My parents were always very different. My mom was more of a crazy person. She wanted to experience things. She ran a fashion boutique and later trained as a belly dancer. Dad was the precise and correct one. Everything had to be in order. He completed his studies as a legal assistant. But the fall of the Berlin Wall was a drastic turning point for Dad. His training and work experience were worthless overnight, even though I didn't understand why. During my elementary school years, Dad worked all sorts of jobs. He was a taxi driver, helped in Mom's boutique, and was a boatman on the Spree. But money was getting tighter. That was the time when the Stasi story came out. As a child, I noticed it in the size of the aquarium. In our old apartment, we had a large aquarium that divided the room. My dad looked after it lovingly. When the fall of the Berlin Wall came down, we had to leave our apartment. The fashion boutique also went bankrupt. That was the time when it came out that Dad was a Stasi member. And suddenly we were living in a small apartment – I had a small aquarium in my room, which I shared with my mom. That was the end of my parents' relationship. The official separation, however, didn't come until years later; otherwise, it would have looked bad in society. My dad doesn't want to confront the past. He carries this conservative tradition from his mother's side within him – as well as a lot of pain and persistent existential angst. Discomfort with the new, the unfamiliar. I think he'd like to free himself from constraints. When I ask if he wants help coming to terms with it, it's an absolute no-go. For him, that means he's sick and disturbed. That generation simply doesn't reflect enough on what happened – not even my mother. Perhaps there's too much pain in that. My father was and remains a rule-abiding mother – my mother, the free woman, who always wanted more. Neither of them, however, has come to terms with the past.
