My stepmother loved to have power over me. To have power over me, she needed to know something that could blackmail and frighten me. So she went to my room every day when I was at school and searched through my drawers and especially my counter by my bed. My secret hiding place. Until this very moment.
I had always hidden everything under my Mickey Mouse notebooks. Including the message of a girl in which I was fallen in love, or whatever you call it, if you are not yet 10 years old.
She found the letter from Amelie saying that she found me sweet and that the last night was beautiful. We baked bake, my stepmother didn‘t like that because she didn't want me to have fun. I should hate life, because she also did.
The next day, my cousin's birthday, I not only noticed that Amelie's letter was gone. At the big table with the whole family, my stepmother stood up, cleared her throat, and left the note out loud. She was the only one who laughed. I was the only one who walked out of the room crying, shy and embarrassed.
One do not have to know something about you to expose you. It just has to be a person bad enough to either destroy your day or your life with these things.
That day my stepmother exposing me was a mini trauma to me. I talked to nobody for 5 days. I was, with what I did not want to tell anyone, placed on a marketplace of voyeurism. Naked and vulnerable.
As a psychologist, I always thought there is nothing worse for us than to reveal our secrets. But that's not true. The worst thing is when others reveal our secrets to the people who mean something to us.
Today I have to change and optimize my behavior to protect my privacy, because everything I say, watch, write or search is potentially being recorded. How do I do that? I imagine as often as possible, my stepmother would see everything I do, and remember the feeling of that time. Then I rething the step.
They can take everything but not our right NOT to share our data. Not disclosing our data carelessly, but first of all considering whether we want to disseminate it and then possibly encrypting it is our weapon.
Our privacy gives us back what has taken from us daily:
Power over our lives.