between roses and peppermint

by evil minded

AU / Just a short story about a small town in the states – about God's church, about God's people, and about belief, faith and trust, about family, about friendship and about summer '39, about a girl that loves lavender, a boy that loves motorbikes, and about a small church that is a place for God's family … about a picture God has given me some time ago … have fun reading …

1. foreword - God, Jesus and me

Title:

Between roses and peppermint

Prequel to:

Between snow and ice
And sit a while with me
Twenty-one days
A few days more
Two seconds
End of days

Author:

Evil Minded – alias Mrs. Trabi

Classification:

Fiction – based on the bible

Timeframe:

Summer 1939

Location:

New Heaven's Valley, Indiana

Summary:

AU / Just a short story about a small town in the states – about God's church, about God's people, and about belief, faith and trust, about family and about summer '39, about a girl that loves lavender, a boy that loves motorbikes, and about a church that is a place for God's family … about a picture God has given me some time ago …

Disclaimer:

Well … to my knowledge there is no place in Indiana called New Heaven's Valley and any persons and events in this story are fictional – should there be any relations to people or places, then that was far from my intentions …

Also, any reference to the Bible is just that, a reference, I do not own anything written in the Bible, neither the words, nor the persons, places or happenings – the words are God's words and any other things are the attests of witness from people who lived about two thousands of years ago, or rather the translations of their testimonies.

I'm just borrowing things from that best of all books, and even though I promise that I won't misuse anything written in the Bible, that I won't dishonour God, His name, His words or our belief in Him – I nevertheless do apologize for the chaos I might create in this story and I promise, I will bring it in as much order as is possible for a chaotically inclined writer … thanks for your understanding …

Author's notes:

I am writing this in the hope that I'll live up to the responsibility every author has, even though I am aware that this here will be very difficult and reviews are very much welcomed, thank you very much.

Rating:

M – Not suitable for children or teens below the age of 16

Warning:

Story contains bad language and swearing.
Don't ever use such, it's neither good manners nor proper use of language and never mind how 'cool' it might sound, it surely isn't a sign of intelligence.
It won't get you anywhere and people will think less of you if you are unable articulating properly.

Story contains references to child neglect.
Child neglect as well as child abuse is a really, really serious and evil thing, and whenever you meet someone, child or adult, who shows any signs – whichever – of once having been abused or neglected, then try to help … there are too many people in our world who are or have been mistreated or neglected.
this does however not mean that I am not as evil as I pretend to be …^.~ … believe me – I am …

One last word of warning:
If you rip, tear, shred, bend, fold, burn, throw, deface, smear, smurge, bring brown rings caused by your coffeecup on the pages, or in any other manner damage, mistreat, or show lack of respect towards this book, the consequences will be as awful as it is within my power to make them …

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Breåk· … ·~ † ~*~*~*~*~*~ † ~· … ·Łine

Between roses and peppermint

Chapter one – foreword – God, Jesus … and me …

Or – why God is so important in my life

6th of September, 2013

Schramberg, county of Rottweil, state of BW – Germany

This first chapter, the foreword to the prequel of a story I've started here on fanfiction months ago already, might give away the impression that the story itself might be a biography, and some of my regular readers here on fanfiction might already wonder why I, of all people, would start writing something like a biography to begin with – but be assured, it is not.

I have only written it because I felt the need to explain one thing or another, and accidentally this one thing or another, had started a life on its own, but I'm sure that this is something most authors have to deal with – their pencils moving on their own, their protagonists doing the most stupid things they have never planned for them, and their stories being completely different from what they'd intended in the beginning, but that is something I'll come back to, later on … for now, I'm presenting you with a story that might be completely different from what you're used to when it comes to my writing – 'between roses and peppermint' … the prequel to 'and sit a while with me' …

I hadn't been planning to write a prequel to that book, a sequel maybe, but surely no prequel … but, seeing that one of the pastors from our church had asked me to write "a story" about the picture God one day had given me concerning our church, well – here you go … you'll get a prequel. I'm just not really sure if he'll be really happy about it, because – well … I've asked him if there were a "word-limit", after all, I know that he doesn't like reading too much, but he told me that, no, I could use as many words as I'd need to describe that picture. I fear he wasn't aware about the little fact that a 50.000 word story is the minimum of what I'd ever written … and that's years ago while meanwhile I won't write stories shorter than 250.000 words, not to mention that I'm not sure he'd been aware of me writing this in English … but again, English is the language I can write best in, and seeing that I'm planning to give him my best work … *shruggingshoulders* … English it is and an entire book, I fear, it will become.

Alright, now let's start with this foreword …

Breåk· … ·~ † ~*~*~*~*~*~ † ~· … ·Łine

I was born in 1971, at the beginning of October, to be precise, even though I have to admit that I can't be any more precise than – well, it must have been at some time between the 5th and the 7th of October and apparently it had been rather adverse circumstances – and I don't know where exactly I was born either, someplace around or between Göppingen and Geislingen. But at least one thing I can say for sure – namely that God seemed to already have a plan for me back then, because he'd had his hands not only above me but below me, and around me, too – like he'd had a lot of times during my youth – or I wouldn't be here today to annoy you with my babbling.

Actually, everything had already started while my mother was pregnant with my humble person.

She was a chain-smoker and she was an alcoholic – and I don't speak of two or three beers or glasses of wine each night and a daily jag but I'm speaking of real alcoholism – well, you should know that my mother had been drinking and smoking a lot – a real lot – during her pregnancy, and there hadn't been a day when she'd been sober, not to mention that alcohol was not the only thing she'd been dependant on.

I don't really know what had happened after my birth, because I've been too young to consciously realize – and then remember – anything, and of course my grandmother hadn't been there to witness anything, but apparently my mother hadn't really cared for me, because when she'd given me to my grandmother, she'd called her family doc as I'd been not only a tiny, little thing, too small for her liking, but apparently dehydrated and starved enough so that I hadn't even cried anymore – and my grandmother's family doc had then determined a date of birth based on a rough estimate, telling her that surely I'd had to be a seven-month preemie and that due to the dehydration and neglect, not to mention the alcohol- and drug-misuse, the chances of my survival were minimal.

But well, I have survived, and I am still here to annoy people with my often strange ways of acting, something that is more than just a small miracle, that I'd survived this pregnancy of hers safely. After all – how many children are born with brain-damage, with a weak heart, or with weak lungs because of their mothers consuming nicotine and alcohol excessively?

Alright – sometimes I think that I – "stayed behind" in my heart, for the lack of a better word – and if I'm honest with myself, then in my mind and ways of thinking too. But even though I've somehow remained a child, and even though I'm seeing many things from a childish viewpoint, seeing men generally not as men but as some kind of late father substitute, so I anyway think that I can say with sureness – I'm neither stupid nor mentally retarded and the one or other mental and physical problems and scars I've not obtained during this pregnancy of my mother's but some years later while living in her household.

Breåk· … ·~†~*~*~*~*~*~†~· … ·Łine

Today I know that my fears – that I just as well could be disabled or even dead – aren't so far from reality actually.

I have four other siblings – two older sisters, one older brother and one younger brother. However, my mother had given birth to another boy, some time after my younger brother was born. I don't know under which circumstances this child had been born, nor do I know the circumstances under which he'd died – I don't even know how old he'd been, whatever. But I know that my oldest sister once told me a story about how it had been her duty to look after her younger siblings while my mother had been working at one or another job during the day to make money and while she had hung out in pubs during the night to waste the same money on drinks – even though my oldest sister had been a really small child back then herself. And seeing that the same story was told by not only her but my aunt, and my grandaunt, too – and considering later years I have lived through while living in my mother's household, I can be relatively sure that it's a true story.

Apparently there hadn't been too much food back then, sometimes no food at all, and often my oldest sister had stirred water and flour to a strange glop so that her smaller siblings had at least something to eat. One day, apparently, the pastor had stood in front of the door and had asked for my mother – I don't know why, because at that time she hadn't been a believer and had she been at home back then she would have most likely thrown any pan and pot she had in reachable distance after the pastor.

On the contrary – whenever I have mentioned God, Jesus, Heaven or anything else which I had heard from either my grandmother once or at school, then it came along with trouble I got into with my mother and comments like "there's no such a thing as God and you better shut your mouth about it, I won't have any of that nonsense here in my house!"

However, this pastor had given my sister a bar of chocolate – and my sister had been very happy. Not because it was "sweets", but because it was anything to eat at all and she had fed her younger siblings with it. She's to this day saying that she's never ever again got a beating like that from her mother – not because she'd given the chocolate to her younger siblings, but because she'd taken the chocolate from the pastor in the first place.

My oldest sister surely would know more about this brother who'd died – and why – but she won't tell anything and so I could only speculate, which I shouldn't do, I know, but it's hard not to. I just know that there'd been a child, and he had to be but a few months when he'd died – and considering the circumstances in which my mother had – "kept" – her children, and nothing else it had been, and seeing that her other children had been taken away from her around that time, I think it's not hard to imagine how he'd died – especially as no one is telling anything about it, because if it had been crib death, then people could just name it.

Breåk· … ·~†~*~*~*~*~*~†~· … ·Łine

However, I don't know the exact circumstances under which I was born – except that my mother apparently was dead drunk … again … and one day she stood – just sober enough to being able to think somewhat clearly as it seems or she wouldn't have done the only good thing she'd done in my life – in front of my grandmother's house and pushed a small bundle into her arms with the words – "you look after it" – and well, gone she was again for the next ten or something years.

Back in the house – and the bundle being unpacked – my grandmother realized that … oh damn, there's a child in it!

My aunt, who is 12 years younger than my mother, had been living with my grandmother still – and she had looked for some old doll-clothes from a box in the attic – so I've gotten my first clothing ever, from a doll.

I got something to drink and then my grandmother called her family doc. Apparently I'd been born ways too early and apparently I'd been very small – what surely hadn't made it easier for the doc to determine an exact time of birth – but other than that, the doc had said something like: "that child has to be about a day old, perhaps two, and therefore I'd reckon it was born on the 6th of October – more or less".

My grandmother had tried to get information from hospitals and surgeries around and between Göppingen and Geislingen, but none had any information about a mother and her newborn – well, normally people stayed in hospital following a birth, after all, and so – my mother apparently gave birth to me someplace and to this day no one knows when and where exactly that had been.

So – my birth certificate bears the 6th of October and Göppingen as date and place of birth, even though I would have preferred the 7th of October as I love the number seven.

Aaaaalright – and then there I was, living with my grandmother, my aunt, and my uncle – living in a German-American family and environment, and for some years I've had the best life ever.

Breåk· … ·~†~*~*~*~*~*~†~· … ·Łine

My grandmother was the best person I ever knew – except of my husband, of course, and she'd been the greatest person on this God-created planet called earth.

She wasn't a tall woman, but the first time I realized that I was small, was one day in September 1977 and shortly before my sixth birthday – it's been when my grandmother told my grandaunt that surely she wouldn't have me in school that year as I simply was too small to carry a schoolbag even – but I didn't really mind back then. I've had a very good friend in the kindergarten, and as I didn't care about how old all those children there were compared to their heights, well – who cared about their own height while playing? Surely not me, and so my fourth kindergarten-year went by and the next date for my school enrolment arrived, September 1978, just a few weeks before my seventh birthday, but still my grandmother said things like "that child is too small, really, she wouldn't even manage carrying her schoolbag!" or "sometimes I think she's got damaged during her mother's pregnancy, or after birth when she hadn't been cared for. And she's been born just too early, too, it was to be expected that something like that would happen!"

