Part 2 of my life story

When I lived in that town in franconia my life was still okay compared to all the things I had to face later in life. I defended my brother physically and verbally, I felt guilty for my parent fights, but I was also still able to live halfway normal as a child.

I had my best friend I met in 1st grade and we played almost every day together, I really enjoyed my childhood even with the hardships. But let’s be honest, who doesn’t face hardships even as a child?

There was one incident that scared me alot though, when I was in first grade one of my classmates and his older brother lived close to us. One day I was at a playground with my brother that was about 10 minutes away from our house, maybe even a bit farther.

My classmate and his brother also came to that playground and his older brother caused my brother to fall on his back and have trouble breathing. I yelled at them to leave my brother alone and for some reason I knew the breathing problems my brother had were serious. I started running as fast as I had ever ran in my whole life all the way home, while continuously yelling for my father. I climbed over the fence gate (it was a high fence and you had to unlock it with a key, but I did not feel like I had the time for that), while yelling for my dad as loud as I could. My dad, who is an ex-soldier ran down and asked me what happened. I just said: „(My brothers name), playground, can’t breathe.“
My dad jumped over the gate and ran to the playground, I ran after him back to my brother. When we arrived my brother was still having trouble breathing and my dad helped him up and lifted his arms so he could breathe. I went over to my classmate and his brother and pushed them farther away from my dad and my brother and yelled at them to go away and never touch him again. But they did not leave.
After a short while my brother was able to breathe again and we sat him down on a bench and I held his arms up while my dad went over to the classmate and his brother and told them: „If you ever touch or harm my children again, you will regret even being close to them! DID I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?!“
They both nodded and ran away. My dads threat worked, they did not come close to us again, despite living close to us.

But all my harships were manageable, atleast until I was 10 years old. My brother had developed a very strong allergy against our cat, which was the end of the world for me, when my parents told me we had to give her away. She was my world for many years already at that point. And I was not really able to understand what an allergy was, so in my eyes it was my brothers fault we had to give her up. That was the first time that the relationship between my brother and I became bad, atleast on my part.

So in the year 2001 we moved to a city in Baden-Würrtemberg and we gave away our cat to someone who had promised I could visit her whenever I wanted. That did not happen, I only saw her the day we gave her away, because that person had already passed her on to someone else and I had lost contact to my beloved cat for good.
(Now you might be wondering, why is she writing so much about a cat? Well, if you have ever truly loved an animal as if it were a part of your family, then you will understand. At the same time that cat was comfort for me who could always play with her brother, until he started going to gradeschool.)

For me moving was packed with bad experiences, I had to leave the first home behind that I could remember, my moms family that lived there, my friends and ultimately give away the cat I loved for so long.

When we arrived at our new apartment, I had just said goodbye to my cat and I was quite down. But my parents distracted me by going shopping for furniture for my new room. I was somewhat excited, for the first time I did not have to share a room with my brother anymore.

I was put into 4th grade for 2 weeks to determine which school I would be going to next, depending on my performance. Since I was still trying to deal with currently moving, I didn’t pay attention in school and just clowned around and made trouble for the teachers. Because of that they put me into Hauptschule. In that school I faced alot of mobbing, which at the beginning really got to me, but after a short while I got frustrated and started to act up at school.

I stopped doing my homework, I started talking back to the people mobbing me and got into fights regularly. During my time in 5th grade, I experienced alot of disturbing things.

I had a classmate that was making a other classmates eating disorder worse, by constantly telling her how fat she is, although she was already beginning to be nothing but skin and bones. I started to get into fights alot with that one classmate that was picking on my friend who was really suffering from the disorder. I got my friend her favorite food every day just to make her eat and every time the classmate wanted to approach her I would stand in her way. It was very disturbing for me that a person would do that to someone else. But the eating disorder was not all my friend had to deal with, her mother had abondened her a few years prior to me meeting her and she had to live in a childrens home.
My friend was constantly reaching out to her mother trying to go back to living with her, that classmate knew that and used that against my friend saying harmful things like: You are too fat and ugly, that’s why your mother doesn’t want you.
I’m pretty sure her eating disorder came from her loosing her mom and those sentences were extremely harmful to her… She was beautiful and would have been even more gorgeous if she had her normal body weight… But the most disturbing thing I witnessed with her was when I came to school one morning…

WARNING IF YOU HAVE A WEAK STOMACH OR CANT DEAL WITH STORIES ABOUT SUICIDE ATTEMPS PLEASE SKIP THE ITALIC TEXT!!!!

I came to school and the childrens home she was in was right next to our school, maybe a 2 minute walk. I saw her and went up to her, she was standing there with one of her friends. She was pretty down that day, she told us that it was that morning, that her mother had written her off for good and even gave up the guardianship.
We were in shock, none of us could understand how a mother could do that to her 13 year old daughter… Suddenly she took out a razor blade and cut both her wrists in front of our eyes… For a split second I was in shock, then i grabbed both her arms as tight as I could and yelled at her other friend, who was still in shock, to run to the childrens home and have them call an ambulance NOW! I looked at my friend while still holding on as tight as I could, the blood was running down her and my hands and I was crying. I just kept asking her why and all she responded was: „She doesn’t want me ever again…“
It seemed like an eternity until her friend came back with one of the workers from the childrens home who then bandaged the arms as tight as she could until the ambulance arrived… As soon as the worker had taken over, I looked down at my hands and my pants that were full of the blood of my friends wrists… I fell down to my knees and just started crying as the ambulance arrived and took her with them. I wasn’t sure if I would see her again or if it was too late…

After that Incident, she was gone for about 2 weeks. Every attempt to ask about her wellbeing at the childrens home was denied with the explanation that I am not family and have no right to know. They forbade me to go to the childrens home because I started yelling, saying that her mother who is family has abondened her and her friends that care about her like a sister are not provided with any information about her wellbeing.

2 weeks later she returned to school, she looked worse than ever, I tried to talk to her but she distanced herself from us for a whole week after returning to school. Despite her pushing us away we still protected her from harmful classmates and after 1 week I had enough of watching her deteriorate. I went over to talk to her and I asked her what happened in the 2 weeks she was absent from school.
She told me the hospital contacted her mom although her mother had abandoned the guardianship over her. The hospital made her mother come and she saw her mother for the first time since she had been given to the childrens home. My friend had hoped that her mother would care for her and be sad if she saw in which state her daughter was, but after she met her mother again, she wished that she hadn’t.
Her mother yelled at her and told her that because she is such a useless child causing her trouble, that she no longer wanted to have any ties to her. So while she was in the hospital my friend was put into a psychic ward after the first week, because of two suicide attempts after meeting her mother.

When she told me all of those things she was sitting there crying and all I could do was hug her and beg her to never attempt to take her own life again. I told her that I will never be able to feel her pain, but I would still be there for her and care for her like a sister. Her other friend who was there when the first incident happened, told her the same things I did. At first (of course) it didn’t really change anything for her, she was still abandoned by her biological mother and stuck in a childrens home, but after time she started to lean on us and open up. I actually got her to eat every day again and she was starting to gain weight once more. She stopped having her eating disorder and began to like herself the way she was.

But after one year in that school, I took a test to get into a higher school and I succeeded. I worried alot about my friend, but because the higher school was in the next building I went over during recess to check on her every day and I was happy to see that she was still eating and getting better.

That is where I will end it for now. I will continue the next part with the test I took, the consequences it had and how my life continued in the new school.

Take care everyone, thank you for reading and supporting me.