bag of lemons fell to the floor. And as the lemons rolled across the floor, everything became very clear to me. That's how it had been. That's how it must have been.
Bianca Isabella Christine Tiator, German Psychoanalytical Association; Mainz Psychoanalytical Institute AT FIRST, I THOUGHT IT WAS ALL A MISUNDERSTANDING. She didn't write anymore. After all those years of our pen pal friendship. It took quite a while before I became seriously concerned. Perhaps it was even two years during which I unconsciously clung to the belief in our deep connection. Surely she just didn't have time, was in a stressful and demanding situation and therefore couldn't reply to the letters I continued to write to her. She was important to me. We were so close to each other from all our visits... like sisters... almost like twins. Without me knowing what it feels like to be a twin. But we had shared so much, confided so much of our teenage girl worries to each other, kept so many secrets together. It took a long time for the doubt to burrow its way from the depths to the surface of my consciousness. Was everything all right between us? Or had something happened? I desperately tried to remember our last encounter when I visited her in Caen on New Year's Eve two years ago... Had I said something wrong? Was she upset with me about something? Should I ask her about it in another letter? But... what if I was terribly mistaken? What if she wrote: ‘Hey, no! Everything's fine! Why are you thinking such nonsense? Don't you trust our friendship anymore?’ Shame. That was what I feared. Being ashamed, exposed with my paranoid thoughts that she might have turned away from me... might not like me anymore... might never want to see me again. What should I do? Julia Gerlach, DPG/German Psychoanalytic Society At first, I thought it was all a misunderstanding. But then it turned out that all the participants really did have to leave. "Grab your things, but quickly," the course instructor had said, and I had grabbed my bag and hastily thrown in my writing materials, notebook, and glasses. In my haste, I had left behind the half-empty water bottle, which I was particularly sorry about, because it was a souvenir from my last vacation on Fanø. The alarm blared unabated through the sprawling building and we hurriedly ran down the many steps and out into the open air. The sky had clouded over since noon and dark storm clouds were gathering over the city. The rumbling of the thunderstorm was more noticeable than audible, because the alarm was deafeningly loud even outside. The first flashes of lightning flickered across the black horizon and we fled from the beginning downpour under the trees that had provided us with shade during our lunch break.
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