2.
My name is anna, actually ann-kathrin. I am at that time 27 years old and i am totally blind. though I am only 27, I experienced things in my life, which are so terrible, that people may wonder, how I overcame them. But i somehow did.
I count to those people who are blind since birth. le's start from my early childhood. my family belonged to jehovas whitnesses. My grandparents still are part of this religion. But all of a sudden, my world broke, when one evening, i was only 7 years old, i know it as if it was just yesterday, mom and i sat at the dinner table, having meat scures, when mom said, darling, listen, mom and dad are going to devorce.
Bang!
I already knew what it means, to get devorced. and i knew that from jehovas whitnesses, they wont tolerate it. it is a sin! it is adultary! I started crying, and I only know pieces of the conversation we had. the usual bla-bla, we love you anyway, it's not your fault and so on.
after that conversation, my life was somehow a mess. mom did not have so much money. dad slept in the livingroom when i came down to get dressed for school. dad was not home very often. so dad had a new girlfriend. mom was often alone with me. Mom got to know some guy called marko, he played the guitar and I also was very musically, showed him what I taught myself on keyboard. he seemed to be impressed. mom was also very chubby, like i am now. for this marko she tried to loose weight. dad did not want to see me for a full year. mom was really begging him to take me for some time. she carefully made sure, that i almost noticed nothing of their fights and how he treated me, his only daughter, but this, was a mistake. That with marko did not last long. mom got to know some other guys, who for me were just some friends, or some friends of my mom. people who came into my life, and quickly disappeared.
Suddenly my mom got to know a guy called axel. he became my stepfather. Always when she went to meet him, she gave me to a family of jehovas whitnesses. I liked them, and their three children. i got friends with eve and myriam, the older two girls, the youngest, almost still a baby, is called clara. I still remember all that… Mostly, when she gave me to them, it was a day when they had congregation, they visited the so-called kingdom hall, their church. they dont call it church though.
when mom and dad got devorced, dad got excluded and mom excluded herself, and also pulled me out. to the anger of my grandparents who still are jehovas whitnesses.
One day she got me home from this family, mom told me axel was sitting at our house. he wanted to get to know me. I was shy, but we shook hands. after that i went to bed.
the next day held a surprise for me. i must say, i had two rooms. we were living in a house, and i had one room downstairs, and one room upstairs. upstairs was my bedroom. downstairs was my so-called playroom. there were all my toys and also my desk to do homework. I woke up quite early, earlier than mom and axel who slept here.
when i came downstairs into my playroom, to listen to cassettes or play with lego or barbies, i bumped into something which did not stand there before i left home. i felt down with my hands what was in my way and recognized speakers … and … a stereo? but not mine! it must be mom's or axel's stereo, but why the hell soes it stand here in my room? but a few minutes later, mom and axel came downstairs and said good morning. i also showed axel how i played the keyboard. he seemed to like it. then i wanted to ask about the strange things in my room i bumped into, but I did not have to. Axel came to me and told me, this was his old stereo, and I am going to get it for my room upstairs, as I was always complaining that i had no cd player upstairs, and mom's old walkman was only used with batteries, and connected to small speakers. they were hidden in the upper drawr of my wardrobe. Axel went upstairs with me and showed me the stereo. showed me all buttons and how to use it. I also got to know that this stereo had a microphone jack. so i could record my voice on tapes. so i wished a microphone. Jehova's whitnesses dont celebrate birthday. but mom wanted me to have some special day once in a while. so we made the so-called ann-kathrin-day. one of those ann-kathrin-days in summer, to not let it look like a birthday which would be in march, was very special. dad was there, axel was there and mom. first i was at my dad's, woke up and got two barbies, dressed like a doctor and a nurse. and i got a hospital set. I also got a microphone. when dad took me home to mom, axel was there. Mom gave me a card she wrote in braille. Mom was able to write braille. I was so happy. I got some clothes for my barbies, another microphone. an empty cassette, and … a musicbox. One i always wanted to have. It was a stuffed lion i saw when we went to visit axel close to the swiss border in the easter holidays. we went to a huge toy store to let me take a look at all those things. then i saw this wonderful lion which played claire de lune, not that one by debussy, the childrens song. It was a melody i did not have yet. and the lion looked so beautiful and was so soft, but mom said no. on my special day, i got the lion from axel.
