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the pain and the feeling of being misunderstood. I once suffered with gastritis for weeks.
    My mother, who was also reeling from the break-up, transferred her way of dealing with it to me. Just as she swallowed the pain and uncertainty and carried on bravely, she demanded that I keep a stiff upper lip as well. She had a very difficult time understanding that, as a small child, I was completely incapable of doing so. When I became too emotional for her, she reacted aggressively to my outbursts. She accused me of feeling sorry for myself and either tried to tempt me with treats or threatened punishment if I didn’t stop.
    My anger at a situation that was incomprehensible to me gradually turned against the one person who had remained after my father had moved out: my mother. More than once I was soangry at her that I resolved to move out. I packed a few of my things in my gym bag and said farewell to her. But she knew that I wouldn’t get any further than the door and remarked on my behaviour with a wink, saying, ‘OK, take care.’ Another time I removed all of the dolls that she had given me from my room and placed them in a row in the hallway. I meant for her to see that I had resolved to lock her out of the realm that was my room. But, of course, these attempts to outmanoeuvre my mother were not a solution to my actual problem. When my parents split up, I had lost the anchors of stability in my life and was unable to continue relying on the people who had previously always been there for me.
    The disregard I suffered slowly destroyed my self-esteem. When you think of violence perpetrated on children, you picture systematic, heavy blows that result in bodily injuries. I experienced none of that in my childhood. It was rather a mixture of verbal oppression and occasional ‘old school’ slaps across the face that showed me that as a child I was the weaker one.
    It was not anger or cold calculation that drove my mother to do it, but rather an aggression that flared up, shot out of her like a flash and was doused just as quickly. She slapped me when she felt overburdened or when I had done something wrong. She hated it when I whined, asked her questions or queried any of her explanations – that too earned me another slap.
    At that time and in that area it was not unusual to treat children that way. Quite the contrary – I had a much ‘easier’ life than many of the other kids in my neighbourhood. In the courtyard I was able to observe time and again mothers screaming at their children, pushing them to the ground and pummelling them. My mother would never have done such a thing, and her way of casually slapping me across the face would certainly not have shocked anyone. When she slapped me in public, nobody intervened – though, for the most part, she was too much of a lady to even risk beingobserved. Open violence, that was something the other women in our council estate engaged in. I was required to wipe away my tears or cool my cheek before I left the house or climbed out of the car.
    At the same time, my mother also tried to assuage her guilty conscience with gifts. She and my father competed to buy me the prettiest clothes or to take me on outings at the weekend. But I didn’t want any gifts. At that phase of my life the only thing I needed was someone to give me unconditional love and support, something my parents were not able to do.
    A memory from my primary school years demonstrates the extent to which I had internalized the fact that I could expect no help from adults. I was about eight years old and had travelled with my class to spend a week on a school retreat to the country in the province of Styria. I was not an athletic child and did not dare play any of the wild games that other children liked to play. But I wanted to brave at least one attempt on the playground.
    The pain shot sharply through my arm as I fell from the monkey bars and hit the ground. I tried to sit up, but my arm gave out, causing me to