Huhu, my dearest Sunday Lovers,

this Sunday, I’m sharing one of my all-time favorite stories with you. It’s about leaving home for a journey of personal growth, learning a new language, and living abroad for a year. And somewhere along the way, we’ll talk about being a woman: our bodies, our health, and our boundaries.

Like every other girl, then and now, I was madly in love with Sex and the City. Obsessed with America. With cities like New York. And for a European girl like me, it all felt very far away. So I made a plan: learn English properly. In America. As an au pair. I’d been babysitting since I was 14, so I figured I was qualified. Little did I know what kind of qualifications my future self would need to survive.

But to tell this story right, we have to talk about being a young woman in this world. Sure, we all know the drill… but this part matters to me, and hopefully to a lot of young women out there. If it helps even one girl or grown woman, it’s worth it. So bear with me. The fun stuff is coming.

 

Let’s Talk About Boobs

I wasn’t sure if I should put this part into this week’s story. But since we’re embracing honesty and body positivity in almost every direction these days, why not? I see so many women openly talking about their wonderful boob jobs. So why not talk about mine? Even if mine went the opposite way.

For as long as I can remember, back to my early teens, I had big boobs. Bigger than anyone else’s in my class. At first, it was great. Don’t get me wrong, becoming a woman is wonderful. But at some point, the growing is supposed to stop. Mine didn’t.

By sweet sixteen, I had a wonderful pair of D cups. And they just kept going. I’m not sure if it was because I’d started taking the pill. But it certainly felt like someone had pressed the grow button and forgotten to turn it off.

Big boobs can be phenomenal. But honestly? At some point, they hurt on every level: emotionally, physically, and even financially. Do you know how expensive a bra gets once you’re in the oversized section? And you don’t want to buy grandma stuff. Back then, a decent one cost almost 200 bucks, which an 18-year-old girl simply couldn’t afford.

But even with the money aside, there was the emotional discomfort. And the physical pain. That much weight on your chest. All day. Every day. It never takes a break. And don’t get me started on the endless, horrible hunt for something to wear.

Back then, 90-60-90 was the dream. (That’s centimeters, my American friends. Or 36-24-36, if you prefer.) Mine felt more like 150-60-90. I could literally have tipped over. Face first. My cup size was an H. As in: Heavy. So no matter how much weight I lost, the boobs stayed. Yay.

And size wasn’t my only concern. Medically, there was barely any fat in them. Mostly glandular tissue. Which, as it was explained to me, means more tissue where cancer can grow. With breast cancer running in my family, it felt like Russian roulette.

So I did the math. I didn’t want that. Not the pain. Not the risk. I wanted a C, or even a D. A cup that felt like mine. A cup size that would finally let me shop at Victoria’s Secret. My name is Victoria, after all.

So I had a breast reduction. There. I said it. A breast reduction.

I hope that if even one woman reads this, she knows it’s okay to talk about the discomfort, the pain, the embarrassment. And that it’s okay to decide on a boob job the other way around.

So now you know the vulnerable part of this story. Let’s get to the fun part.

 

Welcome to America

Three months after my breast reduction, I got on a plane to America. “The best time of your life,” they tell you, while you’re paying 1,000 bucks for the program.

After a couple of interviews with different families, I picked one with three kids. I was placed near Washington, D.C., a bit outside the city. Not New York, but at least I was on the right side of the country. I chose school-age kids on purpose. The older two were already (almost) teenagers, and I really wanted to learn the language. A baby wasn’t going to give me quite the same conversational practice.

A lot of people romanticize being an au pair. Sometimes it lives up to the hype. Sometimes it’s hell. And you’re about to find out about my little hell on earth.

But first: young Victoria, with her brand-new small boobs, had made it to America. I was so excited. I couldn’t wait to buy my first bra in a size you can actually find in a store. Back then, that meant a lot to me.

I arrived at my new home, and the family seemed lovely. The deal: childcare, with my paycheck at the end of each week. Since the kids were old enough to handle most things on their own, my main job was organizing their calendars, driving them to all their activities, and sorting out double bookings. You know, when one kid had to be in one place and the other two somewhere else entirely. At the same time. I also did the laundry, kept things organized, and made sure the kids did their chores, like cleaning the cat litter box or the chicken coop.

