decided that I would meet Cecilia again and confront her with the list. To arrange a new meeting, however, I needed to simulate a submissive, admiring, fawning, apologetic, and overly flattering tone in my further communication towards her. It worked, because then she unexpectedly “really wanted” to meet again at Gilda’s Room. I had received many hints from her side that it was namely such a behavior she wanted me to adopt, the role of an unaware slave—and it was also obviously the behavior that she had trained many other guys to embody. Usually, I have no problem showing people respect, or from my own free will, choose to do both big and small things for others. But when a person lies and performs the level of psychological, emotional, and social abuse that Cecilia performed, and moreover at the same time tries to make one completely sexually dependent, whereupon she dismisses one, humiliates one, humiliates my closest, and later expects me to reward, admire her and slave for her because of it. Then I really lose patience.
I sat down at Gilda’s; she came a bit late, but when she saw me, she pointed at me and said: “Look, a dog.” She sat down next to me; I took out the list, read her statements, and wondered what it was about. She hisses and says: “Well, that doesn’t look so good,” whereupon I said that I will send a letter to her partner David Lindberg where I describe her and my entire relationship if she doesn’t answer satisfactorily to what she has done. Her facial expression then became completely distorted; she hissed: “Then you have never loved me!” whereupon she started hitting me with her fists, tried to take my mobile, and then verbally threatened to harm my daughter.
I dismissed her blows. She calmed down, turned around, looked to the left, and pointed towards a man in a suit a few sofas away. “There’s Björn Ericsson; he’s a nymphomaniac!” she said, whereupon she got up and went over to him to exchange a few words.
I glimpsed the same kind of submissive gaze, radiance, and attitude towards Cecilia from Björn, as I had already witnessed from many other of her male friends. By the way, Dangerous Liaisons was Cecilia’s favorite movie, ”den är ju helt underbar” she often said.