Of course my granny didn't say those things in front of me, she loved me very much, after all, and she'd never hurt me intentionally. But just like any other normal child, I've been curious and very much interested in things that hadn't been my concern, and so of course I heard such comments when my grandmother was talking to her siblings, or to my aunt who lived with us together with her own small family.

However – it came to pass that I didn't go to school in September 1978 either, but went to preschool – and well, as most of those children in preschool had been five or nearly six years old, I didn't realize that I've been small. Only shortly before my eighth birthday, in September 1979 and when I went to first grade, I realized that I was the oldest, but the smallest. I've been nearly two years older than most of my classmates, but have been more than a head smaller than the next smallest child in my class.

Now, what all of this had to do with God?

One – without God I wouldn't even have survived that pregnancy of my mother's due to excessive alcohol-, nicotine- and only God knows what other drug-misuse, that's for sure.

Two – without God I wouldn't have grown up without several handicaps caused by that same excessive alcohol-, nicotine- and drug-misuse during my mother's pregnancy, and caused by child neglect after my birth until my mother had dumped me at my granny's doormat, even though as a seven-month preemie I would have needed special care.

As a child I've been too small, sure, and I've been a bit too slow, alright … I've been dreaming away time a lot, too, but other than that I've been a healthy child and my marks have always been above average – except of math, but well … *shruggingshoulders* … everyone has to have one subject that's just shit.

And third – God has always been a constant in my grandmother's life, and somehow in mine, too, even though, in later years, there had been times I'd thought He'd left me – today I know that, He never had.

Breåk· … ·~†~*~*~*~*~*~†~· … ·Łine

My grandmother has never visited church, never visited service on Sundays, and she's never gone to the pastor for confessing her sins. She's always dealt with God personally. And she hadn't been reciting prayers over prayers you can find in a prayer-book either. Sure, she's had a chaplet, but that thing had been hanging on the mirror in her bedroom, getting dusty with the years because she'd never used it. She's been talking with God the way she'd been talking with us, with me, with my aunt and uncle, with my cousin or anyone else, and so God's presence had been something absolutely normal for me. It's been nothing holy that you can mention with a whisper only and it has been nothing you had to keep secret either, nothing you had to hide away. She's been talking to God in the middle of the street if she'd thought it necessary, without caring about what passers-by would think of her, and believe me, she'd earned a lot of strange looks for it.

I think, she'd just made a lot of bad experiences with the Catholic Church and its workmen, what had caused her saying "I do believe in God, but not in church and I need no church to talk with our Lord. I can do that in my bedroom or in the bathroom if I so wish and He wouldn't mind."

One bad experience clearly had been, when she'd been pregnant with my mother and the guy she'd been with had left her – after all, how could a good and nice girl get pregnant without being married? And how could she be without a husband after the child had been born, even? I know that a lot of people had turned their backs on her and I know that a lot of them had been family. How many people had pointed their fingers at her? And how many hurtful comments did she have to listen to? I dare not imagine.

However, a lot of those people had been from church or had been churchgoers. Of course she wouldn't think well of them in later years! And well, seeing that my grandmother was the one person I knew as my "mother", the one person I'd learned most from, I'd of course also learned from her that – God was there, always, and caring for us one way or another if we had need, what we often had as my grandmother was no rich person, on the contrary. She used to say that the money she got was too little to live on, and too much to die on – but we didn't need the church for talking to God. And with that knowledge my life was great.

I didn't have a lot of games and toys.

Our young people of today would be very shocked to hear that I had neither a mobile nor a laptop, and not even a Gameboy or a PlayStation – all of these things were invented only decades after I've been a child. My granny had a black-and-white television, and I've grown up with things like the Sesame Street, Bugs Bunny, and the little house on the prairie. Other than that, my granny has read fairy tales to me, and we've played games like 'Sorry' and 'Monopoly'.

However, back then there had been a lot of Americans stationed in Göppingen and they'd started friendships with the German population, they'd started relationships with German women and therefore you can imagine that the "Göppinger population" has been a rather colourful and mixed bunch of people – American families or family members, friends, that wasn't something strange and no one had frowned upon it, it's been a normal thing.

Therefore I've been as fluent in American English as I was in German, and knew where to find the things in the PX as well as in the mom-and-pop-store down the street – I've had a family, I've had friends, and I've been living – and happily so. Until –

Breåk· … ·~†~*~*~*~*~*~†~· … ·Łine

Yes – until …

It was in the beginning of the summer holidays between grade two and three.

I don't really know how old I've been back then, I'd need to calculate it down and I've never been good in math – math is a horror for any linguist I swear, and I've been in a coma during each math lesson. I need ten fingers to count two and three together, just to get a wrong answer anyway – but just in case someone wants to count it down, I haven't started school when I was six years old, but when I was seven, nearly eight years.

However, one day in the beginning of this particular summer holidays my mother stood before my grandmother's door a second time – with the words "I am your mother, and I'm taking you with me." and I had no other choice than going with her, a completely strange woman, a woman I've never ever seen in my life before, and thus moving from Göppingen to Stuttgart and leaving behind everything I knew – my grandmother, my family, and God included.

You might now say that – how could you leave God behind?

But not only had I never had anyone who'd told me who exactly God was, or what he'd done, as God's presence in our lives had been a given that hadn't been discussed, He's been there, period, but also had I never had anyone who'd told me who Jesus was and what he'd done. I didn't know the bible, I didn't know the stories of the bible – I just knew that … there was God and God was good, God was the most important thing in our lives. God was there whenever we were happy and he was there whenever we were sad or in need – in Göppingen, and with my granny. But I had left Göppingen, and my granny seemed a thousand miles away from me back then. Never before had I left Göppingen or my granny, and so of course I'd lost God, because He was there, in Göppingen, with my grandmother – a thousand miles away.

Back then there was no child protective service which would have slowly gotten the families back together until the children could be re-integrated into the families. And back then no one had cared about the family-intern matters either – back then it had been enough to CPS that my mother had divorced her alcoholic husband, had partaken in a withdrawal treatment and had then married again, her new husband being a teacher even, and therefore neither my grandmother nor my aunt or uncle could do anything against it – and within but a few hours, clothes, a few toys and a few books had been packed in boxes and I were sitting in my mother's car, on the way from Göppingen to Stuttgart where she was living in a house together with her new husband – and my siblings.

Breåk· … ·~†~*~*~*~*~*~†~· … ·Łine

I remember that I'd been nervous, that I'd been scared and that I'd been taken away by a completely strange woman which I'd never before had seen, that I hadn't known where I would end up and that I hadn't known what would happen from then on – the only thing I had known was – I had lost my family and was on my way to an entirely new family.

I also remember that my grandmother had taken me to the side for saying good-bye and that she'd said – "you don't need to be scared, she's your mother and she'll love you, just tell her that you love her too and everything will be alright. I'll visit you as soon as I can." A few words and then I'd lost her.

Living with my grandmother had taught me that her advice was always good advice, and so I had followed her suggestion during the journey, even, which I back then had thought it was a trip around the world – and in the car I'd told my mother, an entirely stranger … "I love you" … which I shouldn't have done however. Maybe I'd hoped that she – she was my mother after all – would love me too, that she maybe would tell me that she would love me too if only I told her – what an utterly childish and idiot thought it had been! It had only resulted in the very first trouble I got into with my mother.

I don't really remember what exactly she'd screamed at me, but I know that it had been something along that line – "your grandmother has told you to say such a thing, that's just like her, putting her nose into other people's things!" Of course it had been my grandmother's advice, but only to help me feeling better and back then my mother's accusation of a woman I had loved just hurt. She'd also told me that I couldn't buy her love with a simple "I love you" and that I had to earn her love.

I think I've never earned her love, not in forty-something years.

But I know that this "I love you" had been the last "I love you" I've said to anyone for many, many years – for nearly a lifetime, to be exact.

I remember, that I've been in my mother's car, in the car of a strange person who'd taken me away from my family, driving from Göppingen to – some place called Stuttgart which I didn't know either, and at one point or another I had prayed to God to get me back to my granny – but He hadn't. And in later years He hadn't taken me back to my grandmother either, never mind how much I'd prayed to Him, never mind how much I'd cried, and never mind how bad those years had become – and for me they had been hell. Had I ever wondered about the concept of hell, back then while living with my mother, I'd learned that concept.

My mother didn't believe in God, not in the slightest, and neither did my siblings which lived with us in Stuttgart. My granny, who had God, and who would have been able to answer one question or another, was "a thousand miles" away, in my imagination, and I hadn't seen her again for nearly fifteen years. I'm sure that my mother at least knew the answers to some questions, but whenever I had asked her about God, I got in real trouble with my mother and anyone who knew my mother, knew that trouble always got along with a good beating – so I soon stopped asking questions at all and about God in particular.

Of course I went to religious education at school, and yes, there I finally did hear stories about Adam and Eve, about Moses and about Noah, about Jesus and his disciples – about who God was and what he'd done. But with the years they had become just that – stories. I still did believe in God, don't get me wrong, but for me God had become the God of my granny, the God that lived in Göppingen, the God for the good only, and as I wasn't good – after all, my mother told me ten times each day that I wasn't good and so I had to believe that – God wasn't for me anyway and God wouldn't be a God for me ever.

Somehow I had left my good grandmother and I had left everything that was good behind with her. I had become bad and so it was no wonder that God had stayed behind in Göppingen with my grandmother, it was no wonder that I had lost God, that He wouldn't have any dealing with me. Today I know that you can't lose God if you don't explicitly turn your back on Him, that He'll always hold your hand so that you wouldn't get lost, but back then I hadn't known that, back then, I'd been sure that God had let go of my hand for sure.

Alright, now you could say that – why wouldn't you have asked your teacher at school? If you have visited religious education at school, so why wouldn't you have asked your teacher?

Well – as I have stopped asking questions at home, I have stopped asking questions at school, too. I have become an autodidact learner and whatever knowledge I have acquired, I have learned it myself – sometimes by experience, sometimes by books, sometimes by watching others, sometimes by trial and error – and you better learned quickly in this case as error always got along with a good beating from my mother – and sometimes by completely other means – any means of learning was alright with me but asking questions.

And still … and still there seemed to be God in my life, because never had my mother managed beating me to death, never had she managed keeping me locked up for long enough to die in that damn cellar of hers, and never had she managed destroying me for sure. I'm still alive, and I'm still sane, even though I wouldn't sign the last one, and believe me, there had been several situations in my mother's house which have been close, especially in later years when I had been a teenager.

Breåk· … ·~†~*~*~*~*~*~†~· … ·Łine

Well – and so there I was again, this time ripped from my family and thrown into a completely strange family, ripped from a family where very much strictness – but even more harmony and love had ruled and in which I'd been happy – and thrown into a family in which strictness had also ruled – but no harmony, only irascibility, in which no love but hate and anger had ruled, in which violence had been the first topic on the agenda.

I'd been the last of 5 children who came back to my mother. I don't know in what order my siblings came back to my mother, but my two older sisters as well as my older and my younger brother were already in Stuttgart in the house of my mother and stepfather when I arrived there – as the fifth wheel, in the truest sense of the word.

