I Am Not Innocent

I Am Not Innocent

I was born in 1989, one month premature, while my mother was dying from cancer. I suffered oxygen deprivation at birth and spent my first weeks in an incubator. When I was only two years old, my mother died, and from that moment life became unstable.

Before I turned eighteen, I had already moved eight times between foster homes, institutions, and youth homes across Norway. Most places felt temporary, cold, and controlled. I often felt more like an object in storage than a child. The only place that truly felt like home was a foster family on the west coast of Norway. They treated me like family, took me on holidays, and made me feel normal for the first time in my life. I still keep contact with them today, and when my foster mother died in 2025, it was one of the few times in my adult life I truly broke down crying.

Throughout my childhood I stayed close to my biological father. We traveled often together, and he remained important to me until cancer took him too in 2006. His death changed everything.

That was when alcohol entered my life.

I inherited over 350 liters of homemade liquor after he died, and alcohol quickly became my way of trying to silence grief, anger, and dark thoughts. Instead, it made everything worse. The drinking brought out aggression, violence, and self-destruction.

Over the years I became involved in crime, violence, vandalism, car thefts, and conflicts with police and authority. Some situations were self-defense, others were simply rage and poor choices. I have been violent toward both guilty and innocent people, and I deeply regret much of the harm I caused.

I have been sentenced 18 times in Norway and once in London, and I have spent around 13 years in prison. I am not innocent. I deserve most of the years I have served, and if I had been caught for everything I did, I would probably have spent even longer behind bars.

Prison shaped a large part of my adult life — locked doors, strict routines, concrete walls, and years disappearing behind steel and schedules.

But there were also better periods.

When I worked, life improved. I worked long hours in jobs like floor sanding and discovered that structure, work, and purpose helped my mind far more than alcohol ever did. Alcohol only made the darkness stronger.

Today, at 37 years old, I still struggle with my past, anger, and the damage I caused. But I also try to live differently. I try to stay productive, avoid alcohol, and build some kind of peace inside myself.

I cannot change what I have done.

But I can be honest about it.

And despite everything, I still try to move forward — one day at a time.