They lived outside the city, surrounded by nature, on their own little piece of land. With chickens. And cats. The mom was a vet who made house calls in her vet car. The dad was some kind of manager. Three kids: Hannah, a teenager; Ethan, a boy approaching his teenage years; and little Maddie. A beautiful light-green house with a big wraparound porch.

Not NYC. But a wonderful American home. From the outside.

 

Lost in the Lyrics

Bonding with a teenage girl shouldn’t be that hard, I thought. After all, I had a sister at almost the same stage. Hannah was about 14 and, of course, a boyband fan. So music seemed like a promising place to start.

I asked her to play me her favorite songs. And honestly? There was some good stuff in there. Stuff I actually knew. “Oh, I love this one!” There I was, smiling enthusiastically, feeling like we were really connecting.

Until she explained what some of those songs were actually about. Drug abuse, among other things. Subjects that didn’t quite match the delighted look on my face.

Oh, well… apparently, enjoying a song and understanding it are two very different qualifications. I had come to America to improve my English. Clearly, there was room for improvement. As I was about to find out.

 

R-O-O-S-T-E-R

My next vocabulary lesson was considerably less musical. One afternoon, I reminded Ethan to clean the chicken coop with Maddie. Meanwhile, I was taking care of the dishwasher. Right when my head was deep inside it, someone came running in, yelling: “Tori, Ethan killed the rooster!”

Back then, I had no clue what a freaking rooster was. I just knew something might be dead. The letters kept spinning in my head. R-o-o-s-t-e-r. Still nothing. So I looked it up. And there it was: Ethan had killed the rooster. Basically, a chicken.

I went outside and found him lying on the grass with the rooster (aka chicken) in his arms. Its neck was looking… loose. So I asked what happened. What the f*** could possibly happen during an innocent coop cleaning? Unfortunately, the rooster had attacked him while he was cleaning. So he did the only thing he could think of: he grabbed his hockey stick and swung it like Tiger Woods at the Masters. Unluckily for the rooster, its neck broke.

Luckily, his mom was a vet. So I went back inside and knocked on her office door. Whatever progress I’d made with my English, my German accent showed up in full force for this announcement: “Your son killed a rooster.” (Please read this in your best German accent.)

She didn’t react. I repeated: “Your son killed a rooster. Like, a chicken.” She looked at me and said, “I know what a rooster is. Where are they?”

I led her to the crime scene. She pulled out her stethoscope, listened, and informed me that the rooster was dead. As if I hadn’t mentioned that three times already.

She looked at him, then at me, and said: “We’ll… well, he has to dig some graves.” Now, I’m not a native speaker. But even I caught the “s” at the end of that sentence. Plural. So I asked, “More than one grave?” And she said, dead serious: “Yes. We still have a hamster in the freezer. We have to bury him, too.”

Ethan started digging the graves in the garden, under a nice tree. It was really hot outside, the humidity through the roof, so I decided to help him. Never thought digging graves would turn into a bonding session. But here we were. I grabbed a shovel, pushed it deep into the ground, and started digging. Something felt off. At the same moment, Ethan yelled: “Stop! That’s our cat! Dig over there.”

Never have I had a more horrifying vocabulary lesson in my life.

 

Red Flag Number One (Not Counting the Rooster and the Hamster)

Unfortunately, animals weren’t the only gap in my vocabulary. Money was another.

At the end of my first week, I didn’t get paid. I was too shy to ask, so I waited. When my paycheck finally came, it was late. And less than what my contract said.

Three days later, it was already payday again. (That’s how late the first one had been.) Asking felt weird, since the last payment had only just come in. But I asked. And again, the paycheck was short. And two days late.

Along with it came a question: could I help clean the house more, now that the kids were going back to school and I’d be “free”? That wasn’t in my contract. I did it anyway.

After four weeks of late, short paychecks, I decided to stand up for myself and ask why. I wrote myself notes beforehand. Because, as established, my vocabulary had gaps. And “salary negotiation” was definitely one of them.

Spoiler alert: it did not go well. The mom got mad at me and told me she was having a hard time herself and was figuring it out.