Time passed. mom asked me if i would like axel to be here, if i would accept him. of course i liked axel, but he was not my father. sometimes i caught myself calling him dad. he was proud but i appologized for calling him dad. but now he is dad for me. and my father is just my producer. but all in a row.
when i got 9 years, i celebrated my first birthday. for the first time in my life i got borthday presents. also from axel's family in swizzerland. we als often visited them. and i liked my new aunts and uncles. I most liked my auntie adele and my aunt iris. my uncle herbert and my other uncle eddy. my cousin björn 😀 my family has grown. also, axel and mom got married when I was 10 and i got a little sister.
but the older i got, the more my father destroyed me. he was talking bad about my mother. he said seriously my mother wanted to keep me fat… i always was very chubby. i believed him. but as soon as i got home, mom told something about dad i did not like. i was caught between two chairs. did not know what to believe. and i was only 12! The older I got, the more my father thaught to teach me things which should be important for my life. he said that my mother was not able to prepare me for my future life. when we went somewhere for eating, i had to pay for myself. my dad only payed with reluctance. He had a new girlfriend whose name is monica. at the beginning i liked her. she was cooking with me, baking cakes prepared deserts with me, but the olderI got the more she also talked bad about my mom. i hated her. and I still hate her for what she did.
Holiday was not something i could look forward to. because I had to go to my dad for some time, and there, i should cook, clean and wash, he tried with drill to teach me violently what mom in his opinion failed to do. I remember one particular situation when he left me alone with the uncovered sofa bed with the uncovered pillows and blankets, and I should have done it myself, not being able to do. i think that my dad had shown it to me only once. and now i should do it on my own. dad was not willing to help me. i cried and wanted to go back home. mom had to get me home with axel almost at night. i hated my father and this damn monica. And still the name monica has some negative association for me. Sorry, all you monica's in this world, i dont know you and maybe you are nice girls, but this particular monica is not.
but i learned to cope with it. dad wanted me to go to boarding school. but mom was not for it.
Also dad he also begrudged my success. Since the age of 9 i play irish music and had various gigs in public when I was 14 or 15. I played and sang in various irish pubs together with my former tutor i fell in love with when I was 13. There i experienced my first sexual feelings, but I was talking about it only to my best friend. Dad did not like Irish music. he always compared me to others, who in his opinion had done better than me. I was never good enough. he never asked or saw, that people went to my singing teacher annette, telling her things like "oh my god, this blind girl with the irish christmas song, she mooved me to tears" or "this girl singing the irish song with all her heart and soul is so empressive" Yeah, I know what people were saying, Annette had told me, and I told her about my father, and she got really upset about how he reacted. when I still think on this situation, it makes me cry again. It was my success, and he destroyed it. Thank you, father! Thank you for so much pain! But I forgave you.
when iw as 16 i tried high school in marburg. but i again failed. i was happy when i got accepted but i heard my sister crying and i stopped being happy. my sister knew i would not come home so soon. she thaught she would loose me. she was only 6. i repeated 10th form and would have had repeated 11th as well, but laws did not allow me to. so i had to look for an apprenticeship. that apprenticeship with languages they offered i wanted to do, at that year was not available. or they wanted to kick me off. i dont know. fact, I wanted to do something with slavistics as I got my interest on russia and the russian languages, when i fell in love with a ukrainian guy from my school, but he had a girlfriend and he hated me, when others were there, but as soon as we were alone, he was totally different. Praised my achievements in russian language. touched me, as if I was his girlfriend, and not this terrible katya. My decission for an apprenticeship fell on chemnitz. I had a trial week there. i had to fill out some surveys had an assessment and afterwards a serious conversation with the psychologists there who discovered my perfectionism, my strickt way of treating myself, but also at the same time my insicurity towards myself and me not being ablf to judge myself correctly. The fear to fail, to fail once again.
I got accepted at dialogue marketing. but my mother was not ammused. "they are going to use you, they are not seeing your real talents, go get something else. why dont you go to nueremberg and go to musical school or search for a language school" but I refused. I could do it afterwards if i wanted to, i said to my mom. with reluctance she accepted my decission.
in my first year i got to know a guy called darek. i got to know him over a teleconference chat. we met, and i fell in love. we were together for 9 months. he always wanted a blonde, slender and sighted woman. but i am none of those. i am chubby, have brown curly hair and i am blind. but still he started something with me. i dont know why. he was not able to finish with me, i had to do it.
