Before I left Harburg, I had felt threatened mostly by my family. When I came back, it seemed as though the whole town had turned against me. Everyone knew my shame—or at least that was what I believed.
I walked through town with my head lowered, imagining people staring, laughing, pointing at me.
“Remember her?”
For years, I carried those imagined voices with me.
As a young girl, I had become convinced that I wasn’t worth much. Even after I grew up and left Harburg, that belief followed me. It became a handicap I carried into almost everything I did.
By the time I was thirty-six, however, my life looked very different from the frightened girl I had once been. I had completed my master’s qualification in tailoring and fashion design, worked as an interior decorator, and become part owner of a high-fashion boutique. I had acquired knowledge, developed my talents, and proved that I was capable.
Yet none of those accomplishments could silence the voice inside me.
You are not good enough.
Working independently felt safe. I could use my abilities without constantly worrying that someone would criticize me or expose some weakness I believed was there.
Then, after a robbery at the business in 1996, my life changed direction again. I began working as a desk clerk at the Air Force hotel in Wiesbaden. One of my reasons for taking the job was that I wanted to learn English.
But that old voice followed me there.
You are not good enough to work at a front desk.
My coworkers soon discovered my insecurities. Because I was grateful simply to have the job, I rarely protested. Before long, I found myself accepting assignments no one else wanted.
It would take me years to understand where that willingness to accept less had begun.
I could trace it back to childhood.
I remember one December in particular.
The winter was bitterly cold, and so was our house. We children had not eaten a proper meal in some time. Mostly, we survived on oatmeal with sugar, cocoa, and milk.
The previous summer, our gas station had closed for good.
Some people said my father had run the business into the ground because he spent the money on his inventions or his girlfriend. Others blamed my mother. My father seemed interested only in his orchestra, the choir he directed, and his inventions. I never knew which version of the story was true and which was a lie. Perhaps there was some truth in both.
By then, I hardly cared.
Nigg and I felt cheated. We had always been told that one day we would take over the business. All those hours we had worked suddenly meant nothing.
One thing had always been clear: my father’s music and inventions were more important to him than his family. He brought almost no money into the household. What we had came mainly from our mother or our grandfather.
During one of her angry spells, my mother once shouted, “If you kids had to live on what your father brings home, you would have starved to death long ago.”
The older I became, the less I understood why she fought so hard to keep him.
She knew he had been having an affair with his secretary for years, yet she seemed willing to endure almost anything to prevent him from leaving. Whatever my father said or did became law. My mother accepted his humiliation as though she had no choice.
One day, my father showed us a photograph of a woman wearing a Red Cross nurse’s uniform. She was petite, with light blue eyes, black hair framing a beautiful face.
“Yes,” he boasted, “this is the woman I met right after the war.”
Then he pointed at my mother.
“She is nothing but a big fat pig.”
He turned toward me.
“And you will get this fat one day too.”
I looked at my mother and waited for her to fight back.
I knew his words had hurt her. Tears filled her eyes, but instead of becoming angry with him, she defended him.
“Your father didn’t really mean it the way it sounds,” she said. “I really should lose weight.”
I was disgusted.
That same evening, she called Nigg and me into the bedroom. Her manner had changed. She was subdued, almost gentle.
“Would you like to have a Christmas with plenty of presents and a good meal with a goose on the table?”
Nigg and I looked at each other.
We knew there would be a price.
Our stomachs told us to say yes.
My mother waved a sheet of paper in front of us.
“I found this unpaid bill in the paperwork from the gas station. All you have to do is drive to this address and collect the money. Don’t accept any excuses. I know these people. They always keep money at home.”
Something about it felt wrong. But we were hungry, the heating-oil tank was nearly empty, and Christmas was only a week away.
I looked at the bill.
Three thousand Deutsch Marks.
“Why don’t you or Father go and talk to these people?” I asked.
She slapped me across the mouth.
“Do you want to tell us adults what to do?”
Then came the punishment disguised as a choice.
“That’s okay. If you don’t want to go, your brothers won’t have any food—and thanks to you, no Christmas.”
Nigg grabbed the bill from my hand.
“Let’s go.”
Our car had no gasoline, so we asked our school friend Wolfi whether we could borrow his father’s van. We could always depend on him.
Fifteen minutes later, we were on our way.