I remember that we'd been sitting at the kitchen table and our mother handed out kinder-eggs – yes, they existed back then already and for all of you who don't know what it is as they are uncommon in the States because it's toy and food in one which isn't allowed in the States, it's a chocolate egg and inside the egg is a yellow thingy with a small toy inside. However, she's had four – one for Elke, one for Gaby, one for Charley and one for Andy. And then there was an – "oh, Claudia is here, I'm so sorry, but there's none left for you."

It's been kinder-eggs, it's been chocolate bars, it's been yoghurt, it's been cookies, it's been candies, or it's been anything else – never mind what it was, it was always one less, for years, and my common answer was just – "never mind, I don't care, I don't like kinder-eggs anyway." – chocolate bars, yoghurt, candies, cookies … never mind what … I had learned to not like it because I wouldn't get it anyway …

Well – one, I'd soon learned that crying wouldn't help me – second, I'd learned that a scene only led to a beating – third, it wouldn't change anything anyway – and forth – yes, what a stupid thought, but, maybe – just maybe – my mother would love me if only I were patient enough, if only I were obedient enough, if only I were good enough, if only I were – well, if only I were … just what? I hadn't known it when I'd been a child, and I still don't know it to this day.

Breåk· … ·~†~*~*~*~*~*~†~· … ·Łine

What I also had learned very quickly was – if my mother said jump, then you better jumped. You didn't ask why. You didn't ask for the height either – but you jumped, and you better jumped as high as possible. Figuratively only, of course, it's a saying here in Germany.

She'd taught me during this first summer holidays how to cook – and that had been one of my duties from then on – besides of doing the dishes, cleaning the floors and doing the laundry – not to mention cleaning the kitchen and the bathroom. And woe betide me had the food gotten burned or the garbage forgotten to be taken out.

I remember that she stood before me one time, asking me why I hadn't taken the garbage out – and each time I told her that I had just forgotten to take it out – I'd gotten a slap in the face. What do you answer to such a question if you're not allowed to say that you have forgotten it? And if you know that it is just the beginning, that the afternoon could be very long and that it would only get worse? I'd stopped saying anything at one time. After all, I didn't want another slap in the face – instead I'd got a good beating for it because I'd refused to answer her.

My mother used to sit at the sofa with a very strange activity – she'd been reading Jerry Cotton, John Sinclair, and other such shlock, and while she'd been reading she'd marked each and every vocal in the thing with a pencil. I don't know why she'd done that, I think, no one knows why she'd done that, but this is what I remember when I think of her – sitting at the sofa, reading and making circles around all the vocals – but well, she had enough children for working and only one thing she'd done herself – namely handing out the beatings, and she'd been good at this.

She'd always started with her hands, had then gone over to taking the next best thing that was in reach – and she hadn't cared about what this thing could do or what injuries the thing could cause, I think, she'd been just too angry to think clearly in such moments – and she'd gone over to using her feet in the end when we were laying on the floor.

Breåk· … ·~†~*~*~*~*~*~†~· … ·Łine

Today, I know that my two sisters didn't have the best life in her household either – but back then I often had thought how unfair all of it had been. My mother had always had drawers where she put us in – again, only figuratively, of course.

Elke had always been the oldest and the intelligent one. She'd been to the high school and therefore it had been more important for her to care about her school than doing work in the house – today I know that she'd had her work outside in the garden – not to mention that, as a child she'd had work and responsibility enough for an entire life, and that as a youth she'd been burying herself in learning so that she didn't have to see our mother – and maybe so that she didn't have enough time to think, because today, years later, I know that she's suffering deep depression because she has too much time to think.

Gaby has always been the pretty one, the beauty. She didn't have to be intelligent and she'd been allowed to get bad marks. She'd been a pretty dolly-bird and a pretty dolly-bird didn't need to have anything in her head and therefore she'd gotten a lot of clothes and make-up, beauty articles. Today I know that Gaby had never wanted all of that, that she would have liked it more if someone had cared about her dyslexia, if someone had helped her with learning and that her – playing the beauty, had only been so that no one knew how much she was crying in her heart.

Charley has always been the charming one – not to mention a boy and of course a boy didn't have to do housework. He didn't even have to clean his room. I have never understood why Charley had always been her beloved one, and neither do I understand why he's still her beloved one – but well, that's one of the things I'll never understand but I think it isn't my place to understand it. It's just like this, and it always has been – Charley had done one thing or another, and upon my mother starting to give him a lecture he had just smiled at her and the world was alright. Sometimes I think, maybe I haven't smiled enough at her? On the other hand – I would have been stupid had I not tried his tactic also, and I know that I'm not stupid, and so I'm sure that I did and that it just hadn't worked for me as it had for him.

After all, there are many things of my youth which I have – and successfully so – pushed away as far as possible, which I have buried as deeply as possible and I don't really dare to dig deeper than I absolutely have to, because I know that nothing good can lay down there, I'm not a coroner, and I need to examine neither bodies nor things.

Well, and then there was of course Andy. Andy has been the little one – and that was a very comfortable place – but not as comfortable a place as his older brother held. It's been strange, he's been the little one and a boy too – but anyway he'd had to help me with the dishes. I had to wash them and my little brother had to dry them. Dunno why he had this task, but well – for me it meant that it was one duty less and at least it was a few minutes more each day which I had left for other chores to finish before the evening.

However, today I remember that Andy has been beaten just as well, and I know that nothing what he'd done had been good enough in our mother's eyes, I remember that he'd had the same fears as did I, and I remember nights during which he'd been laying in bed, rocking back and forth while he'd been unable to sleep, and then our mother came into the room, telling him that he either stopped his rocking, or he'd have to sleep in the bathtub. Today I know that he, most of all, had felt being left alone by his mother when she moved out – even though my mother had never cared about his nightmares and about his fears, not once, even though he'd been the little one.

And me –

Uhm – wait … just wait a moment! Me?

It's been like always and there hadn't been a drawer left for me – I've simply been nothing. I haven't been smart, I haven't been pretty, I haven't been charming and I haven't been the little one. I haven't been the oldest either – I've been – just nothing. I didn't have a place and I didn't have a drawer, I didn't have a label. Maybe that's been a good thing though, because maybe that's the reason as to why I have never followed one crowd or another – I've always been alone, always followed my own direction and often even going against the tide, never mind what.

If I want to sit on a table – then I do it, if I want to wear black – then I do it, if I want to sit – and Indian style so – on the counter in 'the other shop' where I am working three times a week, then I just do it. If I have to say something to someone, then I do it, without sugar-coating it and I won't ever lie to anyone just to spare this one's feeling. I don't care about what people think of me, about what people say about me behind my back, because I have nothing to lose. Alright, I'm sure that I'd be very unhappy would they call me nice or something similar, because I am not nice, but except of that, I don't care.

I've always remained me – dark, tough and cold, unmoved by anything the world threw at my feet. Or at least that was the picture that I've presented the world with – and sometimes, often, still do. But what I want to say with that simply is – I am me, and I do not change for the sake of the people around me. I have learned to keep true to myself, and people either take me the way I am or they leave it, but I won't play a role just to fit into one drawer or another.

Just one example – for my baptism people said "you need to wear white, that's important, it's a symbol for your sins being washed away". Right. I do agree on the symbolic of it. But I have thought over it for weeks, and weeks, and weeks, and I have to admit that I've been worried about it. Because I don't like white, white is the worst – colour – existent, it isn't a colour even! How can people wear plain white? You know what I did? In the end I've been wearing my jeans, my trainers and my usual black t-shirt. Because had I worn anything else, then it wouldn't have been me, then I would have worn a mask, I would have played a role and that would have been the wrong thing – to give myself over to God with playing a role.

A good thing indeed then, that there hadn't been a drawer left for me, in my mother's cupboard.

Breåk· … ·~†~*~*~*~*~*~†~· … ·Łine

My love for the English language – even though it might not be perfect and even though I may annoy people with it …

Well, I don't really know what had been – or still is – my mother's problem and I don't think that I have the right to speculate. But fact is – my mother hates my aunt and my uncle so very much, she would be ready to do nearly everything to hurt them or anyone else who'd been loved by them. Maybe because she'd had to share my grandmother's love when my aunt was born twelve years after her, maybe because my aunt had been happy in her marriage later while my mother hadn't been happy in her own first marriage, maybe because my uncle is an American and not German, I don't know. But unfortunately I'd been one of those who'd been loved by my aunt and uncle, and so the first thing she'd done after she'd taken me to her home was – she forbade any kind of English things, language, readings, contacts, whatever. If it was red/white/blue then it was bad, if it had stars and stripes – then it was bad – if it sounded English or she couldn't understand it – then it was bad. If it was written in English – then it was bad. If it was Hamburger or Hot Dogs – then it was bad. You could continue the list endlessly, she always found enough things to blame me for/with, just because it was one way or another English, American, or had to do with my aunt and uncle.

It wasn't that I couldn't speak German, I could, but seeing that English is a language easier to learn and speak than is German, and seeing that I've been used to use both languages, well, it was hard for me to stop using English from one day to the other, from one moment to the other, actually. I don't think that I would have had a problem with speaking German, which was necessary anyway as my mother didn't understand the English language to begin with – but the fact that she'd forbidden it entirely, it hurt me, and it scared me. For me it was as if she had taken a part of my person away, as if she had eliminated part of my past – one part of many others which she'd eliminated, and today I think that a good portion of the beatings I had gotten over the years had just been because there had been one or another English word or even comment which had just slipped my tongue accidentally, something that – even today – scares me to death, and I know that whenever I have the chance to speak English, what I really love, do not take me wrong, I need days until I lose my fears, until I am able to move my tongue correctly around the words.

Well, it hadn't gotten any easier the moment I visited fifth grade and brought home better marks in English than in German and I'm sure that my mother would have taken me out of English lessons had they not been required subjects back then already – because in her opinion, English lessons had been bad … and unnecessary anyway.

I think, at one point or another I'd started to think English instead of German, even though I'm sure that back then it must have been really chaotically in my mind, because – not only was it something forbidden I've feared, knowing that my mother best never learned of it or I wouldn't survive it, but also, if you don't practice a language actively, then you'll forget a lot of it over time and maybe that's the reason as to why now, years later, my English is a strange mixture of American English, British English, school English, slang, and Middle English – not to be mistaken with Old English. But well, it's been the only thing which she couldn't take away. She'd been able to take away the clothes I'd gotten from my grandmother and from my aunt and to replace them with new ones, and she'd been able to take away the few toys and books and to replace them with new ones, and she even could forbid me to see my family, she could destroy pictures of me with my family which my grandmother had packed too – and yes, there are really only three or four pictures of my childhood left which my grandmother had kept when I have left her house … in other words, she could take away all my past, all that had to do with my real family, but she couldn't take away my thoughts.

And therefore – well, that's the reason as to why the English language is so very important to me – because it's the only thing left, the only thing that is left from my past, from my childhood, from my family, whatever, because there's nothing else …

Breåk· … ·~†~*~*~*~*~*~†~· … ·Łine

Of course my grandmother and my aunt, too, had tried to visit me over and over again, Göppingen and Stuttgart weren't – and still isn't, of course – too far away from each other after all, forty-five minutes with the train only, and later when we'd moved to Bochingen then my aunt even came to visit the Black Forest in the attempt to visit me or to at least see me.

I don't know why my mother always had forbidden any contact, had forbidden my aunt and grandmother to see me, not once in all those years, but I only can guess that she'd not only feared my aunt – or my grandmother – could find any marks from beatings but that she also wanted to hurt my aunt too.

