A day after drinking the cocktail of a mixture of feelings, that I described as a focktail, I very soon heard myself swear, and swear again, and swear louder, until I heard the term f*ck exploding out of me. It felt as if something inside of me burst open, and the cracks of it were so frustrated and that they finally spoke up, and since they aren’t the most educated or developed parts of me, they tend to reverb back to four letter words.

I cussed in CAPITALS.
I cussed in exclamation marks!!
I cussedcussed double.

I shouted in every room of my parents’ house. From their office, to the garage, through the pantry, in the hallway, up the stairs. I undressed swearingly in my old bedroom, walked nakedly upset to the bathroom, stepped in the tub angry, while running the water, which, as water tends to do, just takes its freaking time to fill what I wanted to drown myself in.

Let’s just lose the star in f*ck.
What a fucked up day.

The blissy feeling that I had yesterday had turned into an emotional blizzard. I was livid. Heated. Even raking leafs in the front yard as a distractor didn’t go my way because of the wind. Luckily my last brain cell ushered me to go back inside the house before the neighbor could hear and see me lose my cool. If I had my way, I would have poured boiling water in the tub, to not only sink in it, but also to simmer myself to death.

Make me feel anything but this!
Or -better yet- make me understand my feelings!

Would I turn to alcohol? Absolutely not. There was no amount or percentage of alcohol that could handle or numb (or even aggravate) the frustration that had totally festered in my brain, tying knots in every psychological pathway that up till then was a perfectly fine way to do life, at least for this Saturday. It felt as if I had swallowed mud.

But now that I brought up alcohol, I can say that what would have helped me was smashing a bottle or two against a wall somewhere. The bottles were not mine however, so I smashed myself to pieces.

If there is one thing that I have such a hard time dealing with, it’s the concept of disappointment. Teach me what disappointment is, share its determinants, show me how it dresses itself up, presents itself to me, how it feels, and explain to me why it feels so foreign, and tell me how can I deal with it.

Can someone arrange a date with the brother of disappointment, so at least I can ask some questions about his upbringing? How disappoint was as a kid and why he became so elusive and obtrusive? What name should I ask for if I am sitting at the bar waiting for this brother date? I hope he doesn’t bring wine as a gift.

I had such high hopes for my Saturday. To do some work for my dad, get myself some relaxation in the tub, work on my puzzle, and top the day off with some pizza.

But the only thing I got to was part of the puzzle that mama had bought me for my birthday. Other than that the day sucked so bad, that if someone had broken the lazy button on my writing skills and ushered me to make a lame word joke, I would have said (and drank) a sucktail. Ok, enough with the word distortions.

What got me over the edge was the project that my dad asked me to help him with. It frustrated me to the point where I could not understand that this wasn’t a matter of me not wanting to help him, but the irrevocably incapability to do so.

But since incapable isn’t a feeling, I had no way to process what was going on inside of me. Everything inside me wanted OUT. But my skin didn’t budge, so the chaos just got bigger and bigger inside of me. The only opening was my mouth, but honestly? Fuck didn’t even cover a fraction.

I felt such a failure for failing. I need to tell my dad that I can’t do what he asked me, because I just don’t understand what he is asking me to do, even though he has explained it at least five times and I can even understand what he is asking me and I can five times repeat what he just said.

But something about this project is asking me to lay out a structure before I can begin work, while my brain needs to have a structure first in order for me to begin.

It’s like someone asking me to do them a favor an buy an airline ticket.
Me asking: to what destination?
And them replying: just buy the ticket.
Me asking: for which date?
And them replying: if you don’t want to help me, you could just have be honest about it.

It also reminded me of my past year of creative therapy, where every time I asked the therapist when the project needed to be done. Or I asked what we were going to make. Her answer was always unsettling or at least not helpful.

It’s done when we decide that it is done, she said.
And it will become what we decide it to be, she said.

Noooo, just tell me what you want me to chisel out of this stone and tell me the deadline of it. And these two life-support questions were exactly the wrong ones to ask in a creative process. And the nonanswers that I received were exactly what pushed me over the edge every time. I can’t work without structure or borders. Not even sure what edge she pushed me over..