then i was with a guy called daniel, when i started my second year. he is also polish and lives in berlin. but the way how we got together was not fine. he made me jeallous with my best friend, and although the time is not right yet, i started something with him. because i did not want him to start something with her. but it did not feel right. I was with him until the end of my apprenticeship. his parents did not accept me, because i am blind and not polish. but he did stay with me. mooved away from his parents. had his own flat. after my apprenticeship i got accepted at the company where i made my internship in my last year. but i quit after 7 months. in this time i also quit daniel. i got to know a guy called sergey, who was kazakh. but at first he was nice, the more i was shocked as he got more and more brutal. he started shouting at me, threaten me, he also started beating me and kicking me. he stole money from my account, stole my ipad, my iphone, my windows pc, almost stole my old mac pc, got upset when i was looking for my things, drank alot and said terrible things to me. he said my russian was not good enough and told me to train russian after work. i was reading in my dictionary after dinner not to be in his way. but he got more and more upset telling me i am not useful to more than sleep, eat and shit. but i said i am going to work and bringing the money home, which you spend with full hands. i only came home with fear. fear what comes next. he even told me: "if I wanted, I could kill you. Your meat i will give to the dogs, and the others I will tell that you are on holiday. noone is going to find you" I was so scared. Experiencing domestic violence is not easy and I never thaught and never wished to experience it. I knew, that in a lot of eastern european families, the man is the boss and the woman has to obey. I had to learn it, but i saw and felt myself rather acting like a robot. like machine, like a doll who was bending her knees whenever it is wanted. but I wanted to be an eastern european woman, so I had to cope with it. but i actually doubt it, that it means to be an eastern european woman or the woman of an eastern european guy to tolerate whatever he does, even if he beats you.
one day when I came from work he ordered me to clean the bathroom in the middle of the night. also to hang the washed clothes. for each mistake i made in his eyes i got kicked in the ass. i slept too little and fell asleep in the train and woke up far far after my station. i came too late to work. my boss although he was an asshole, put an end to this and when he saw the fear in my eyes to go home, and he saw how absent i was he courted me to the office and said: "we will now call the police, dont be afraid, here is the telephone and tell them what you experienced" so I have filed a criminal complaint because of personal injury, document forgery and threatening. I went to women's shelter for one week and afterwards together with the police i threw him out. Then i went back to women's shelter, but before, i went to daniel. the police made him talk to me. i cried and told him what happened the last three months. i told him what sergey did to me, and that i had to cope with various people from his friends go in and out of my flat, i had nothing to say in my own flat. I was talking to one of his friends or should I say, complicities, and once he said "Were you nice? yeah? I guess you only acted, right?", and sergey said yes. so I knew he did not really love me. he was the devil in person. I went back to daniel. but it was not the same. we were together, but sooner or later, the same fights started on and on again. after being unfaithful again he almost quit me, but i tried to persuade him to stay with me as i was really sorry. but then i saw myself that it had no sense.
after being with daniel, i was with a polish guy called adam. we were together for one year, and he fulfilled me the wish to visit poland and the polish mountains. He even made it somehow possible that I got a polish costume typical for the mountain area. I looked like a polish highland woman. and when I wore this, I did not feel ugly at all. i felt beautiful. But I also saw, that adam was not faithful to me. and as a coincidence i got to know his neighbour who was a gypsy, and i fell in love with him. and robert fell in love with me. but he had his own problems. he could not go against his sister taking the money which was meant for him. he was ready to leave his home, but he was not ready to learn german. he hated germans, but he had nothing against me or my family. but he drank too much, this annoyed me. and he only helped me for a reward which meant i should buy him beer. I was tired of this. he said he would stop drinking, when i told him he should decide, either me or the alcohol. Back to poland he showed what was more important. he drank one week through.
by coincidence i got to know another blind guy from poland, his name is marcin. his story was very touching and I was really sad, not being able to help him in some point. He also was very musically. Marcin told me, i need not accept alcoholism. i should free myself from this. and I did… but marcin was even worse. Also with him i experienced some kind of domestic violence. he also bet me, not as much and strong as sergey, he did not steal, but was very ungreatful. I bought him new clothes because it was getting cold. he had nothing more than his old ripped clothes. so I was in debth for him. strangely after I got my new mobile phone, because my old one was crap, his android phone got dammaged. He had some work wherefore he needed an android phone. I gave him my brand new phone and said, if you have the money you can pay me back but here you are, work with it. he told me some times that he got some money and I asked for the first installment. he got upset and said, i will set it back and you can have it. i will not take from people who ask from me all the time. i cried and said i am not asking anything from you, if you dont have it yet then it is ok. and after some time i said, just let it be i do not want any money from you. we got engaged after 1 week being together. i wanted to wait, but he felt rejected. i did not want him to feel rejected. and i really loved marcin. i actually loved all of my boyfriends. But then marcin was shouting at my cats, shouting at me, slamm the doors, I wondered why my neighbours did not call the police. Once in a while he ripped me on my backpack and once on public street he slam his knee against my back because he got upset about a guiding person going too fast and me telling him to go faster.
he seemed also to be very sick, meanwhile they seemed to found out that he has cancer. but he felt worse and worse. the doctors here did not find anything. I thaught he was simulating. twice he almost got unconscious. i almost saved his life twice, and the second time after a very big fight.