However, she'd always locked me away in the cellar when my aunt or my grandmother was to visit, telling them that I visited a friend for the weekend, and I know that I'd often been in the cellar, most likely even more often than there having been visits from my aunt or grandmother, and most likely just because my mother could lock me up there. There had been a lot of things she'd done, just because she could.

I remember that one day I'd been crying in the car because of it. My mother had told me to help her with shopping – never a pleasant experience, believe me, and while other kids loved it, to go shopping with their parents, we always feared it. However, we'd been driving from Bochingen to Oberndorf and I think I must have known that my aunt had been visiting shortly before and so I'd been crying because of it as I really missed them, my aunt and my uncle, and my grandmother – and my mother had told me that "you stop this crying right now or I'll throw you out of the moving car."

Of course it had been a ridiculous statement, today I know that. It wouldn't have been even possible because she would have had to stop the car anyway to open the passenger door – but as a child I hadn't thought along this line and as a child such nonsense statements were just horror. The threat that she'd keep me locked up in the cellar forever – ridiculous, because in Germany school attendance is required by law and so she couldn't have locked me away forever. But again, as a child I hadn't thought along this line while at the same time I knew very well what she was capable of.

She'd had a whip hanging on the wall in the dining room – for decoration only, of course – but over the years it didn't remain a decoration and neither a threat of hers to use the thing but she'd actually done it. The threat that she'd beat the hell out of us if we told people private things – one time I'd passed out at school because I'd been too tired and because I'd had to little food, I guess, and the school called for an ambulance, of course they did, and I've ended up in hospital – it's been one of the worst beatings I ever got afterwards because my mother said I'd done that deliberately just to give her a bad reputation.

Not that it had been the first time that I'd had the opportunity to look at the floor from a closer point of view, it happened from time to time, especially during work at home when I didn't have the chance to walk a few steps or to move otherwise but had to stand in one place for hours. Whatever, I think, I'd quickly learned that a threat of hers could come true sooner than we liked.

Breåk· … ·~†~*~*~*~*~*~†~· … ·Łine

I think, I'd soon changed and I'd learned to avoid my mother as best as possible – or to keep silent in her presence. At one time or another I seem to have thrown this particular person together with all other persons in one large pot, have stirred and the outcome was a very peaceful and calm school-time, very silent and human-avoiding too.

My place had been the backmost table by the wall with the windows – for years and I've never ever accepted any other student at this particular table.

One time, at the beginning of a new school year, dunno when exactly it had been, there had been a new girl in the class and she'd actually come towards me and then sat down at the table beside me – and without asking even! Even though everyone knew to better keep away from my desk! I'd been so shocked – and so angry about it, knowing that I wouldn't be able to bear it having anyone so close, I'd just stared at her. I hadn't said anything, why should I have done – staring at people angrily and coldly was enough, I knew, and really, just a few minutes later she'd taken her schoolbag and had left my table to sit at the other side of the classroom, as far away as possible – well, I'd been satisfied and she'd never ever again dared to come close or even talk to me, and so I had again ensured my freedom and my reputation.

I've never had friends – because I've never wanted friends.

I think, I could have had some, I remember that there had been one or another who tried to approach me once in a while, maybe because I'd been a miracle to them with my stillness and my seriousness, maybe because I've been really good in swearing and cursing in English at other times and they thought it was "cool" … I don't know, and I didn't care either, but I've always driven them off right away, never accepting any other people in my life, neither students nor teachers and I think they'd gotten used to it with time. I think, sometime from grade seven on I even could have been sleeping back there in the last row, laying with my arms and head all over the table, visibly and openly sleeping – and no one would have cared about it. And again I've been satisfied with it, because that meant – I've had my peace. No idiot students who annoyed me with their presence, no idiot teachers who annoyed me with their stupid questions – I think, I did love school very much, because that was the only place where I had peace, where I didn't need to be scared, where I didn't got beaten and where I didn't got screamed at – not to mention where I could rest, physically as well as mentally.

Because at the same time my teachers knew very well that – sleeping or not – I got good marks, or at least marks above average – except for math, of course, just wanted to mention it. One time my older sister had to learn "John Maynard" and for learning it by heart she recited it over and over again, and in the process of listening to her reciting the poem, I'd learned it too. Grade seven or eight it was our part to learn the poem by heart and the moment our teacher presented us with the news there could be heard a small whisper coming from the back of the classroom, a whisper that said: "John Maynard, who is John Maynard? John Maynard was our helmsman true. To solid land he carried us through. He saved our lives, our noble king. He died for us; his praise we sing. John Maynard. From Detroit to Buffalo, as mist sprays her bow like flakes of snow, over Lake Erie the "Swallow" takes flight and every heart is joyful and light. In the dusk, the passengers all can already make out the dim landfall, and approaching John Maynard, their hearts free of care, they ask of their helmsman, are we almost there? He looks around and toward the shore: still 30 minutes ... a half hour more ..."

It's been a funny situation, for me, because never before had the classroom been so void of sounds, and even the teacher – who should have known me by then – just stared. Well, maybe because it's been one of the very rare moments that I've said anything at all, because generally I've just ignored any questions a teacher might have asked of me, glaring at them accusingly for their daring of asking any question of me at all.

On the other hand, never mind my behaviour towards the teachers, they always knew that I'd never lie to them.

We've had a student in class who was – well, really mentally disabled, I guess.

He'd often chewed on things, preferably on small pieces of candles. I still don't know why he did that, I've never asked, but he did, and he was often laughed at. I ignored him, because I wasn't stupid enough to go and talk to him, just to get hurt by him later on. I didn't fear my class, they couldn't hurt me as I didn't care about them, but if I started caring about any particular person, just because that person was bullied by others, that person could hurt me … nope, doing such a thing would have been plain stupid, and I wasn't stupid. So, I ignored him, and I ignored my class bullying him.

But one day everyone brought small pieces of candles, and during the break, when the teacher had left the classroom, they started smearing the wax all over the blackboard. I'm sure you can imagine that the blackboard was destroyed, you couldn't write on it anymore, and when the teacher came back, noticed the mess, he of course asked who'd done that – and the entire class had pointed with their fingers at that student who used to chew on candle pieces.

I don't really know what had made our teacher suspicious, maybe the little fact that he'd thought that one person couldn't have done that mess, I'm not sure, and neither do I know why he'd looked over at me, questioningly, because never before had we had a situation such as this, but he did, and as much as I've always stayed out of things, I've shook my head, because I knew that he hadn't done it – and the strange thing, our teacher had believed me rather than the rest of the class.

And don't worry, I haven't gotten into trouble with my class, because for them I've still been untouchable, not only because of my daring behaviour even towards out teachers, but also because there's never been anything they could have hurt me with, as I never cared about anything at all.

Well, the only teacher who'd tried to change things had been my class teacher from eighth and ninth grade – and I think he was even close to managing. I remember that we had to do a presentation and I had the subject Japan. I'd written the presentation, I'd drawn maps of Japan, and I'd even taken a look at the language, and then I'd handed it in to my teacher before the break – the conversation that had followed had been, kind of funny, or it would have been kind of funny had it not been another one of the really rare occasions where I had talked at all.

It was like …

Teacher: "There's no need to hand it in right now, you'll need to present it during the next lesson."

Me: *shruggingshoulders* … *shakinghead*

Teacher: "A presentation needs to be presented, that's why it is a presentation."

Me: *liftingeyebrow* "nope."

Teacher: "Now, you keep this and present it next lesson."

Me: *scowling* "nope."

Teacher: "You must."

Me: *scowlingevenmore* "nope."

Teacher: "If you don't present it, then this will be a failure."

Me: *shruggingshoulders* "so what?"

Teacher: *gettingangryabit* "You'll present it, period!"

Me: *evenmoreangry* "You call me up there – and I'll pack my things and leave. I won't present the thing, you can turn upside down to perform a headstand and waggle your feet, I don't care."

Well, of course I'd been the very first one after the break whom our class teacher called up to the front for the presentation – I should have known. I've looked at him for a moment, sighing, and then I've packed my things, and left the classroom without a word, but I'm sure that he knew my thoughts at that moment, namely 'I told you so'.

I'd gone to the park and there I smoked a cigarette – yes, I'd been smoking already back then in eighth grade – but the strange thing? It was 45 minutes later when the lesson had ended. I was still sitting at the park because going home early? Despite everything I wasn't suicidal after all. Well, and then my class teacher had appeared, sat down beside me and lit a cigarette himself. He was the very first person I allowed to sit down beside me and he was the very first person I talked to after years of – not muteness, but talking as little as possible and often there were days in rows during which I hadn't said one single word as I hadn't felt the need for talking. However, today I think that – maybe he could have done something, most likely he'd even been ready to bring in child protective service – and maybe I would have been ready to accept it, and to tell him – or them – more than I'd told him during these thirty minutes while I was waiting for the bus – just to being able to leave my "family".

But then everything changed and I couldn't afford such a thing anymore.

Breåk· … ·~†~*~*~*~*~*~†~· … ·Łine

Today I don't really remember if it was at the end of eighth grade or at the beginning of ninth grade, I've pushed many things away for years and it's not easy to get everything in an order now without digging more than I need to, because sometimes I think there are things I don't need to know, and I don't want to know either.

However, my mother moved out.

She'd been meeting someone for months already, she'd started to work in his embroidery and for a few months we'd even had one of those 12-headed embroidery machines in our garage. But well, of course not our mother had done the home work, but we – my siblings and I, added to our regular duties of course.

I remember that she'd promised us 10 pennies for each finished towel – that would have been an hourly wage of about 60 pennies and we've been very happy about it because so far we'd never gotten anything for the work we'd done. I should have, however, known that it was wishful thinking only, because of course we hadn't seen just one penny of it and somehow I think – I hadn't really counted on it either. But for a moment it had been a good thought anyway, especially in retrospect.

Never mind – my mother and this guy had come closer and they'd started a relationship, my mother moved out and into a flat together with him – and fortunately they had started their own embroidery so that the guy could leave the old one to his wife – fortunately because therefore they had needed the embroidery machine from our garage and so the added work went bye bye – I have been so very unhappy about it! … *huff* … not really, on the contrary …

Whatever, I'd stayed at home together with my little brother, my stepfather, and the mother of my stepfather. Both of my older sisters were already married and had left the house long ago and my older brother had started a carrier at the federal armed forces.

I was happy about it, that my mother had moved out, even though it had gotten rather difficult then. But she was gone, she was gone and she couldn't scream at me anymore, she couldn't tell me how worthless I was anymore, how insufficient and how disappointing, and she couldn't beat me anymore. I had finally found some peace.

The problem?

Well, she'd come once a week – not that she would have entered the house – and not that I would have been unhappy about it that she hadn't entered the house – no. the problem was, she'd brought one basket with food each week which she put into the downstairs corridor – and this basket with food needed to last for a week – for my little brother, for my stepfather who suffered from Diabetes and was sitting in a wheelchair with only one leg left in the small granny-flat downstairs, and for the mother of my stepfather, a diabetic too and she didn't even manage leaving her bed anymore – if she really couldn't or wouldn't, I don't know, but really? I can understand if she just hadn't wanted to leave her bed anymore. I've often been at this point too, after all.

Well – so there wasn't much room when it came to food and honestly, it's been a mission impossible to divide portions so that at the end of the week there would be any food left – not to mention so that it would last until then even, and often I went to bed or school hungry as I knew – as a diabetic my stepfather and my step-grandmother needed food first, and three times a day even, and I also knew that my little brother needed something to eat before I did, and with the months it only grew worse – so, all in all I think we have just existed, not really lived in that house – because with time, there hadn't been anything left for living. Food, heating, power – name it, and we didn't have it.