My boyfriend of eleven years did the same when he asked me to get him some candy from the store.
Me asking: which one?
Him replying: just get whatever.
Me saying: they don’t sell that brand.

And in a desperate attempt to understand myself better, also hoping that the other one understands me, I frantically come up with more examples, like seeing a man peeing against a tree. I sob, because I too tried peeing standing up, but everything dripped into my pants and into my socks and shoes. The guy turned around and said: how could you even think you could do the same? I have a Tinkle, you have a Twinkle. Of course you can’t pee against a tree.

Why do I keep thinking I need to be Barbabright, but also able to morph into Barbazoo when someone takes me to a forrest, or Barbalala when someone takes me to a concert. I am just not wired like that. I am attached to ME, and that makes it impossible for me to be at places that my wire isn’t long enough for.

How is that failure?
Why should I be ashamed of that?

I still have this faulty idea that me being unable to do something has to do with me being lazy or not trying hard enough. I would probably be as hard on myself for not being able to hug someone when I had no limbs. What I perceive as a moral failure, is basically nothing more between a mismatch between task and predisposition. Is a zebra upset he can’t reach the leafs that are waving at him from 19 feet high? Is a tiger complaining that he doesn’t come in black-and-white coloring?

How does acceptance feel? Is that this cool bigger brother of disappointment? Is he the one I’m supposed to have drinks with later today? Maybe we could go and sit in a bath sub somewhere.

Still being in my dad’s office, I felt filled with defeat, even though nobody was watching, but in my heart I knew the world would soon find out. I turned the computer off as if I was pulling the plug of my own existance and walked away from the computer, away from the project I so wanted to work on but couldn’t.

I went into the living room, where I saw how the day prior I had laid all the thousand puzzle pieces out on seven trays. Let’s just work on a little part of it, to 1) calm down or 2) feel like at least I am capable of something. And in sitting in the calm of the living room, missing my mother immensly, but at the same time being so grateful they took their second holiday this year, it hit me and I understood why I was able to do deal with the blue and white scramblings.

The puzzle can become only one thing and it’s already printed at the finish line, being on the cover of the box. It was also calming because I know that all the pieces are tiny promises that they will be needed. Besides, the designer of this puzzle is so professional that each piece fits only one way, and you immediately feel it when it doesn’t.

This is what I need. At least for this day.
And maybe that date..

As I am sipping mint tea, I think it might as well have been the weirdest cocktail. A cocktail of feelings. Let’s call it a focktail, with ingredients like calmness, complacency, decency, adultery (wow, that is apparently not how to conjugate the feeling of being an adult), hope, contentment, love, gratitude, hope, forwardness, urge, desire and strength,..

If I had to put it into a glass picture, it’s the scene in a boring movie (or more a snippet of some CCTV edit) where you just bought something you really needed because it broke, and you bought it without any further consideration, more out of necessity, like breathing. The cashier runs your card and you see the payment go through so you can walk out with that thing under your arm.

Perhaps a feeling of being DONE?

If someone would ask me to rate how I was doing and gave me a scale ranging from zero to ten I would answer that I don’t have a number for what or how I feel, even if you would classify zero as not good and ten as super good. I am not scalable. On a scale of that adjective, however, I’d definitely tick a ten.

But now that I am standing on that mental parking lot, with that ‘thing’ under my arm, that thing that I apparently needed and now have, I have a feeling of now what? Looking around me I see so many cars I can get into, with so many destinations to go to.

And as I hear the glass door slide together to close behind me, I am once again reminded how I am so wired and used to, and experienced in so, so, so much chaos, disturbing and alarming unsafety, anger, resentment, threat, walking on tippy toes and eggshells, waking up from nightmares, having one medical issue after the other, being preoccupied with my parents’ dooming death or strained relationships with siblings, that when all these things are absent in my mind (not in reality), their echo leaves just the loudest of silence that I have no idea how to fill.

Luckily alcohol doesn’t present itself as a filler. The suggestion to raise a glass to celebrate (and ruin) my calm would be the same kind of weird to wallpaper your living room and then go and stay at the neighbor’s house.