I bought him a guitar, though already being in debth. but then he wanted a second one. a classical one. he also needed new strings for the electro-accoustic one i bought him before. I said ok, we will see, but first I will pay my bills. i promised to buy him but not today. but he thaught that it is today. He always said he will go back to poland, there everything will be better, but i did not want him to go. I tried to get him more calm and said that I will do it but not this month. and he said I would betray people, promissing something i could not keep. I am always keeping my promisses as I am a christian and in the bible already is scripted that what you promise, you shall keep. I told him if it would not be fine if we go again to our favourite greek restaurant, and he said, no, you will not buy me with this.
we went to the music store, we tried it with the guitar, but the bank said no. but we got him new strings, plectrums, a capo and a cable to plug his guitar to my keyboard so we could play together. and I bought myself a new microphone because that one he gave me, those people in poland where he had his concert, forgot to pack it in. he lent it from me because he could not get his.
he started shouting at me, "never trust a woman, she will fool you and betray you Never believe a woman any word" this was annoying. then he lost consciousness and I was the one who organized water, shouted at people to make space in the train. and he, seriously said I was not there for him whenever he needed me? I was always there for him. ALWAYS!
he wanted to search for work, almost had something, needed a laptop. 2 days later, there was a laptop. and he said it was rubbish because it was from the social store already a year old and if you wanted to change the battery, you would need to turn 2 little screws. he said it was too difficult and too complicated. why i would buy him such rubbish without asking him what he needed. i was like oh my god, you wanted a laptop you have one, it is fine, don't complain now. i do not have so much money to buy you the latest model. and one year is not that old.
he felt worse and worse. by this time i got the things for my new home office workplace. he said, these are all deceivers, only because bioresonancetherapy is not recognized by conventional medicine. i am working for a company which produces devices for bio resonance therapy. the fight started when he found my mini-rayonex under my pillow what we all got when starting work here. "Don't use it! it will rather cause you more dammage than it helps. I know it, my grannie got something like that, and now she has problems with her heart" and he showed me some video about some deceiver from poland who sells some fake devices and fake pills and very expensive pots… but this is not us! this is not my company, well, the company i am working in. this is not Rayonex.
I searched for proofs that we are no evils, but he did not believe it anyway. "Those deceivers, and my poor girlfriend is taking part in this" were his words. he was upset that we get everything. "poor anna, has to sit on a soft great chair, doesnt it reach out if you take one of your own chairs? Here in poland we have to work for all this, but you germans you get everything" those words made me upset, because, no, we do not get everything here. absolutely not.
after having problems with work and my cats, because of the dust they cause, I had to decide weather to loose my cats, to loose my work or to get more help or moove into another flat. i did not see a reason yet to moove out of my flat. loosing my work after 3 years of searching another? I must say I quit at this company i made my internship in, found another work 7 months later, and after mom died from cancer i also lost this job. then i searched for almost 3 years. so loosing it again? no way! more help? also no way! then I decided to give my poor cats away. for the sake of my work. also because other people also somehow forced me to. forced me to make changes to get on in life. It was hard, but i made it. I sent marcin back to poland to put myself back into order. but hardly that he was in poland, he did not contact me almost. he did not call, he hardly wrote, once i wrote to him and was fine, good tempered. he was like "Well, you are so well tempered, are you happy that i am away? maybe it has to be." i was like are you crazy man!
When he still was in germany, he was trying to make me jeallous. once i acted like i was still sleeping.i heard him writing messages to some girl, asking if she would like to live in his flat, telling her that i said it is too small for two (30 squaremeters) and said darling to her. I asked him about this. he said: "At last i made you jeallous! Do you think it is fine for me, when I am listening how you talk to these czechs, or talk about them? I know what you do when i am in bed. you are flirting arround with some czechs, and this marvin, maybe he should be your bf" but marvin is just a friend, and … czechs? if so, there is only one czech and it is a former school mate and we are just friends for god's sake, we have not seen each other for 12 years! while he spoke he took an empty carton and hit onto it. then he went to the bathroom and slamm the door.
I was so relieved when he left home. I could sort myself. I could calm down. I was somehow unhappy. I went to chatrooms to forget, got to know some czechs and one of them recommended me duolingo to learn czech, and it was so accessible, also the website. So that is why i was happy. After some time, i had another trining from work, and he asked me for some money as he said he had no food and no money to buy food. so i sent him some money. but another friend of mine told me, that he had another girl next to me and has never said a word about me, and we were engaged! so I made sure to tell this girl what is wrong, and yeah, she was as false as he was, but later on you will see why i say it. Now everything seems to go fine, thank god.