“It’s only fourteen kilometers,” Nigg said. “If we hurry, we’ll be back in an hour and I can eat something.”
It was already dark, and snow was falling heavily. The road stretched between empty fields, slick with ice.
Nigg was thirteen years old and small for his age.
He was also driving.
It was illegal, of course, but he had been driving for almost a year because our parents expected him to. Whenever another car approached, or we passed through a town, I slid my legs underneath him so he would sit higher and appear older.
When we reached Wemding, we realized we had no idea where the street was.
“We’ll have to ask someone,” I said.
We stopped at a Gasthaus, and I went inside to ask the innkeeper for directions.
The first thing he said was, “What’s a little girl like you doing out on the street at night?”
He gave me the directions, then added, “Tell your parents children have no business being out at night.”
I was relieved he didn’t follow me outside. If he had seen another child sitting behind the steering wheel, he probably would have had a fit.
Only when we finally knocked on the door and a man answered in his pajamas did I realize how late it was.
I showed him the bill.
“Our mother sent us to collect the money.”
He looked confused.
“I don’t know anything about this. My wife takes care of the bills. Come inside while I wake her.”
As soon as he left the room, Nigg smiled.
“That wasn’t too hard. Now we’ll have a nice Christmas.”
Then the woman entered.
The moment I saw her face, I knew something was wrong.
She was furious.
She held up a receipt signed by my mother—a receipt showing that the bill had already been paid a year earlier.
“I told your mother a week ago to stop asking me for money!”
I wanted the floor to open and swallow me.
Then Nigg spoke.
“If we don’t bring money home, we won’t have any food. And the heating oil is running out too.”
The woman’s expression changed.
“Go sit at the table.”
She brought us fresh milk, homemade liverwurst, and bread.
“No, thank you,” I said quickly. “We have to go.”
Nigg pretended not to hear me. He sat down and started eating.
Soon I could no longer resist either.
The woman watched him.
“You sure are hungry. When was the last time you ate?”
She didn’t wait for an answer.
Instead, she got up and wrapped more food for us.
“Here. Take it.”
Then she wished us a Merry Christmas and handed us a bag filled with food—and some money.
Something changed in me that night.
I understood what it meant to feel ashamed of your family.
But for the first time, I also understood something else.
The shame was not ours.
The snowstorm made the drive home even more difficult, but neither of us was eager to get there.
“What are we going to tell her?” I asked. “She doesn’t want to hear the truth.”
“Don’t worry,” Nigg said. “The food and the money are proof enough that we were there.”
A little later, I asked, “How much longer?”
“Why? I’m not in any hurry to get there.”
“Me neither. But my stomach is rumbling. I have to go to the bathroom.”
Nigg smirked.
“No wonder. First we don’t eat for days, and then we gobble down fat liverwurst and fresh cow’s milk.”
The snow changed to icy rain. The road became a mirror, and we slowed to barely five kilometers an hour.
Suddenly, my stomach turned.
“Nigg, stop! I have to throw up!”
I barely made it out of the van. Vomiting and diarrhea hit me at the same time. I remember being grateful that no one else was on the road to see me.
Soaked and trembling, I crawled back into the van.
“This stupid thing doesn’t even have a heater,” Nigg complained. “But we’ll be home soon.”
When we finally arrived, I handed my mother the food and money.
She looked at it.
“Is this all?”
I turned and walked out of the kitchen.
“What is your problem?” she called after me.
I said nothing.
I went to bed with one thought burning inside me:
I hate that woman.
The next day, my mother went shopping.
She bought cigars, butter, and ham for my father.
We children were given noodle soup without meat and a slice of bread with margarine.
Then Christmas Eve came and went.
There was no Christmas tree. No presents. Not even the good meal we had been promised.
My father received new gloves and a warm scarf.
That was the way it had always been.
My father got the best, whether we had money or not.
We got what was left.
The childhood experiences reflect chronic emotional neglect, coercive control, and repeated subordination of her needs to those of others. These experiences contributed to learned helplessness, diminished self-worth, difficulty establishing boundaries, and excessive compliance, patterns consistent with her documented diagnosis of complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD). In adulthood, these trauma-related patterns persisted despite significant professional achievement, contributing to self-doubt and tolerance of exploitation in the workplace.