I can even sum up turmoil that is literally going on around me, that somehow doesn’t really faze me, one of them being yet another car that was set on fire behind my apartment, at 1AM, sirens and all, because a couple of roofers can’t settle their beef on which roofs in which quarter of the city is officially theirs to come fix when you call them. It’s been going on for years now, and people are actually getting killed because of it. I find it as weird as when, for example Domino’s weren’t allowed to deliver their pizza in certain areas of the city, because New York pizza wants to deliver there. And to make sure you understand how serious I am about my pizza, I’m gonna burn yours, or shoot your driver.

Another thing that is going on is that someone in my neighborhood is running a scam, and uses a couple of my neighbors’ addresses, including mine, to first order stuff online, to have it sent to our place, but then intercepts the parcel before the postman can ring our bell. This way, the dude gets his parcel (let’s just kid ourselves that girls don’t do this), and we get the problems in the form of bills, summons and bailiffs.

Oh, and let’s not forget that person who keeps jerking off in the middle of the night in our communal garden. A green, well-kept flowery place you can only get into if you have the key of the fence, which only us residents have. No gender hypothesis needed in this case: one of my neighbors has ‘it’ on camera. I wish she would have just given me the verbal summary. I am so glad I am a sound sleeper so I didn’t hear him come in the garden (pun intended), since sound travels far up in this square-built building and I love sleeping with the windows open. It reminds me that it still is not winter.

But somehow I am just filled with bliss. Let’s go with blissy. If I were forced to compare the feeling to an animal, I would point to the colorful microscopic dust that’s on a peacock butterfly’s wing.

And in that blissful state I will spend my Saturday working. My dad asked me to join him again in a major project. He said: I like how meticulous you go about things, I enjoy working with you, and two of us get the job done quicker, but these three reasons could have easily been uttered in a different order.

So, that’s my Saturday! The world upside down, because normally people would love to not work on a weekend. But I love working on this project, our project. Proud that my dad trusts the choices that I will make, trusts me with access to the code of certain software, where I can do a lot of (financial) damage if I make a typo and accidentally press save instead of undo. The attention I need for this project is so intense that I hardly blink or breathe. If I were a computer myself, I would use 99,9 percent of my processor every second that I am at work. It’s incredibly satisfying to be in such hyperfocus. I think that a butterfly won’t even notice me move.

What else?
Maybe working on a puzzle.
Maybe sipping on my focktail.
Maybe order a pizza after?
Definitely feeling blissy through it all.

I really do hope that I will see you again, the doctor said as she walked me to the space where the twenty chairs were reclining nineteen people, leaving me no choice but to take the one open spot for me to sit, so that I too, could have my blood drawn, in my case to provide a test sample first, for them to see if it (or I) was of any use for the blood bank.

They wanted to check what I just verbally vowed to.
Drugs?
No.
Alcohol?
That’s drugs too, but no.

I wanted to share a little something about my recovery from addiction, but on paper they only gave me a box to tick. It made me think of how strange I find it that society makes a distinction between being single and being divorced. I mean, in both cases I am without a partner. The same thing with the distinction between married and widowed. In both cases the marriage hasn’t been annulled. Why isn’t there a category for me to tell that at one point I was deadly addicted to drugs but not any more? I carry a richness of experience from that and a simple NO to drugs doesn’t begin to cover that.

This was the start of the talk with the doctor and the talk turned out to be more than lovely. It was a woman roughly my age, whom I suspected to have autism, but to lessen the negative connotation of that, I will side with the Māori on this one, who use the term takiwātanga, meaning in their own time and space, which immediately points the finger to society for black-and-whiting someone’s blueprint.

The doctor and I related to one another on so many things that society frowns upon when mentioned. I just love wrinkled conversations or jump to topics you are only allowed to discuss when you have a solid base and trust. But somehow we just dove in, as if the bottom was laid because we both sat down with a closed door behind us.

It felt as if we had been or at least could be friends, and when she uttered the words that she hoped she would see me again, I could have sworn she meant that she wanted to keep in touch but didn’t dare asking because it could look unprofessional. It was because of the cadence in the words. Her bodily position. The slowness of her speech and walk. The timbre and emphasis on what she said between those words.