Our mother soon had stopped paying any bills and my stepfather – well, he had sat in his wheelchair all day long, down there in his granny flat, and he had been too ill and too dependent on his beer bottle to really manage anything at all and if I have to be honest then I have to say that he'd never managed anything from the beginning on. It had always been my mother who had paid the bills and who'd gone shopping – with his money, but she'd done it. I think, he hadn't left the house for years already, when my mother had moved out and I had to care for him in the end, too.

Breåk· … ·~†~*~*~*~*~*~†~· … ·Łine

Not that I would have hated him, and surely not that I would have feared him the way I have feared my mother, on the contrary. Today I have a lot of respect for this man. He'd married a woman who'd just made a withdrawal treatment, who had five children scattered all over the place in BW, and he not only had encouraged her to get her children back but he'd also bought her a house so that this woman and her children had a roof over their heads. Not to mention that he'd fed her and her children, children which weren't his. He'd never beaten us, not once, and he'd never screamed at us either. Maybe he'd thought that – with their mother they're in enough trouble as it is, there's no need to get them into more trouble even.

On the other hand – he'd never done anything against it either. And back then, when I was a child, I guess I'd blamed him for it, because he hadn't cared, at least I'd thought he hadn't cared, and at least in my heart I have blamed him, because never would I have accused him openly, but in my heart I have blamed him.

And he was a strange man, too.

I think, if I have shared ten sentences with him during all those years I have lived with my mother and him – then it's been a lot. Alright, that was exaggerated – but it's surely never been more than a hundred sentences during all those years! However, it hadn't only been because of me, seeing that I've rarely spoken to anyone at all, but because of him too, because my siblings hadn't had much more contact with him either. Maybe it hadn't been as extremely little contact as it had been with me, seeing that I'd had no contact with anyone, but it had been similar. I think, Elke, the oldest of us, she'd had the deepest relationship with him and even that was – more than just reserved.

One of the clearest memories I have of him is, that one day my homework had been to draw a map in my geography exercise book and my mother hadn't been at home – and so I'd shown him the exercise book with my homework – the first time that I'd shown my homework to him instead of my mother who'd normally demanded to see them, even though it would have been easier for her leaving it to him as he'd been a teacher to begin with. He'd been able dealing with our homework.

Sometimes I think that she'd done so, just to make sure that she had another reason to beat us and surely not because it was important to her that we'd done our homework. I don't know what I'd been more scared of – showing her my homework, because she always found something she didn't like, or being late in showing her, which she didn't like either – what often resulted in me standing in front of the living-room door, with my exercise book in my hands and rooted to the spot, knowing that I should hurry up with going in there but being unable to actually move and to really enter the living-room, trying to delay the upcoming beating for just a second, and then for another second, and then for just one second more …

However, back then, this one time, my stepfather had taken the exercise book, had studied the map I had drawn, and he'd really been interested. Wordlessly he'd started to skim through the pages, to look at older works and in the end I think he'd been really happy – and me too, because he'd said he wished all his students had done such a good work than this one had been, and because it was the first time (and regrettably the last time too) that I'd gotten any praise from one of my parents. I've never forgotten that one moment and whenever I think of my step-father, then I remember this particular incident.

Today I think that he was just as scared of my mother as we were, even though she's never beaten him. I think, she just could hurt him with her words as much as she hurt us – and today I'd wish to see him one more time and to tell him how much respect I have for him, and to thank him for what he'd done for us.

Breåk· … ·~†~*~*~*~*~*~†~· … ·Łine

It must have been at the end of grade nine, and therefore I had to be about sixteen years old, when I realized that, after several months of caring for my stepfather, his mother and my younger brother, while having none to nothing of anything, I had reached the end of my rope, mentally as well as physically.

During ninth grade and during my exams, I'd fought to somehow feed the remainder of my "family" with one basket of food per week – in vain.

A year during which I myself didn't have much food and I don't know how I would have survived had I not had the subject "cooking" at school – because when I think back at that time, today, then I think that these had sometimes been the only times I've had a somewhat decent meal myself and after this year I've been ready to simply disregard the responsibility I had towards my family, because I haven't been able to carry out that responsibility any longer. Maybe I was too tired, maybe too hungry, maybe I just hadn't cared anymore, I don't know which – maybe all of it.

In the end I contacted my oldest sister, told her that she had to look for a solution, that I'd leave, and then I just moved out of the house and have left my family behind.

Not that it had been too much better then.

I had started Junior High in Oberndorf while living on the streets – until October or November, and then it was clear that I either had to go back home, what wouldn't be any better as they didn't have power or heat anyway, or that I had to look for a room, or a small apartment to live in. In other words – my school? Forget it, because I needed to work so that I had money to pay the rent for the room I lived in and to buy food – but at least I had food, and so I'd taken any job I could get.

The problem was that at this time I was so deep down the road of an eating disorder – and a sleeping disorder – that the food I had at home didn't really help. Not that I've suffered from anorexia or bulimia – surely not. I've just always forgotten to eat, sometimes for days, because I wasn't used to regular meals and most likely I was far beyond the point where I really felt hunger. A problem I'm still suffering from, I have to admit, even though it's getting better.

However, I have to admit that today, many years later, I am buying – and cooking – too much, but somehow I still fear that there could be too little food at home, that anyone in my house, especially my children, might go to bed hungry the way we have, and therefore, I'm buying too much, already getting nervous if my stocks won't last for a month at least, because I'm always scared that my children could go to bed hungry the way we have.

It's gotten better with the years, seeing that I'm 41 now – at least I think I'm 41 – but joke aside – I have a different life-story than my oldest sister has, but anyway I can say that just like her, I had enough pain, fear, work and responsibility for a lifetime and I'm not surprised that I am the way I am, even though it's getting better the more time passes.

Breåk· … ·~†~*~*~*~*~*~†~· … ·Łine

During the years after I have left home, I think I have deepened my misanthropy even and I didn't leave the house if I didn't really have to – except for work and except to buy one thing or another – for me, people had become the worst creatures on this earth – the only animals which could destroy themselves, gruesome animals which are deadhearted and able to do the most horrible things imaginable towards each other. And so I've started avoiding people even more than I've done in my youth, except for one friend I've had for years – until I've met my husband.

Of course there hadn't been too many changes in the beginning.

I've left the house a bit more – if my husband, who hadn't been my husband back then – was with me.

I've started to speak to others – if he was with me.

And I've gone to one pub or another – if he was with me.

Except of that – well, there hadn't been too many changes in the beginning. We've married, but I've always stayed at home with the children – and happily so. And surely not just out of the feeling for responsibility towards my children but rather because – why should I have gone out there and handle annoying, stupid, and depraved people? And why should I do this to other people, having to handle me? It's been better that way, because that way I wasn't annoyed at the people out there, and the people out there weren't annoyed at me either.

However, why my husband had married me – and had then stayed with me despite all my failures and despite all my inadequacies, I don't know – but I think it's like it's written in the bible – one man, one woman, one lifetime. A man will leave his parents to take a woman and they will become one – a unity, and that's what we became with time, a unity, in good times and in bad times, and we've proven it because – bad times have been very present for many, many years – until, let me say, three or four years ago.

Breåk· … ·~†~*~*~*~*~*~†~· … ·Łine

And I don't speak of – "not so good times" – but of really bad times.

"I love you" – had been a sentences I'd said to my mother many years ago when she'd taken me from my family – and it's been one of the last sentences I've said at all without being requested to speak while I've often had times when I've just ignored such requests – it depended on the person who requested speech – whatever reason for should I have said anything after all? Whatever reason for should I have explained anything? Or asked anything?

There was no need to explain anything at all, to no one, nothing, and there was no need to ask for help, because help wouldn't be given anyway, and because I knew that people better never learned of my domestic situation, that I better never told anyone of my home-life if I wished to get out of it alive, one way or another … and so, the only request I've never ignored had been the request of my mother, because one didn't ignore any request she made, never mind what kind of request it was. But except for that? I've soon become in the truest sense of the word – still, because if she didn't hear you, she might just as well forget about you, and because if she didn't see you, she might just as well forget about you.

Maybe that's been the reason as to why I wasn't shocked when one day I wasn't able to speak anymore at all, even though it lasted for several months, and even though none of us knew what it was.

I think – any other man would have said – "alright, now you've lost it and you can go and jump in the lake but I won't have it anymore". I think, Elsa with her view of men – 'if you know one, then you know all' – could learn something from my husband if she weren't a fictive person from one of my stories, some of you might know her.

However, I myself hadn't thought too much about it when from one moment to the other I haven't been able to speak anymore – just another failure, nothing new here just another disappointment. But my husband never left me, never mind all the months of written conversation from my part, and never mind how often this happened afterwards, the longest relapse being one and a half years of mutism without a break.

But well – that isn't so important.

Breåk· … ·~†~*~*~*~*~*~†~· … ·Łine

Important is – as strange as it is, but I seem to be important to God or he wouldn't put up with all the work he has to do with me, all the times during which he's protectively holding his hands over me and all the years during which he's had his hands below me to carry me, too. He really has to be very, very patient with me – and all of that just because he has a plan for me?

Well, there had been one point or another when I had started reading the bible because I'd wanted answers, finally.

In my youth, I had to do so secretly so that my mother wouldn't see, and it had been a good thing that she'd never made our beds, because therefore beneath my pillow had been one of the safest places within the entire house – but all that I'd found in there had been that God was a God that easily punished and a God that punished harshly, unfairly even, and especially, unjustified, and with my teenage sense of justice, I'd gotten angry about it.

Just one example that had shocked me as a young teenager – God had killed all mankind except for Noah and his family. All mankind on earth, all of his creation destroyed within a moment of anger, and for me God had become like my mother was. One moment of anger and the punishment for forgetting to turn on the laundry machine, or for forgetting to get out the garbage, wasn't simply being grounded for the day, or a TV ban for the remainder of the week for all I cared, but a slap in the face at the best, and a beating that would draw blood or maybe even break bones at the worst – an unjustified punishment, just because one moment of anger, and just because to show her power, just because she could do that. Neither did I think it fair, nor did I think it logical, and now I had learned that God, that one God I had prayed to, to get me back to my grandmother, the one God that hadn't helped me with my mother, that He had done the same, just to show His power? Just because He could do it?

I've been disappointed, and I've been scared, and I've been angry.

Well – one of the mistakes I had made back then, when I was a teenager, was that I had only picked the bad things from the bible, that I'd been looking for the bad things, even, because I had learned the bad things from my mother, because I wasn't able to look for the good things anymore. And another mistake I had made was that I hadn't regarded the little fact that maybe God had been watching the wickedness of mankind for many hundreds of years already, that maybe he'd shown enough patience already, that maybe God had been so very angry by then, so very disappointed already, that he couldn't have acted differently.

And as I had no one whom I could've asked for help, to explain things, no one whom I could've asked questions without risking trouble – of course this bible-reading turned out shit.

Several years later, when I was older, much older, actually I've read the bible again, and I've done so with different eyes.

