Whenever I traveled to Croatia, to Kutina, the town where I was born, it was always the same. I stayed at my parents' house and visited relatives, or met up with them. My aunt, maybe my uncle — the two of them aren't together anymore. With my aunt I felt a sense of connection, since she was the first attachment figure in my life. I always held on to her, and later clung to her, whenever panic seized me and I was full of fear of losing myself in this world.

My uncle was the only male attachment figure who truly saw me. He was the only one who was interested in me — more than my aunt, more than anyone else in the world. When their relationship fell apart, it felt to me as if my own parents were getting divorced. Even though they have children of their own, with whom I was never really able to build closeness, I saw and felt myself as their own child. The two girls came later; they grew up during the separation. For them, this family means something different than it does for me.

And I don't know what I mean in their lives. This time we saw each other at a family dinner, but we didn't talk much. After dinner, back at my parents' house, alone again in my small room, I felt empty. They weren't interested in me. They didn't ask me a single question — not how I was doing, what I was up to, where or how I live. I, on the other hand, asked them plenty of questions. I listened, I was interested in their lives. At some point I felt strange, almost foolish, because by then I was only communicating with them through questions.

I saw one of them again later, when I met up with my uncle. But it was the same there too. I told her a little about myself, but she didn't ask me a single question either. Maybe this isn't just how my family communicates: people talk. They talk about themselves, or about the world, or about anything else — but they don't ask questions. It's a pattern my parents have too. They talk a lot, often about the same things. Sometimes even within the same sentence. They repeat themselves, but they don't ask.

But this time it was different too. One evening I sat with my father on the balcony, and we talked. And he started asking me questions. He wanted to know how things were with the house, what all we'd done to it, how big it was. How the heating worked, what was still old and what was already new. What the neighbors were like, and the area around it. Where we could shop, whether there were doctors nearby. I was surprised by his interest — it's something he's never shown me before. It gave me a warm, comforting feeling. It's nice to be seen. Nicest of all by your own family.

My uncle was interested in me too — he always has been. But he was also someone who talked a lot about himself. Sometimes so much that I felt like a ghost, one that could turn invisible or vanish completely, and no one would notice. That's loneliness — not being alone, but the feeling of not being noticed or seen by the people around you. Maybe that's part of why my two cousins aren't interested in me either — maybe they weren't seen enough themselves. But that's only speculation. I can only be sure of what I experience myself, not of what I see in others.

But what left me most confused was that my aunt wasn't interested in me. She, too, never once asked what was going on in my life. Maybe it was always like this and I just never noticed, because in my own way I'm blind to other people's realities. It's just that this time I noticed, and it hurt. She was the most important person in my earlier life, and I've always carried that feeling for her inside me. But recognizing a reality can be painful — especially when it's as far removed from your own experience as it is in my case.

I'm back in Germany now. There are 1,200 kilometers between here and the world of my relatives. But the real distance between the lives within my family is far greater. I'm still holding on to a past that no longer exists, and never will again. The small child from back then no longer exists. The other people don't either. And others still, like my grandparents, are no longer alive. Time devours everything. Memories are the only thing that outlasts time for a while. But even they will vanish into nothing, like all of us, like everything.

And yet I can never quite let them go. And I don't want to. I can't let the people from back then go. They were my world, they were my universe. Every visit to my homeland is a trip into my past, with all the feelings I had to leave behind back then, when I was torn out of this paradise and taken to a foreign country. This time reality broke through, and I don't accept it. I hold on to my world, to my reality, and I will never let it go.