And for a moment I considered exchanging phone numbers.
For another moment I considered going back the next day, to just say hi.
The third moment played the tape forward. I saw myself getting hurt again.

I cycled home and stayed home the next day. I did think about how encounters like this that make life cool and livable for me. The whole being in the moment thing. I liked her and she liked me. I love being in this kind of bubble with another person, not being boxed in, not minding time, and she not minding her job basically, because she was only there to fill in some paperwork, but we ended talking for at least an hour, about everything that’s outside the scope of any work. We both agreed that it is stupid that women over forty and with a psychiatric resume can have a baby by themselves, but are not allowed to donate their eggs to someone who wants to get pregnant.

I don’t remember her name, nor her face, but when she called yesterday, for the result of the blood sample, I immediately recognized her voice. Somehow my brain ‘saw’ her, and I saw her posture. Her choice of clothing. The way she did her hair. The way she walked and what space she took up doing it. She had little leader vibes coming from the way she held her papers. Her voice was unique like the DNA in her blood.

It had been three months or so, since I had been at the blood bank, and I thought that perhaps they had forgotten me, or didn’t bother to check my sample, since I wasn’t allowed to donate blood or plasma, because of my thin veins and low hemoglobin.

The doctor on the other hand had stepped out of the bubble and I was reduced to a box again. She didn’t remember who I was and was surprised that I recognized her voice. She almost wanted to ask if it was actually her that I met three months ago. When the needle burst my bubble like that, I was splattered with the tiniest of shame drops covering me from all sides. They formed a weird cape of embarrassment covering me and I deliberately pretended not to remember the conversation, while comforting myself outside the bubble that I had felt with her that I knew had substance, but no permanency.

If I would bring the memories back to her, I would run the risk of being perceived as a stalker, I mean, why would any passerby remember even the shadows of thousands of alphabetic letters of a whole sixty minute conversation with an anonymous doctor up to three months later? That is not loving, or having good memory, that is just flat out creepy as hell. I also swallowed my disappointment when I didn’t say out loud: ‘You even said you hoped we’d meet again.’

Don’t you remember me?

Instead, I matched her professionalism and reminded her about how the blood bank already told me I wasn’t allowed to donate because of my thin veins and low hemoglobin.

O, she said, I don’t know anything about that, I only called for the results.
‘Can you tell me my blood type? I always wanted to know.’
She could. It was positive.
O, I repeated, and we hung up. Not sure if she just gave me my blood type, reduced me to a number or reminded me how bubbles do exist, even if it’s just me in there, in my own time and space.

After 15 years of living in the same city, only 3 miles away from each other, I finally bumped into him at the fair yesterday. My ex.

When I saw him, my whole body reacted in such automatic, parasympathetic systematic delight that it wasn’t until I got home that noticed that my right ear had stopped working and I forgot that I didn’t wear a bra underneath mama’s black sweater that she gifted me, when I had pressed myself firmly to his body to hug him, once, twice, five times.

Just hold me like you always did.

He patted me on the back in a way that I can only describe as him being either slightly embarassed, or fully uncomfortable with my enthusiasm, since he was married.

Seeing him, hearing his voice, brought everything back, as if we were 22 again. Seeing him gave me the same feeling I always felt when we were still a couple, together for 11 years, when we went shopping and he wandered off to a place he didn’t tell me, so I always ended up strolling the whole store, sometimes even calling him on my call phone to ask what floor he was on, and then when I then saw his face again, I was filled with this tiny oxygen sigh shot, not a sigh of relief, but of familiarity. The most seemingly uncaring sentence of the world ‘oh, there you are’, but at the same time so meaningful as the mirrored person showing up when you stepped into the bathroom to see if you actually existed. There I am! Damn I look good!

Being in his arms -or more: me wrapping myself around him as if he was the sturdiest tree to climb in- was as natural as knowing you’re about to sit down in your favorite chair, or the sound your door makes, a sound you don’t even hear any more when you get.. home.

That’s how he still feels for me. Home.

His soul hadn’t aged at all, and even though we both will be fifty years old soon, time stood still and even leaned backwards when I encountered him. It was seeing, hearing, touching and smelling him at the same time, as if we never separated and I just found him again, not in a store this time, but on the street. Ah, there you are.