I guess I have started praying again when I had left my mother's house. Not praying like we've "learned" to pray back then in religious education at school, reciting a few words from a prayer book which you either read or have learned by rote, but praying like my grandmother had done, simply talking with God. I have started telling Him things, how I felt, what I liked, what I disliked, what I considered as real shit, how much He had disappointed me, what I'd done that day or what I'd planned for the next day – anything that came to my mind, but always there had been a part I had to thank Him for, too – namely that in the end, never mind what, He seemed to have been there, keeping me alive, keeping me sane, keeping His hands over me.

Never mind all the beatings I'd gotten over the years, and never mind how often I'd thought that this time she wouldn't stop, that this time surely she'd beat me to death, she'd always stopped before that could happen. Blood being drawn, bones being broken, and the fear of dying was all that ever happened.

Never mind how long my mother had kept me in the cellar, and never mind how often I'd felt that I couldn't bear it anymore, that surely I'd go insane one day, that surely I'd die down there, alone and without anyone finding me, without anyone caring, I always had been out of it before really bad things had happened.

And never mind how hungry I had been at some times, later, after my mother had left our household to live with another guy, leaving back my drunken and disabled step-father, his old mother and my younger brother, without money, without heat and without power, never mind how many days I had gone without anything edible – there had always been one person or another who'd given me something. There had been a teacher who'd placed a box with a sandwich or an apple at my table while passing, wordlessly and without even looking at me, there had been the subject "cooking" once a week where the teacher always had some leftovers she'd packed for me and my brother, and later, when I ended up on the streets until I had a small apartment after I had run away finally, there had always been one or another skyscraper with an open door warranting a night in the stairwell during fall, and I have to thank God for all those small occasions, because never mind what, He's been there to keep me alive, over and over again.

Breåk· … ·~ † ~*~*~*~*~*~ † ~· … ·Łine

In later years, I've met my husband, and somehow we've had the same position. He did believe in God, but not in church.

It wasn't that I had made bad experience when it came to the church, surely not, because actually – I've made no experiences at all. It just was that – where had they been when my grandmother had needed them while being pregnant with my mother? Where had they been when my aunt had needed them while suffering under the cruelty of her older sister? Where had they been all those times when I had needed them? Nope – church or her workmen never were there if people needed them and so why should I care about them?

My grandmother, my aunt, and I myself, too, we were used to caring for ourselves, and I had learned caring for myself from a very young age, even – so, why should I now start trusting in any kind of church? Why should I now start depending on them? That would have been stupid as they wouldn't have been there in the end anyway.

Several years followed during which we've prayed, talked with God, during which we've read in the bible – not at a daily basis, and surely not particularly together, but over and over again we did, and every now and then we've told each other what great story we've found in the bible, and every now and then we've discussed what we've read in the bible – we've been looking for more, but going to church or service? Surely not!

Our son visited the Royal Rangers, went to camps, went to their meetings on Friday evenings, and at one point or another he started visiting service on Sundays. The church he went to was situated in the neighbouring small village and he easily could go there by his bike, it took him a few minutes only and there even was a bikeway.

"Won't you come, too, mum?" He'd often asked. "It isn't as if you wouldn't believe in God, after all – so, won't you come, too?"

"I do believe in God, yes, but not in church." I'd always answered. "You go there if you're happy there and if it's the right thing to do for you, I don't mind, really, but don't ask me, son."

"But that's no church you might imagine, mom, just try it and come." He used to say, because he wouldn't be my son if he weren't stubborn and would give in easily.

"Nope, son, you go, but I won't, period." Had been my answer each time – if only I had listened to him back then already.

Well, similar conversations went on for several years, until – there came the day he told me that he'd get baptized.

"You'll come, won't you?" He'd asked. "You'll come to see me being baptized?"

"Of course I'll come." I'd answered, sighing, because never mind my view of church, of course I'd visit when my son got baptized, that was out of question, of course, even though I didn't like the thought of setting one single foot into any kind of church.

Now you must know that our church is a free evangelical church, not really looking like a church, but it is a church anyway … but the strange thing was – the moment I entered, I immediately knew that I had entered my home. A strange thing if you consider that I had barely left the house before that, that I had hated human beings with all my heart and a strange thing if you consider that I'd surely had never planned to go to any kind of church in the first place. I have been a bit confused, I have to admit.

Had it been for me, I would have mailed the grocery, mailing them my shopping-list and telling them to place everything before my door, and that I'd transfer the money – just one example, and now I felt being at home in … that church?

I was startled by that thought – and I was startled by the amount of people in there, too. Too many people for my liking, while at the same time I knew that I didn't hate them – whatever reason for, they were human beings, after all, and most of them were strangers, no less, but I didn't hate them, and somehow that scared the hell out of me – maybe even in the truest sense of the words, I don't know.

However, at ten o'clock, and after everyone had found a seat, the worship band had started playing and I'd thought – whoa, good, at least they have acceptable music and not that typical church-tootling. But then people started lifting their hands and I thought – alright … they're all a bottle short of a six-pack, a pound short of a penny, one taco short of a Mexican meal … really! They'd all lost their marbles, had a bat in the belfry, and all I could think of was – just let me out of here! Please!

Well, after that – and after I'd survived it – the sermon had started and suddenly I'd known that that was the correct thing. I don't even know the subject of the sermon anymore, but I knew that it was the only correct thing, and I knew that I had to come again – the strangest day in my life, so many different perceptions within just a two-hour time range, but anyway I knew that I had to come again.

Well – yes … I knew that I had to come again, but … there was one problem – how would I tell my husband?

After all, we've both had the same opinion when it came to church, namely that you better stayed out of it.

Well, I've never been a friend of beating around the bush, and so I've started one of the strangest conversations ever.

"Uhm, darling?" I'd started one evening shortly after the baptism.

"Hmm?" He'd asked, without looking up from what he'd been doing.

"Well, dunno what's with you, but I'd like going there again." I'd said, receiving a confused look from my husband.

"Where?" He'd asked, shaking his head, clearly not understanding what I'd meant.

"Well, to that – service." I'd answered, unable to bring myself to saying "to that church".

"Sure." He'd said, causing me to look over at him, startled, shocked, blinking at him like a stupid idiot. "Let's do that."

Well – one might now think that surely that's far from being a strange conversation, but it was, because I'd been so sure that he'd think that now, I'd gone completely nuts! After a speaking disorder, and after a social disorder, now I must have gone completely nuts! I'd been one hundred percent positive of that. And then he'd told me that – 'sure, let's do that? Just like that? Without any kind of contradiction? Without any kind of discussion? Without a "but" even? Without a "why" even?

Strange, really!

But well, from that moment on we'd been going to "church" regularly, even though it had taken a long time until I'd really called it a church. "Service" I'd called it, "sermon", "community" or "assembly of God", even "prayer group" was alright with me, anything, absolutely anything but – church, and it took me a long time until I've learned that the church actually is the church of God, and that the word church has nothing to do with most of the churches we here have.

Well, until that time, whenever people had asked if I were a Christian, then my answer had been "a Christian? Well, sure … of course I am a Christian."

Because – well, I wasn't a Jew, I wasn't a Muslim, I wasn't a Buddhist, I wasn't a Hinduist, and I didn't believe in Manitou and the happy hunting grounds either. And definitely was I no Atheist, because I did believe in God, after all, didn't I?

So – of course I was a Christian! Wasn't I?

What else should I be except of a Christian?

How ignorant I have been!

How much I had fooled God, myself and anyone else!

Not that God had been fooled by me, surely not, because God knew exactly where in his realm I stood, but I had fooled Him anyway.

I had believed in God, yes. And I had read in the bible, sure, and I had talked with God, of course, but again I had made a mistake, and a grave one this time, and this time I didn't even have the excuse of being a child anymore, I've been grown, I've been an adult, and so I should have known better. Because the truth is, I've only had God walking besides of me, sometimes I've been running ahead, sometimes I've been trudging behind of Him, but I haven't been really walking together with him.

Breåk· … ·~ † ~*~*~*~*~*~ † ~· … ·Łine

You know … I always actually have believed those stories in the bible. I've believed them when I was a child, and I've believed them when I was a teen, and I've known they were true when I've been an adult. God creating earth and man in six days? Sure, what reason for should I not believe it? After all, how stupid was that evolutionary theory?

Every form of life being formed by chance? Out of some kind of primordial soup? Accidentally? Cells dividing themselves – and a million times, no less – in just the correct way? That would be even more luck than winning the lottery a million times, and I haven't even won it once. All the perfection of the universe – and of mankind – having happened accidentally?

First – life did not start with a bolt of lightning striking a pond of water, causing several molecules to combine in a random way which, just by chance, resulted in a living cell which then divided and – again, just by chance – evolved into higher life forms, as claimed by evolutionists. That's just hogwash. An entire team of top scientists from all over the world with unlimited resources and the most modern laboratories would be unable to create a single living cell as it is simply impossible to form organic life from inorganic matter. To produce a living thing you must start with a living thing, always.

You know, some people might believe that they stem from monkeys – I prefer believing that I am a child of God.

Second – you know, in school our children are taught that life can evolve given enough time and that our ancestors are some kind of monkeys – that's not only a statement without any scientific support, but it's a simple lie. Our children are taught that, allow a monkey to use your laptop to punch the keys at random, and eventually they're writing down the simple 26-letter alphabet. That's just nonsense. He can't do that, never in a trillion of years.

A computer was programmed to do just that – writing down the 26-letter alphabet by randomly using the keys, and after .000 (35 trillion) attempts it has only arrived at 14 letters correctly. In other words – time does not make impossible things possible, never in a trillion of years.

And now a simple single cell organism, they say, has evolved given the complexity of more than 60.000 proteins of 100 different configurations and all in the correct places? Sorry, but never in eternity could that have happened! Time doesn't make impossible things possible, never mind how much time is given.

How much easier is it to believe that God has formed a man from clay in one day? Sure, it still would be a none-living matter, but how much easier is it to believe that God has breathed life into the man's nostrils? What is there to doubt? Every day you can witness the wonders of nature and you believe that they're there. You won't deny the beauty of a particular sky shortly after a thunderstorm. So why would you doubt the wonder God has done with Adam? I see no reason to doubt that.

Third – even Charles Darwin himself confessed that a perfect and complex eye could never have been formed by natural selection: "To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I confess, absurd in the highest degree."

If natural selection were true, then humans in the tropics wouldn't have black skin as black skin absorbs the heat more than white skin does – anyway they have, just the opposite of what natural selection would say. Eskimos would have fur to keep them warm, but they haven't, except of the hair of the scalp and beard they're just as hairless as everyone else, again, just the opposite of what natural selection would say.

Evolutionists say that a fish has wiggled out of the water and onto dry land and then became a land creature – that's just stupid, because the moment the fish came to the land, it would have gasped for several time, trying to get back to the safety of the water before it would have choked to death as it can't breathe air.

Sure, fishes can do stupid things at times, like a fish jumping out of the aquarium once in a while, and like whales that keep swimming up on the beach where they die. But there's no reason to think that those fishes or whales would be trying to start evolving into a fish with lungs to become some higher creatures, that's just plain irrational as no fish would wiggle out of the water for several millions of years in an attempt to choke less and less until his gills evolved into lungs so that he could breathe air, not to mention that he'd be unable going back to the water as he'd be drowning then. The fish wouldn't have become a higher creature, he'd just changed his living environment.

How much more logical is it that God has made the fish the way it is, with having a reason? Would he have liked the fish living on land, then he'd given him lungs instead of gills. But no, God has done a perfect job in creating living things on the earth, in the water, and in the air. All the living space on earth God has filled with life – what is there to change? It is perfect the way it is, and there's no reason to come up with a theory that would explain why there's life on earth, or in the air – it is the way it is, because God has made it that way, and it's perfect the way it is, no reason to change anything at all.

