Chapter 29

Denial

I believed life is what you make of it.

I believe I am in control over my actions and reactions.

I thought depression was for someone without goals or for someone who let others influence them.

I told myself that I was in charge of my health and wealth and no one dictates what I can, or can’t, do.

I told people how tough I was, that nothing could influence me.

I called people who needed a therapist weak. I had no problems. My life was under control I proclaimed. If something was not the way I wanted it, it was someone else’s fault.

I was wrong.

I explained away my failures with men by insisting that other people influenced me.

I knew I was always right, like my father and no one should question me. Everybody else was wrong. Still, when a little warning signal went off, I ignored it.

It was when I decided to leave Germany for the United States that I had to admit my life was not as perfect as I would believe.

I had to admit I was looking for something all my life, but had no idea what it was.

I could not admit the real reason but I felt I would find it here, the place I was living for 42 years.

Sometimes I said I was leaving because the German people were too narrow minded. Other times I blamed it on Germany’s damp, cold weather and I complaint about the slow moving German court system that had made me wait 5 years regarding a robbery in my business. No matter what it was, I never looked inside for the real reason.

At the time I did not owned or recognized any deep feelings. How could I? I learned very early to repress what I felt.
It was much easier to blame circumstances or other people for what went wrong.

What I could not verbalize was a feeling, that I had to distant my self from the place, the people who reminded me with every breath, that nothing will change unless I change myself.

The more I repeated my story, the more I realized it wasn’t the real truth. I blamed the strict and the dictatorial attitude among the German people without connecting it to my childhood, to my father.

The word denial came alive the day I said yes to Alex’s proposal. This was the day I begun to face reality, - I was running away from my past.