How does one catch up on fifteen years.

Sara, you’re so skinny, are you doing stupid stuff with food? I nodded and felt like a toddler being caught, and I looked away. It was only then that I noticed my reflection in one of the windows across the alley and I could actually see how other people must see me, how small my face was, how hollow the eyes, how tired the cheek lines. I was the one who had aged. This last year especially has taken residence on my face, asked for rent and charged its toll. The mirrored reflection in his words showed me a woman who not only had lost a bit of her femininity but also her spark.

But I still felt so fully Saar with him. Saar and safe. If he would have divorced his wife right then and there I would have walked away with him forever and everywhere. I wanted to tell him that when I was planning my exit from life in 2014 that the letter I had written him was the hardest and easiest to write, although it should have been in tears instead of ink. When I said out loud that I still think about him from time to time, I knew I was just ice skating over the surface, because underneath was something else: I still love him.

He kissed me on the cheek and I embarassed him one more time by just doing what I wanted to do, which was hug him. Then he turned left and I turned right. When I got home the clock told me that it had been hours since I had shut the door behind me to just take a walk outside.

I couldn’t eat, even though I needed to. As I sat down in my favorite couch, it felt as if I had water in my right ear. My tinnitus didn’t whisper, not sang, but played tricks with my heart beat and I didn’t only hear my usual high Hertzed pitch, that awful hissing sound that I have been hearing ever since a medical procedure went wrong, but now also a throbbing so consistent and fast that I thought one of the neighbors was listening to music.

At this hour? Are you kidding me? I walked downstairs to hear who it could be. Nobody. Then back in my apartment I pushed my left ear against the living room wall to hear. Maybe it was someone in the building next to me? But as I held my breath and my heart stopped beating and I heard nothing.

When I held my fingers against my nek, I discovered that my heart beat was in tune with the beat that I was hearing everywhere. It turned out to be me! I was hearing my own heart pumping my own blood through my own vein in my own inner ear.. thud.echo.thud.echo.thud.echo.thud.

Meeting my ex literally had made my ears ring.

How is your Chlamydia coming along? I asked mama as we walked through our favorite greenery. Ever since my father turned more and more deaf, my volume went up and up, also when he is not around. I keep surprising myself with how consistent I am in my all or nothing personality. I apparently either talk loud all the time, to everyone, or I don’t.

Because his deafness happened in such a slow pace, it was ingrained deep into me to talk loud, the same way that in a bath tub you hardly notice when they turn the temperature up one degree per hour. And since I am so used to my own volume I forget to tone it down when I am around others. I have no idea if I’m outside of any objective or someone’s personal nuisance parameter, but it struck me again yesterday when my neighbor-friend said she can always hear me when I am on the phone. And with my mom, on more than one occasion I catch and interrupt myself mid-phrase when I’m alone with her: Why am I talking as if dad’s here?

In the weirdest and muddiest of thoughts it even led me to think: when he is really no longer here will the memory of him, still be a fundament on which I base my voice and volume? Will my voice be his legacy? Is my volume his living inheritance? Will I, in talking loud, always keep him around?

Others: why do you talk so loud?
Me: because of my dad.
Others: but he’s not here.
Me: exactly.

The loud Chlamydia question was an inquiry into the fuchsia flowered Cyclamen plant that mama had bought three weeks prior.

‘Absolutely lovely, it just keeps on growing’, mama said as we strolled through what felt like fields and fields of geraniums petunia’s.

‘Oh, and look, Saartje, they have snoetjes’, she said, pointing to all the violets staring at us. Mama calls these plants little cutie faces, because let’s be real here, they look like actual faces, don’t they.

Over the years we collected our own vocabulary that only her and I know the meaning of. It’s these little strings of the heart that sing so sweetly soft that you can only hear them if you listen not with your ears, but with love.

She is the only one who knows that I have a little lemon plant growing on my balcony. She has a gift of consistently showing genuine interest in what interests me. She was the one who went searching for my sheep when I lost him three years ago. She understands me even in my silence. That plant joke is ours for life even though probably everybody in the greenery could hear it.