Well, and if you take earth itself, just look at how earth is correcting its own route every now and then, to just the correct times and coordinates, so that it won't go astray, and to save us from being either burned to death or freeze to death – that doesn't happen accidentally and just by chance, without someone bigger to control everything.

Do not take me wrong, I won't say that science is bad, because we need science and I'd be happy being a scientist if that weren't connected with math so much. And do not take me wrong, I won't say that Charles Darwin was a bad guy, either. Evolution is a theory stated by Darwin more than one hundred and fifty years ago – but actually it was already developed by his grandfather in the year 1794, before Charles Darwin was even born, and back then science didn't have the evidence available to prove the theory false. Of course he wouldn't only believe his grandfather, but also look for anything that might support his grandfather's theories – nothing wrong here, but sadly he'd declined the existence of God with his theory and caused thousands of people with him to turn away from God.

Louis Pasteur once said: "The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. Science brings men nearer to God."

James Prescott Joule once said: "Order is manifestly maintained in the universe … the whole being governed by the sovereign will of God."

And Sir Isaac Newton once said: "Atheism is so senseless. When I look at the solar system, I see the earth at the right distance from the sun to receive the proper amounts of heat and light. This did not happen by chance. The true God is a living, intelligent and powerful being."

Well known scientists who all state their belief in God, because there are more than just the few I've mentioned here – now, can they all be wrong? Surely not.

In my humble opinion, belief in evolution is not only a very remarkable phenomenon, but religion already, because despite the lack of any visible scientific evidence for evolution, it is a belief that is passionately defended by scientists and evolutionists – really, how much easier would it be to simply believe in God having created everything? They wouldn't have to look for evidence over evidence just to find that their evidences have no hold when it comes to God's creation.

The question is, just why do they feel the need to counter the creationist message? Why are they so adamantly committed to anti-creationism? I do not know an answer to that question, but I think it's a sad thing that people won't give God a chance but dismiss him so easily.

Breåk· … ·~ † ~*~*~*~*~*~ † ~· … ·Łine

Alright, and now I have added an entire section about creation and evolution, which I haven't had in mind the moment I started writing this foreword, but well, I guess there will be a reason as to why I did, and who am I to tell my fingers to stop writing if they're at work?

What I wanted to say with that simply is – the mistake I had made when reading the bible a second time, was not lack of knowledge, because I always knew that God was there to keep everything alright – I'd known it, and I'd been an adult who should have been able to use some brain and think. I'd known that what is written in the bible is no fairy tale but truth, but I have never taken those stories from the bible into my heart. I have never tried to learn from them. And most importantly, I have never lived according to what I have read in the bible.

You know, I have learned a lot of things during my life, and learning is one of the most important pastimes to begin with. I've re-learned English after I was free from my mother who'd forbidden me this particular language which I have grown up with. I have learned Sindarin and Quenya, I am learning Cheyenne and Danish, and I have learned a lot of other things, too, as long as it didn't have any relations to math. I have learned playing the guitar, I have learned how to write books and I have learned how to use a pencil for drawing. When I was a child and but ten years old, I have learned to survive, to work, to care for a house and a family, and to carry more responsibility than any child should carry.

I have learned many things – and sometimes I wonder why I have not learned anything from the bible.

Maybe it was because I've never had someone who told me that you actually could learn from the bible, maybe it was because Satan had so many means to keep people from regarding this particular book, and maybe it was because somewhere in my heart I hadn't trusted in God, not completely, after all, not really, because the most important lection I had learned in my life, had been that you better trusted no one. It was a lection taught by my mother, and she'd had her own means of teaching, and I'd never forgotten this one.

Never love.

And never trust.

Breåk· … ·~ † ~*~*~*~*~*~ † ~· … ·Łine

But then – if you're going together with God, then anything can happen.

If you're going together with God, then you can collect miracles like others would collect marbles.

If you're going with God, then the impossible can happen.

For nearly all my life, for about 30 years I'd hated people with all my heart, with a passion that was already legendary amongst those who knew me. After all, people were the most cruel and horrible beings, doing cruel and horrible things to each other, hurting each other whenever possible, killing each other, stealing things from each other, lying to each other – there's nothing good in mankind, absolutely nothing and there's not one who'd go as an exception.

Sure, I'd never viewed my husband as a killing guy who'd steal and hurt people in the most cruel way possible, because not only is he the best person on this earth, but also I'd simply lived in my own world where I had my family, where I lived with my family, but except of that I'd never left the house to meet other people if it weren't absolutely necessary – in other words, indispensable for life.

However – like I already said, I'd visited this church for the first time, and I hadn't hated the people there, whatever reason for, and it had scared me so very much, back then, because I hadn't understood. But then, I'd gotten used to … not hating those people, and I hadn't thought about it anymore – it was just like, 'well, I don't hate them, that's alright with me. Surely it hasn't anything to do with me, but with them because they might be – well, some kind of good people'.

But then the next really strange thing had happened – after several weeks I'd started loving those people!

Imagine!

Me loving people!

It's been as if Gilderoy Lockhart had proven some backbones and said that surely he'd go to the chamber of secrets to kill that basilisk, alone and without endangering the students – something that was just impossible!

But it had happened, and the more time had passed, the more I'd loved them – sorry, but if that's no miracle, then I don't know what is.

With some time passing I'd started loving other people, too, people who weren't in our church, people I've met in town, and people who'd been anything but kind in the past. I've been able to ignore their not always nice comments, and I've been able to do them good, even though they didn't care about it, and I've been able to forget what they'd done in the past.

Alright, I had changed, hadn't I?

There'd been a miracle, and I'd changed, and surely that's been it!

My mother had taught me how to hate – but God has changed my heart so that I could love again … God has shown his power, has done his miracle concerning me, and so – well, surely that's been it!

Breåk· … ·~ † ~*~*~*~*~*~ † ~· … ·Łine

How wrong I'd been, and how much I'd misunderstood God, because it hadn't taken long until the most strange thing possible had happened.

My husband and I had signed in for the Alpha, an evangelistic course which introduces the basics of Christian faith through a series of talks and discussions, and the course started on a Wednesday in spring 2013.

The day before that, on Tuesday morning, I'd been walking through downtown in Schramberg, on my way to 'the other shop', when a person came towards me.

Nothing to worry about, because it's been downtown, of course I'd meet people there!

But upon looking closer I couldn't help noticing that …

what the …

was that my – MOTHER?

Ah, no – surely not, because she was living someplace in Bavaria while I'm living in Baden Württemberg, surely she'd not walking through Schramberg, and surely not while I'd be doing the same …

Just wait a moment – it WAS my mother!

But what in the Name of God was she doing here?

I hadn't met her for several years, for many years, actually, for a lot of many years, I hadn't met her for about five hundreds of years or something like that, for a lifetime, and now I'd been meeting her here in my hometown? What was she doing in my hometown? Couldn't I have some peace from her in my own hometown, even?

But a moment later she stood before me.

I'd been so baffled, I only could ask "what are you doing here?" Without saying "hello" first, or "good morning", or any other such greeting phrase you said just out of politeness without a meaning behind.

"Well, I'd had an appointment in Schramberg." She'd answered, standing before me, and suddenly she looked just as unsure and lost as I always had felt in her presence. "And then I'd thought I'd go to downtown, maybe I'd meet Claudia."

It's been the most ridiculous thing she could have said, I'd thought back then, because … well, it's just been one of her excuses, one of the things she always made up to get what she'd want, one of her whatever … because, really – how stupid did she think I was? Walking through downtown in hopes she'd see her daughter whom she hadn't met for long enough so that she wouldn't know her grandchildren? Just like that? But on the other hand – there she was, and there I was.

The thing was, I barely could discuss with her on the streets, and so, without further ado – and without thinking over it, too – I took her with me to the other shop, all the way wondering what she'd want of me now, all the way trying to fight down the fear that had threatened to come up over and over again, because what could she do now? I was an adult, after all, I'd raised four children myself, two of them being adults already. I hadn't done anything wrong, I'd done my homework and I'd done the dishes. I'd started the laundry machine, and I'd cleaned the kitchen, too. The most ridiculous reasons as to why I couldn't get into trouble with her came to my mind while we'd been walking to the other shop, just like back then when I'd been a child.

In the end we'd been siting there, drinking coffee and talking about this and that, about the weather and about how my children were doing, about nothing particular and especially not about the past – and then the greatest miracle happened: when she'd left, I'd been able hugging her, even telling her that it's been good having seen her … and the other strange thing? I'd meant it.

For years I'd hated her, more than anything, I'd feared her like other people would fear the devil, and I'd fled anything that had to do with – her – for more than thirty years. And suddenly I was free of that, from one moment to the other, just like that, and without the slightest difficulties.

I'd been in church, and in prayer-groups back then for long enough to know the concept of forgiving people. I knew all the reasons as to why it was necessary to begin with, and I knew how it worked, too. But I'd been so sure that I wouldn't be able forgiving my mother. In my mind, maybe, making a conscious decision, but forgiving her in my heart? I've been sure for one hundred and twenty percent, that I'd never be able forgiving her in my heart, never mind how much I'd try, and I didn't try too hard, believe me.

And then God made this. God sent her on my way, giving me the chance to meet her and to forgive her, and God made me forgiving her. Not I had done that, because I'd been unable to and God surely had known, and so he'd made it. I have forgiven her, without struggling, without a big bang of accusations and without anything else. I'd just forgiven her, in peace and in calmness, it just had happened and that is something that is not humanly possible.

Our contact is still not the best and we don't meet every week. But we have contact to begin with.

Still she doesn't have my number, and it's me calling her. But I do call her from time to time.

And if that is no miracle, then I don't know what is.

And then the next day came, Wednesday, and Alpha would start.

My oldest daughter did believe in God, too, but just like me some time ago, she didn't believe in the church, and she'd seen our joining the church rather critically.

"Just leave this group, mom." She'd often said. "It's a sect, and surely they just want your money." And never mind what I told her, she just wouldn't listen and refused anything that had to do with our church.

She has her own flat in our house and is working in the old people's home here in Schramberg. She's become a very impressive young lady, and I'm very proud of her, but in this area she just wouldn't listen.

Well, this particular Wednesday arrived, and I was walking home, walking along the pavement close to our house when my daughter came towards me on her way to some friends.

"Hey Ronja." I'd greeted her. "Alpha's starting tonight, you're coming?" I'd then asked, just to make a joke, because I knew that she'd never do that, that she'd never come, not for the life of her!

But then the unthinkable happened.

She stood there, looking at me – and then …

"Shure." She'd said, seriously. "When do they start?"

"Uhm …" I'd made, very eloquently. "At eight …"

"Alright, tell me when you start." She'd said, still seriously, and on she went on her way to her friends, leaving me behind, baffled and still blinking in shock.

And she'd really been coming to Alpha.

She's been a challenge, I guess, because she'd been more than just a little bit critical towards everything she'd heard there, not believing blindly and she'd started many heated discussions, provoking the mentors, even, but in the end she's been positive and now she's visiting service whenever her work in the old people's home allows it, she's helping in the Youth Alpha, and she's been baptized just a few weeks ago.

