The Dragons Besides Me

To be honest, there are quite a lot of dragons besides me during my life and somehow, the most inspirations comes from women. Suddenly, the question is, about which of them I wanna talk here. Of course, I could talk about my adoptive mum, since she created a lot of me, but I have my doubts that anyone wants to read a horror story at the international women day. I also could have talked about my biological mum, since my strength is coming from her. But even that seems wrong to me.

When I read The Dragon Besides Me, the first woman who hit my mind was Elisabeth Mann-Borgese, who inspired me and I really miss talking and discussing oceanic topics with her. But I don't think that I need to introduce the youngest daughter of Thoman Mann to the world. Then I thought about Leni Riefenstahl, who inspired me as a photographer and videographer. And besides that, her movies have a direct influence of the stories I write. I sometimes imagine how she would direct the movie to the story.

And I could go on with this list, but neither of them is the right one. At least not for now. There is someone special I actually want to write about. From all the women above, she most likely had the biggest influence on my life: my former girlfriend Stephanie Thomas.

Like me, Stephanie "Steph" Thomas was born September 6th, 1978 yet in Guernsey. We met for the first time in 1995, when I visited my grand-aunt who lived in St. Martin, Guernsey.

We instantly fell in love with each other, yet the long distance between us gave us a hard time, so that we were more like an on-off couple. Whenever we had the chance to meet, we did, but between those meetings we also date others. So it happened that we both enjoyed parenthood with a different partner. Her son, named after me, was born in 1997 and my son was born in 1998.

Ever since we met, we started to write and compose songs together, once in a while we performed our songs on stage. With her, for the first time, I enjoyed the life I always desired. She was the woman, who showed me, that not every female dragon is a terrifying monster who wants to torture me. Until I met her, my experience with women had not been the best.

After she gave birth to her son, she moved to Glasgow, where she lived until her death in 2023. Although, her passion was music, she gave it up to be a single mum. Her son became her strength, her fulfilling reason in life. As our relationship, even her music career had some returning moments, especially when we were together.

When my life in Hamburg became unbearable, she did not hesitate to bring me over to Glasgow. And for few years we actually enjoyed a family life together. At least for a few month, we were the happy couple we desired to be. After those first month, she convinced me to return to Hamburg, to bring my Secondary School certification to a successful end. So I started to live part time in Glasgow, part time in Hamburg and I made my certification.

However, during this time, we also started to drift further apart and decided to finally end things between us in 2008. One of the reason was our daughter, who suffered infant death after three weeks. The token of our love vanished without any plausible reason. Neither of us managed her death well at that time.

Stephanie was a woman who easily could give support to everyone, knew how to be there and always helped everyone to overcome every obstacle. She also was a woman, who knew what she wanted and how she could get it.

In more than one way I owe my life to her. During our thirteen years together, she kept me alive and gave me a reason to go on. Most of all, whenever something terrible happened in my life, she was there for me, stood beside me, no question asked. And she was like that with everyone in her life.

The last time I spoke to her, was a few weeks before cancer took her away. Even though, she knew she would die, she was still full of dreams and plans in case a miracle would save her.

Her memory will linger through my life and my lifetime achievments because without her, I am not sure that I still would be alive anymore. She will always be the woman I love from the bottom of my heart.

She once said to me: "Our strength comes from within the mind. Never forget that."

Thank you for reading!