In the end, the dad came to talk to me. He defended his wife, but he also made one thing clear: if it happened again, he would take care of my payments himself. Her struggles shouldn’t become mine.

 

Red Flag Number Two: Running on Empty

Well, since we’re already counting red flags, here’s one of my all-time favorites from my host mom.

This lady had the nerve to let me drive her kids around in a car that was almost always running on empty. So, out of necessity, I filled up the tank. With my own money.

When I asked for it back, she said: well, I used the car in my free time sometimes, so let’s call it even. So basically, she didn’t pay me right. And she also let me pay for the gas to drive her kids around.

The needle seemed permanently glued to the red zone. At some point, I caught myself thinking: Fine. Then we’ll just get stranded on the highway.

 

The Bra Moment

After finally getting one of my first full paychecks, I met some other au pairs. They became friends, and some of them are still close to me today. So naturally, we went shopping. At Victoria’s Secret, obviously. And I finally bought my first bra in my new size. A C cup.

My beautiful light-blue bra, with little flowers embroidered on it. Standing in that fitting room, looking in the mirror, I was happy with my breasts for the first time in a long time.

The amount of struggle I’d gone through to get that surgery was crazy. What felt like a thousand doctor’s appointments. And then, finally, the day itself. After the operation, I had drains in my breasts for the wound fluid. After two days, they were supposed to come out. They got stuck. They had grown into the tissue, and they had to be pulled out anyway. Never in my life have I felt pain like that.

But it was all worth it. For this one moment in the fitting room. My bra moment.

I didn’t just get a bra that day. For the first time in years, I felt like myself again. At home in my own body. And yes, there were happy tears. In a Victoria’s Secret fitting room. Very glamorous.

 

A Hole in the Plan

So much for wearing my brand-new bra. Back at my American home, a few days later, I noticed that my wounds had kind of… opened up. They hadn’t healed the way they were supposed to, probably because I’d been moving around and doing so much.

My wounds got really bad. And because the surgery had happened in Europe, before my stay, I had no insurance coverage for it in the US. I guess that’s the full experience of being a normal American: no insurance, just sitting there in pain.

So my options were: go to the emergency room and pay about 600 bucks, which I didn’t have. Or fly back home. I knew that if I told my parents, they’d insist I come home. But I didn’t want to give up.

So I told my host mom. She was kind of a doctor. A vet, okay, but still, a doc at some point. She said she couldn’t help me. Nice.

Anyway, I took care of myself. I went to the pharmacy and tried everything to get the wound to close again. I literally had a hole in my breast.

Meanwhile, I was back in my decidedly unglamorous medical grandma bras, while my lovely new bras and lingerie waited in the closet. I kind of noticed they weren’t always quite where I’d left them, but I figured I’d moved them while looking for something to wear. Sometimes, I’d look at that light-blue bra and make it a promise: soon. There I was. Talking to a bra.

 

Cold Case

By early fall, I had a routine. Kids at school, tasks done, host mom in her office: I was out of the house.

One day, though, Maddie (the youngest) was sick, so I stayed home with her. We were on the couch watching TV when someone rang the bell at the back door. I opened it to a man I’d never seen before.

“Hi, I’m here to collect the animals.”

The animals? Which animals? What had I missed this time? Then Maddie appeared behind me. “He’s here for Mom’s dead animals. They’re downstairs.” Sorry. Her what?

“If it’s okay with you, I know where everything is,” the man said. “I come once a week.” Once. A. Week.

He headed down to the basement. I’d never been down there. Honestly, I’d never even noticed there was a door to the basement. (In my defense, I didn’t notice a lot of things in that house.) From the top of the stairs, I could see it: a very large chest freezer. Inside: a German shepherd. In a bag. A dog in a freezer bag.

When he carried it upstairs, I could see the outline of its body through the plastic. “Just one today,” he said. “I’ll need the paperwork.” Of course. There was paperwork.

So I called my host mom: “There’s a man here collecting a dead dog.” Her answer: “Oh, good. Thanks for calling.” She told me what to fill in on the form. I handed it over, and off went the dog. To be cremated, as I learned.

