‘I shouldn’t have told anyone about us and now I was reduced to his erased past’

Elsbeth (60): ‘Six years ago I changed jobs, from orchestra member to primary school teacher. When I met the director, I squeezed the warm hand of a balding man with a tummy. The world of education turned out to be rather inaccessible. I got on well with the kids, but it was more difficult with my colleagues. It was as if they all had the same hobbies, and none of them matched mine. So when in my second year the principal offered to help with the usual preparations for the new school year just before the end of the summer holidays, I gratefully accepted. Finally someone to be with unions.

Great support

Together we dragged the swept aside tables back into place, set up the notebooks and pencils. I made the cards with the names of the students and put them on the table tops, such a class arrangement is always quite a journey. In the meantime, he told how he raised two teenage sons on his own, how little freedom of movement this gave him, but that of course he had no choice.

With veiled jealousy he listened to my stories about the music and the journeys I had made. He was the only one of my colleagues who turned out to be interested in classical music. After the start of the new school year, he regularly walked into my classroom after school and we chatted. When I went to camp with my group of 8, he went with me. I felt very supported again. Not in a flirty or dominant way, but with respect. He helped me with the werewolf games and the whole organization, which gave me relief and the appreciation I needed.

A few days after we got back, I was sitting in the school library with some library moms and saw him looking through the window. I was remarkably happy to see him. Suddenly I realized that I had missed him on the weekend between camp and the next school day. He also reacted differently to me. He walked into the library with a slight hesitation and an insecurity I’d never seen before. In the days that followed, I started paying attention to my clothes, how I smiled and moved. My words no longer rolled out of my mouth without thinking, I began to weigh them.

Visits in my class

His visits to my class after school became more frequent, and sometimes we would spend hours talking. That lasted a year and the evening of the final barbecue I chose my new yellow dress after much hesitation as if something big depended on it. We spent the whole evening together, he thought the yellow looked good on me. I saw the looks of colleagues. At the end of the evening only the two of us were left and he said: I’d like to see how you live.

That’s how it started, between me and the chubby headmaster. I had always loved flamboyant musicians and this crush surprised and amused me. But being with him was so easy for me that it was as if energy was being released. For me, as a child from a large family and as an orchestra member who is used to always serving the greater whole, it was nice to be carried in that way. Our relationship gave me a place in my new world and was proof that I had made the right choice with my major step. And of course I understood when he said: you have to realize that my two boys always come first. But of course, I replied, children always come first.

Fear of gossip

We saw each other on the weekends and our colleagues were not allowed to know anything, because that would only lead to gossip. I sometimes asked: why so secretly and why don’t you involve me more with your children? But he and his children were traumatized by the loss of the mother and formed a closed whole. By what right could I claim my place in their trinity? How could I say on a Saturday night: no, I don’t want you to go home, leave those kids alone. His reasons for going were so noble that they left me powerless. And so we slipped further and further away from how we had started.

The man who had been so curious about me, with whom I went to the theater, with whom I listened to music, shut me out by turning in himself. The few times I did meet his children, they sat down playing games. One day he announced that he was going into therapy. Everything had to change, more time for themselves was the goal. And for me, I asked, do you have more time for me? Yes, also for you. After that I didn’t hear from him for a while, because he had to work on himself. It was Christmas holidays, nothing, it was New Year’s Eve, nothing, New Year’s Day, nothing again. I resisted the temptation to call him. Leave him, this isn’t about you.

Reduced to an erased past

In February, when I had another job in the meantime, a colleague applied for a job with him. She returned enthusiastically. “Such a nice man,” she said. “And you know what’s funny, I was still studying with his current girlfriend.” She looked at my shocked face in amazement and a little later I saw two lovers on Facebook on New Year’s Eve scurrying through the Austrian snow. I saw them eating an apple pie in the Kip caravan he’d told me about so many times, but had never taken with him. “I wish everyone the love we share,” the woman wrote.

He and I had been together for six years. He always canceled our vacations at the last minute. No one I was ever allowed to tell about us and now I was reduced to his erased past. I texted him. “Yeah, shit for you,” he texted back, “it happened to me.” A few months later, last April, I suddenly saw him walking. I got out of the car. He asked kindly: hey, how are you? When I told him what a klutz and a coward he was and how much pain I was still in, he just nodded.’