I suddenly realize that being the daughter of both my mom and dad, I inherited the best of both worlds, being able to be loud and silent.

Oh, let me get my own marker, be right back, the psychiatric nurse said when I already sat down facing the psychiatrist, who had greeted with me with a solid handshake, warm to the touch, with almost the perfect amount of pressure combined with a delicious length of holding mine, sharing his first name. Good, we’re on a first name basis here.

I knew what was about to happen, as I had long noticed the huge whiteboard hanging against the exact wall I chose to sit against. From this chair I could oversee the room; I believe there is diagnostic value in observing where someone positions himself in a space. I need a wall behind me so that I can have my eyes on the door and the window. As a matter of fact, looking out of his window was the first thing that I did after I let go of his hand, just because I wanted to know where I was in the building, since I had walked hallway after hallway, turning left, right, left, left. Oh, his view is on the main street. If this would have been my room I would have never put my desk there, for I would always be distracted by the people passing by.

In sitting down, I knew I sat under the exact thing they wanted to use during this intake. I knew they wanted to write my name on the whiteboard and fill in the blanks from there, having me stare my own whole life in the face, as if my brain just got splattered and framed, hammered as a picture to be hung in disgust and admired with a tilted head, unsure whether this is fixable or just art.

Too many connections would be drawn between too many details from too much of my past and I would not only internally feel the tangle that is oftentimes tearing me apart from the inside, or wrapping itself around my neck in paranoia, but I would now see it visually too, being drawn on someone’s whiteboard, in someone’s room, with someone’s favorite marker, silently, to be whiped away after I would leave. Time is up, next!

‘I chose exactly the wrong place to sit huh’, I joked to the psychiatrist, to which he replied: You can move a seat to the left so we can use the whiteboard.

I could, but I’m not going to and we are not going to use this whiteboard. You are not getting up and have me sit down and relive traumatic stuff, and educating me about things I desperately want to forget because I need to process it first, in safety, which I don’t feel yet. Of course I didn’t say that out loud, but somehow the tone was set, I was in charge. No seat change. No marker. No whiteboard.

Earlier that day, my female friend-neighbor.. oh wait.. can someone please one day come up with a name for this kind of relationship or this kind of person? Kindbor? Neighfriend? Porchpal? Nextie?

Earlier that day, my female friend-neighbor had asked me questions that made me process something in a way I had never done before.

Bring a knife? What would you do with it? she asked.
‘I would lay it on the table, for them to see.’
With what intention?
‘I want them to experience how weird and unsafe it is to ask to trust a stranger who promises you not to hurt you, bringing danger at the same time. I want them to feel the same ghastly terror that I experience sitting there. I need them to feel what it is like when words mean nothing and promises can’t override innate fear. I need them be on that same level with me. If they want me to feel safe to open up, I need them to feel unsafe first.’
That’s actually quite briljantly thought through, but what if all they see is a knife and all they do is rely on protocol and all they do is escort you out of the building, then you would accomplish the exact thing you’re always so afraid of.
‘Which is?’
Abandonment.

Later that evening, she stuck a little blue cardboard triangle note to my front door, with ‘Brain quiz / puzzle: do you want to change or do you want to stick to old patterns?’

So there I sat, underneath the whiteboard. Looking at the psychiatrist. Looking at the psychiatric nurse. Sharing my story, my pain, my loss, my ideas, my scratches of death, my nods and entanglements, my family, my fears, my loneliness, my stuckness, I put everything on the table. The more I talked, the more empowered I somehow felt.

It was as if I was trying to smooth out a crumpled piece of paper, the resume of trauma. As if I was trying to unravel a ball of wool. I talked for almost 60 minutes, and all they did was just listen, listen, listen. The more they listened, the more I shared. When time was almost up, I finally came to the sentence that just about summed it up: ‘I feel unrepairably broken, like there is something fundamentally lacking in me, or robbed from me or wrong with me, deeply unhuman, I feel bereft of something and I don’t know if I should work on accepting that or hope that repair or regain is possible.’

The psychiatrist looked at me and said: I am so glad you didn’t bring a knife, but brought your voice to speak for you. How do you feel?

