There is this weird thing that’s installed in my brain. It’s only now that I understand why, but it is something that has scared me my whole life. My sympathy for the devil.

It may sound scary to you. I’ll try to explain.

Whenever I watch a movie or a documentary about evil people—killers, rapists, narcissists, abusers—I empathize with them. There always is this one person that everyone hates, everyone despises. The one who killed his family, the one who manipulates people, the one who raped and murdered women, the one who abused children, the one who doesn’t seem to care about anyone else.

Whenever I watch a movie or a documentary about evil people—killers, rapists, narcissists, abusers—I empathize with them.

When I watch that same movie, the only one I feel something for is the pedophile. The murderer. The rapist. The manipulator. I feel so sorry for them. I want to help them. Hug them. And I don’t understand the people who hate them.

This may be very hard to hear. Maybe I’ll regret writing this, but it needed to come out. I get now why my brain is doing this.

All my life I had to sympathize with the devil in order to survive. I had to see beneath the mask of manipulation and control. I had to tell myself there was just a lot of pain, otherwise, he would not be like this. I just needed to believe that to stay alive. To cope. To keep quiet.  All I wanted was to protect him. It was an evil bond between us. So I learned to tell myself that ‘bad’ people weren’t so bad. That they couldn’t help themselves. That they were just hurt and not in control. It is not their fault.

That’s how I still look at my dad. I can’t see him in another light. I can’t see him as ‘bad’. I hope that will change. That I can learn to see him and all those others for what they are to me.

The devil in disguise.