I was born in Germany, some ten years after the Second World War. I didn’t experience the war, but my parents did. War does strange things to people; it dims the light in their eyes. Back then, there was no word for it, and I did not know it was not normal. The other kids’ parents in the neighborhood were much the same – zombies navigating their existence, taking one halting step in front of the other. I know my parents did their best under the circumstances. Still, it would also be fair to say that they failed me, making me feel, in their overwhelm and exhaustion, that I was a great burden to them. That I was far more than any parents should ever have to endure; never worthy of praise or encouragement, only ever of consternation and criticism. Ultimately, it shaped how I saw myself as entirely unlovable and stupid. So dark inside that if anyone truly knew me, they would shrink away in horror. It’s not the best footing from which to start out in life.

But then again, perhaps it was by watching my parents live their half-dead lives, utterly numbed from being squeezed inside a box so small they couldn’t even take one cleansing breath, that I came away with my unrelenting inner drive never to give up. I didn’t know where I would eventually go or what I would do. Still, I always knew that I would never be like them, living a life full of such vast impossibility. How else to explain the interminable compulsion that kept me moving forward, no matter how deep the morass, how utterly hopeless my state, and how excruciating my pain? So much pain lay ahead, but undeniably, this inexorable drive in me would not let me quit. It kept me surviving when others might long have given up and died. I guess I have my parents to thank for that.

They had come from vastly different backgrounds: my father from wealth, my mother from the other side of the tracks. They had met at work. He was a movie-star- handsome young executive trainee. She was a twenty-two-year-old war widow with two infant sons who worked in the typing pool, barely making ends meet. She had seemed exotic to him, with her golden blond hair and sad, blue eyes. He loved that she was beautiful without any makeup. She was so very different from the glamorous women in his circles. He, in turn, had shown her a world she had never known existed. However, when they married, it was a rude awakening for them both. My father had clearly not considered that by marrying, he would, in one fell swoop, go from being a rich man’s son, living on his parents’ palatial estate and supported by a generous stipend, to being the sole provider to a family of four, scraping by on a junior executive’s salary. To be sure, he loved my mother, but he could never quite overcome the resentment he felt over his headlong plunge into the middle class. Quickly, his world-wise charm eroded and gave way to dark moods and a volatile, explosive temper. My mother had always been used to managing with very little. Still, it was far from what she had imagined life to be, married to the chairman of the board’s son. At the very least, she had hoped for a good role model for her sons. Instead, my father’s unpredictable tantrums had gotten in the way of any burgeoning parental relationship, and the boys had simply grown to hate him.

My brothers were twelve and fourteen years old by the time I came along; my mother despaired when she learned that she was pregnant with me. “An accident” was the phrase I got used to hearing, and my parents never missed an opportunity to drive home the point. Yet, despite my mother’s overwhelm and depression, her care for my physical being was beyond reproach. In our home, all the traditions were strictly adhered to. There was a little basket with eggs and candy on everyone’s plate on Easter Sunday morning. A tree was decorated at Christmas. My mother even took my brothers and me to Midnight Mass, although we weren’t religious. Nothing in my lovely, clean, orderly, middle-class existence foreshadowed the future that would await me, making my fall so very inexplicable, my failure all the more shocking. How could it be that I would plummet to such a lowly state when my clothes, my bedsheets, and even my underwear were so immaculately ironed? Of course, no amount of ironing would make up for the fact that my mother could not find it in her heart to love me. For love, I fled to my brother Nikolai.