And sometimes I wonder – was it a test God had put me through? This meeting with my mother on that Tuesday morning? Because I know that God had sent her my way. I have learned that if you're going with God, then there are no odds and no accidents, no chances and no coincidences, no lucks and no happenstances. If you're going with God, then he's leading you, and if you allow him to lead you, if you trust his lead even if you don't understand, then he's leading you well.

And maybe God has sent my mother as a kind of test, to see if I'm ready to actually forgive. Like I said, I've heard about the concept of forgiving even before we'd started Alpha – that concept wasn't actually new to me, but knowing about the concept, and acting according to it, there's a difference between those two. Maybe God wanted to make sure that I'd be ready taking my daughter on this path, too, with asking her if she'd like to come to the Alpha, too. I don't know, but I know that there had been two miracles in two days.

Breåk· … ·~ † ~*~*~*~*~*~ † ~· … ·Łine

But then – if you go together with God, then anything can happen.

If you're going together with God, then you can collect miracles like others would collect marbles.

If you're going with God, then the impossible can happen.

I don't know if I'll really be able to live up to the expectations God has set in me … but he's been doing miracles during the past let me say two or three years – or I wouldn't have been able to write this, looking back at all the things without screaming bloody murder and wishing to kill someone, preferably my mother. I have grown during the past two or three years, not in height, but in my heart, I think, in my mind – whatever, I don't really know.

But most strangely – I have even started to love people.

And such a statement coming from my person!

I, the dark and cold misanthrope, the one person who hated human being enough to turn my back on them forever, the one person who could stand up to a guy who'd just broken my wrist, looking up at him with a disdainful smile and with the question if this was all he could do, getting the same wrist broken a bit more for it before again standing up to him and asking him the same question, again, not even hating him anymore but only feeling disdain over him because he was human. I think I could have felt more respect towards a rat or a snake, even a spider than towards that guy – and not even because he'd broken my wrist, such a thing hadn't been the first time after all and it wasn't the first scar either. Someone who'd lived with my mother didn't get out of it without scars. No – but just because he was a human being.

And to say now that I have started to love people? People I don't know even – just because they are people?

That is as if Hereweald Hrothgar – or Severus Snape – gave away a declaration about how to love the world – they would both end up in a closed ward right away. And a year ago it would have been simply impossible for me to say such a thing – I'm sure that a lot of people who knew me up to now would happily call 911 if they knew, without blinking an eye even and send me to a mental ward, preferably a closed ward. Because people knew that – I don't love anyone. Not ever. And not even myself.

But well – I also think that God had given me a place, and the place even seems to fit, seeing that I like to draw and to write. But again – will I be able to live up to all the expectations around me will? Won't I disappoint people again? Just like I've always disappointed my mother? I don't know it and I can only hope and trust in the people around me to have patience with me – something that doesn't sit too well with me, trusting people.

Breåk· … ·~†~*~*~*~*~*~†~· … ·Łine

And concerning the logic of the place I've found myself in – I've forgotten to tell you about my love for writing – well …

Maybe I should first apologize for the chaos that will make appearance in the following chapters before I start explaining anything, just so to set you at ease – and that the upcoming chapters will be chaotic – well, no one, and lest of all me, can deny that.

Let me just say – would any of my prior German- or English teachers get this here between their fingers, then they would most likely – alright, they would surely lay it aside with a shocked expression on their faces upon just reading the name of the author. It would awaken memories in form of horror-visions, because those poor people – and all of them – had been regularly driven to madness – due to anecdotes as they were wandering from the subjects as well as due to essays as they'd been too detailed and comments like "too detailed" … "too comprehensive" … "too circuitous" … "too explanative" … "too nested" … "too complicated" … and even "too loquacious" – even though I doubt that – well, with time they didn't have to come up with such comments anymore, no – they just needed to copy them from the past works of mine.

One teacher of mine once even said – you could describe a leaf floating down from a tree, carried by the wind in autumn – and for this one scene you'd need at least four or five pages in your tiny handwriting no one can read anyway. I'm still not sure if it was a compliment or an insult.

On the other hand – I've never been able to avoid just that – what however wasn't because of lack of attempts but rather because there's a really strange formula which – and I'm sure of that – even the best scientist wouldn't be able to explain –

Namely: me plus pencil equal chaos.

And well – seeing that I've been the worst case in math, the teachers of this particular science having gotten just as desperate upon my questions as to – "but why is two plus three equal to five" as my German and English teachers had gotten upon my essays – so, well, I've never been able to alter this formula myself either, not to mention getting to an – for my teachers – adequate outcome.

The reason for that was simple – whenever there was an essay or similar to be written, actually anything that had to do with words, then I didn't have any influence over my pencil anymore which – apparently – always found its own way across the papers, and so the outcome of an essay was generally inevitable – it was at least six, seven or eight pages, most of the time even more, in a handwriting that was – well – small. I was entirely innocent of it, it hadn't been my fault.

Anyway, even after school, writing one thing or another has kept up with me, has even followed me upon each step I took, whatever the reason.

Some years there had just been a few short and nonsense stories the result of my writing which I would delete from my laptop with the same expression of horror on my face that would be found on the faces of my teachers would they get these upcoming chapters between their fingers – nope, I'd delete it without thinking of it even once, let alone twice and without blinking an eye even, were they still in my possession.

And so I've stopped writing at all – there was no reason in producing trash after all and nothing else it had been and so some time passed – alright – just a few weeks passed, maybe a few months but surely not more because …

Well, yes – because then there was Hereweald Hrothgar who stumbled over my path someplace deep down in the labyrinth of my brain – and he's reminded me so very much of myself that I wasn't able to forget him ever again. And when shortly after Hereweald even met Herbaceous VanHarkins – well, then I didn't have another choice other than – no, of course not to take the pencil from the place whence I'd banned it, but to start my laptop. Not really to write a book, but rather – to write anything at all. After all it's been weeks since I'd last written anything, and for me that was – like years.

And so I've sat there – not at a table in a classroom this time but at home in front of my laptop – but how should it be otherwise? I had to deal with the same problem again. Not my pencil had his own will this time, but my fingers, just as if they'd ignore the impulses my brain was trying to send over to them with a devilish grin and they hastened across the keyboard, quicker than their muscles could react – in other words, I didn't stumble over my tongue but over my fingers.

However, what came out of it was – chaos, again!

But this time it wasn't too bad a thing because – Hereweald had been a messy guy himself and so the thing fit well. Just how I could integrate Herbaceous into this mess – I really didn't know. But again my fingers had taken this decision from me by themselves and when I've read over the thing one evening, about what I had written for the past few nights – well, what am I to say? I've been more frustrated than ever, I've been close to tears even with desperation and short of deleting the entire rubbish.

Because Hereweald and Herbaceous living together in the same house? Never! That would be something like – as if you'd drive with a container filled with high explosive nitro-glycerine over a bumpy and jolty crushed stone road – it just couldn't work! Fortunately however I wasn't able to do it (deleting the rubbish I mean, not the drive across the bumpy road with the nitro-glycerine) and I've rather racked my brains over it once more, for days and days.

And really, I've been able to – against all logic – not only befriend the thought but to even get new ideas out of it – because imagining what chaos had to come out of it if you threw the most normal, sober, and logical person existent on this planet called Earth together with the definitely most chaotic, messy, and impulsive person – well, as my husband one day said: It couldn't be worse than it is with the two of us – and he'd been not only serious about it, but he'd been correct too.

However, the two – Hereweald and Herbaceous of course – grew in mind and character and with the months the two of them had started a life of their own and somehow I've lost any influence on them. They just didn't care anymore about what I – the author – wanted them doing, but they just did what they wanted, imagine! Can you understand how much their constant bickering and picking at each other got on my nerves with time? Not to mention Hereweald's constant sarcasm towards Herbaceous and Herbaceous always being so damn calm about it what drove Hereweald nuts at the same time!

But well, as someone who loved fantasy novels or movies, it was about two years later that I stumbled over Harry Potter – and with it of course Fanfiction – and then started writing there. Hereweald and Herbaceous got in the background of my writing – alright, actually I've put them in a file of my laptop so that I could concentrate on Snape and Potter which allowed me so much room to play. And seeing that I had already learned how to throw the most different people into the least likely situations – I think I've been good in my new job as an internet-author on Fanfiction – at least my readers have never complained much. One thing here or there if they were unhappy with one direction or another I had approached – but generally I got good reviews, and a lot of reviews – and I've been happy with throwing Snape and Potter together into the most difficult and complicated situations where they had to – grow.

It was kind of a special challenge, taking two already existent characters and to then change them without changing their basic nature, without changing who they are – while changing them so that they could form a family. You can come up with a new character, but working with given specifications – it's a real challenge and any other author on Fanfiction will surely agree with me on that.

However, with the time Hereweald forced his way back into my writing again and became a friend of Severus Snape, and seeing that my readers seemed to like him too, he'd accompanied several of my stories over the years on Fanfiction, together with Herbaceous VanHarkins even – until – yes, again until there was something that didn't leave my mind anymore after a daring from Catlady, one of my most loyal readers and reviewers.

Her words have been something like: evil, you really need to stop tormenting people one of these days and I dare you to write something sweet and fluffy … it's been something along these lines and she'd even offered a cup of black coffee afterwards – virtual coffee, of course, seeing that she's sitting in the States and I'm sitting in Germany – to get the bad taste of the sweetness and fluffiness out of my mouth, how very nice of her … :D …

But well, the stone was laid and – well, and I wondered – what about Hereweald?

Not as a minor character as in my Harry Potter stories but as a main character again?

Not that I wanted to write another completely new book with Hereweald and Herbaceous – surely not. Fanfiction had become my home – and so on Fanfiction I will remain – what means, I do need – or rather did need – an already existing book to write about.

But – what about changing books from Harry Potter to the Bible?

A rather audacious thing to do was my first thought, but then?

I've always done the daring things when it came to my writing. And I've always lived up to the responsibility any author has towards his readers. I've never sugar-coated child abuse, never mind if my readers were happy about it or not, I've never sugar-coated anything at all and if I needed to have a character dying, then I've done just that, even though it's been a character my readers have loved – which is the reason as to why none of my stories should be read by children or teens below the age of sixteen, because I'm never sugar-coating anything – and well, I've always thrown people together or them in a situation where my readers at first thought – strange, why would she do such a thing? That won't work, not ever!

But in the end it always worked out.

Some people say they don't know which of my main characters they pity the most, but that's what makes it as interesting as it seems to be – and so I have made my mind up and I have started writing a new story, with a new storyline, with a new plot and with a new background – without wizards, without magic, and the only things that remain are Hereweald Hrothgar, Herbaceous VanHarkins whom I have re-named into Hendrik VanHarkins even, and the fact that Hereweald is a teacher and will be thrown together with a student he doesn't like in a situation that will be – once again – least likely.

But even though it's a new story and a new book – I fear that, again, it lacks the sweetness and again it lacks the fluff – in other words, I fear, I have lost the dare, my dear Catlady … but the idea has me hooked and so it's even become my first priority (very much to the regret of the readers of my other stories as they won't get HP stories anymore) … it's just that apparently I am unable writing sweet fluff because I have learned that – life isn't sweet and life isn't fluffy either … and I would lie to not only you, but myself either would I disregard these lessons …

And I am no one to lie to anyone, never mind the truth …

Thank you …

Breåk· … ·~ † ~*~*~*~*~*~ † ~· … ·Łine

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To be continued

Next time in … between roses and peppermint …

Chapter two: a small valley that deserves your attention for a moment …

Author's notes:

Thanks for reading, and thanks for reviewing ...