And that’s how I found out we had a chest freezer for dead animals in the basement. Complete with a weekly pickup service. Nobody had thought to mention this particular household arrangement to the au pair. Suddenly, “we still have a hamster in the freezer” sounded a lot less random.

I’m sure there was a perfectly good reason why some animals got buried in the garden and others got picked up for cremation. But at the time, I had just one question: Could someone maybe have mentioned the pickup service before handing me a shovel?

 

The Towel Incident

A few days later, on my day off (a Sunday, by the way), one of the parents asked me to watch the kids for a bit because they wanted to hit the store real quick. I said sure. I’d be home for the next two hours anyway before meeting my friends.

I went downstairs for breakfast and coffee on my own. Watched some TV. A totally innocent Sunday morning. When it was time to get dressed, I went back up to my room. The door had been closed the whole time.

I opened it. And there it was. Not so innocent anymoooore. There was Ethan. Half-naked, in nothing but a towel. In my room. His back to the door. And whatever he was doing in there, it didn’t look like drying off.

I was so shocked that I immediately pulled the door shut again. He came out, towel still around his hips, with a smile on his face, and said he’d been in there to dry off after his shower. I asked, “Why in my room?” His answer? “Your room gets more sunlight than mine.”

Later that night, I tried to talk to his parents. Because clearly his mom didn’t hate me enough yet, so why not make it worse? They said he’d already told them: he was just drying off after his shower.

Let me get this straight. Two grown adults, buying their preteen son’s story that he needed to dry off. In nothing but a towel. In the au pair’s room.

Awesome. I could literally watch my chances of surviving this conversation shrink.

 

You Hate American Cars

And yet, let’s give credit where it’s due: most of the time, my host dad was the good guy in this house. Honestly, he was one of the reasons I stayed strong. He patiently taught me the rules of American football. He made sure my paychecks finally showed up. And he let me drive his cars. Really nice cars. With gas in them. Which, in this house, was not a given.

Of course, his wife (my host mom) was not a fan of this arrangement. How dare I drive off in her husband’s car with a full tank, while she had to pay for her own gas?

But I have to admit: within a few months, I’d managed to destroy two tires. In my defense, out there, gravel roads were everywhere. Basically the Wild West. Was it the roads? Maybe my driving? An unfortunate combination of both? I’ll let you decide.

After flat tire number two, I was mortified. And scared I’d just pissed off my one and only ally in this house. But my host dad had his own theory. He looked at me with a perfectly straight face and asked: “Tell me. Do you hate American cars?”

Then he laughed it off. That’s what I liked about him: he took things with humor. He knew my start in this house hadn’t been easy. And neither had anything since. His wife did not laugh. She pointed out that tires cost money. Fair enough. The lovely lady had a point.

But for the record: I never meant to start an expensive personal feud with the American car industry. Luckily, I was about to go on vacation.

 

Five Days of Freedom

My friends and I went up to Canada to see Niagara Falls. After collecting enough red flags to decorate a Fourth of July parade, I needed this. And we had an absolute blast. We met the nicest Canadians (the stereotype is true), partied way too much, and, oh right, saw the Falls. Awesome. Five days of feeling alive again. With a side of anxiety about whatever disaster was waiting for me back home.

I can already hear some of you asking: why didn’t you just leave? Switch families?

Well, first of all, I didn’t want to give up. And I still believe today that those kids have good souls. But I was also scared. Scared I wouldn’t find a new family. And even if I did, who could promise me it would be any better? A new family could mean a new city. Leaving my friends behind. Starting over, alone.

And I knew it could get worse. I knew the au pair chats and groups. I’d read the stories.

 

Someone’s Been Sleeping in My Bed

Before I left for Canada, I’d offered my room to my host mom’s mother, who was coming to stay as a guest. An old lady shouldn’t have to sleep on the couch. So when I got back, I’d take the couch for one night, since our guest would be leaving the next day.

After a 16-hour bus ride, I finally came home. All I wanted was sleep. And surprise, surprise: who was already asleep in my bed, as if that were the most normal thing in the world? Ethan. That little brat. His way of saying: welcome back to hell.

I took my pillow and went to another couch. Nobody would believe me anyway…

With love, and happy Sunday,
Victoria x