Uncensored

Part 3

I grew up when I moved to the U.S.
This is when I learned unconditional love.

I left Germany after high school to spend a year as an Au Pair. Little did I know that I would never return. My host dad as an Au Pair was a young single father who needed some help with his cute 5 year old son. He was a U.S soldier, also getting a Master's degree, and just couldn't do it anymore by himself.

The first night he sat down with me to tell me that he suffered from Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Up to this point I didn't even know what that was. Today I know everything about it. Today it's my life. He further told me that he was deteriorating and since he had never wanted to live in a wheelchair, he would most likely die in the next two years, but he just needed to get his affairs straight until then.

What a Welcome- "and "by the way I will shoot myself soon." Most likely while you're still here, so you can take my son on an airplane and bring him to his Mom."

I was overwhelmed, but I couldn't afford to show it. For the first time I felt like I was treated as an adult. So I did what I had come to do: I took care of Chuckles (nickname) and I took care of him. I helped out in whatever way I could, but it never felt like work. And he made me laugh, he treated me like a family member, never as an employee, from the beginning. Soon he started flirting with me, too. And I liked it. I soaked up all the positive attention and the feeling of being attractive to someone. I had been loved, been in loved before, but I hadn't felt physical attraction like this. Most of my life I had received messages that I was not physically attractive, that I needed to change, lose weight, or else I wasn't loveable.

The same summer we drove to Florida, spending two days in the car holding hands. The first night in the hotel, he came over and kissed me briefly, so quickly that I didn't realize what had happened until it was over. I fell asleep with a smile on my face that night. That summer in Florida was the summer of my dreams- the sun, the beach, the pool, cocktails, alligators, and sex. That summer he seduced me, and that summer I fell in love. In love with a depressed, suicidal, and chronically ill man.

Our first year was complicated.

We spent nights drinking and talking about his deteriorating health and his death. I cried, he cried. We were in love anyways.

Our first year was secret, because I was his Au Pair and he was still legally married.
He fought with his wife. And I became the other woman, the mistress. To this day I'm vehement that I'm not a homewrecker and that I did not destroy that marriage. I would have never started anything with a married man, if I hadn't been told in the beginning that it was over, they were separated, and getting a divorce. And although his Ex had agreed on having sex with other people, she became very jealous when she realized that it was more than sex, that he was falling in love. So she did what any psychopath would do: she used her son to blackmail him: he would never see his son again if he continued the relationship with me. She had the upper hand in the divorce, because as a U.S. soldier he could lose his job for adultery, and he couldn't risk losing his job because he needed his health care. So he did what he had to do: he told me that I would have to leave after my year was completed.

I broke down. I cried for days, didn't eat, hardly slept. I couldn't accept how someone so far away (as she lived in another state) and someone who had nothing to do with me ended up controlling my life, my fate. But then I took a deep breath and I thought about what I needed. I knew I wouldn't be able to live like this for the remaining months. There was no way I could live with the man I loved, take care of him, be with him, and yet not love him. So I told him exactly that. I said that I couldn't do it, and if he wanted to end the relationship now, I would leave the country. I asked him to continue our relationship until the year was over, and then I would go. And he agreed.

We had to hide our relationship from his Ex, still hiding It from almost everybody, but at least we were still together. Along the way something magical happened: he stopped getting worse, in fact he got a little better. He had started a new drug and after months it finally started to take effect. He became less depressed and suicidal. But I was still devastated, because I knew I'd have to leave him. I kept my pain to myself though. And because I thought a lot about my feelings and the truth, it became very clear to me that I loved him despite everything that was so wrong about it. He was sick, by his own words he was dying, he was older, and he was married. I made it my mission to show him life was worth living. I never let him see my tears, my pain, and my despair, because I was determined to enjoy every moment we had left and make the most of it.

Hope grew. Or maybe it was just despair. Or fantasy.

I hoped he would ask me to stay. He had to. How could he let me go? I saw us at the airport, before I was supposed to fly, asking me to stay. He had to, right? I was in more pain than I ever had been before, so much so that I thought I couldn't survive without him. Turned out, so did he. He did ask me one night, the night I had waited for so long. All this time I had loved him so much, had put all my energy into loving him, so that he would see that he needed me, too.

His Ex didn't know, but the summer her son visited her, she refused to return him to his father and decided to keep him, although it wasn't in Chuckle's best interest. And I went back to Germany, got a student visa and came back to the U.S.