I paused for the last seconds of that hour to really search for the words that did justice to what I felt. I felt full, thick, heavy, filled. Filled because I just heard everything that I shared with them, now that it’s all out, it’s all in me too, because I usually just shut myself out.
Then I felt something else.
Calm. Proud.

It was April 15, 2021 when I was done. It was 18 weeks that I had been working on my needlepoint piece, putting in 81,300 stitches in 89 different colors, honoring all 254 counties of the state of Texas, and as finishing touch a golden thread connecting Dallas, where I stayed at the time, to Diboll, where my best friend was incarcerated at the time, being locked up since he was 14 years old.

I could use a friend today, and because death seems to be the only appealing candidate desperately and convinclingly flirting with me so much lately, while awake and asleep, I can understand my thoughts go to Mike, since he died in 2018, and he always was the one who understood.

Police didn’t bother to investigate the so-called accident, since he was covered in tattoos, was involved with drugs, holding a rap sheet that was bigger than his physical height and that was longer in years than he had actually been out in the free world.

Paroled, and found dead at the border of Laredo six months later. And because I never saw his body, I will never be fully convinced he is really gone.

I miss his voice.
I miss his smile.
I miss his letters.
I miss writing him.
I miss how he hugged me so tight.
I miss the soft skin on his lower arm.
I miss opening my mailbox and finding a letter.
I miss. Him.

I have a big three piece canvas of the Dallas skyline in my bedroom.
I have a one square meter folded out street map of Dallas in my study room.
I have picture of Dallas by night as my screen saver.
I have Mike’s handwriting tattooed on my arm.

But somehow I can’t keep death alive.
If he were I would have written him this day.

Mike, I am so scared, and I have been for quite some time. It feels as if I am sensing some impending doom and I can’t stop it, nor get away from it, except by numbing myself by either pretending I don’t exist, isolating myself completely or swallowing prescription stuff I know won’t help me in the long run, but nicely postpones the blow that I so dread.

I am carrying too much emotional weight for too long now and I don’t know how to get rid of some. I feel as if I am not living my own life any more, Mike, but am put in someone’s diorama. My feeling of unsafety turned out to have a trap door and I have fallen into something that is even deeper than unsafe, more substantial, or better said: UNsubstantial. It’s of a category that I can only call ‘fundamentally absent’, and it’s filled to the brim of nothingness and seems to devour me.

I have lost my joy somehow. Something life-giving died in me somehow. The spark that always kept me going. I feel I’m looking at a different lifetime when I see pictures that I took of myself staring me in the face two years ago. I hardly recognize who I am any more.

My smile feels like wallpaper.
My eyes feel like blurry glass marbles.
My skin feels like a ragged winter coat that has lost its fluff.
My emotions left because I starved them. Or perhaps they’re just mad at me.

I am so disappointed waking up in the morning, Mike, who can I share this with someone without them getting worried sick? I wish I could fly out to Texas this year, just to visit you again. I loved the humidity in March! Will it be worse in September? I hope they seat us somewhere on the side, so we can talk without being disturbed too much. I hope they allow you to walk me to the vending machine again. I will bring lots of quarters! Will you just tell me it’ll be okay? Will you stop time for me so I don’t ever have to go back to myself again? Will you ask me what pie I ordered at Emporium in Dallas? Will you ask me what songs I listened to on the radio on my way over to you? Do you have any idea how many churches ya’ll have over here? Can’t I just commit a crime and become your cellie? Will you tell me what dish to try before I fly out again? Will you tell me where your daddy is burried so I can visit him for you? Will you tell me just breathe baby girl? Why didn’t you call me that morning to let me know that someone was following you and you were scared to death?

Mike? Are you there?

Mike?

I did it, I did it, I friggin’ did it, I nailed it, smashed it, killed it, stuck with it, pushed through and READ it, al six-hundred eighty-one pages of it.

It! Not a him or a her, it’s an it all the way.

Reading it out loud, while making summary notes as I ploughed and plodded my way through what I came to fear would never be finished this year. This is one of those books that will leave a memory in your life that will never leave.

What began in 2025 as a nice and light thought of oh, let’s just catch up on some psychology literature and read a couple of titles from the bachelor curriculum turned out to be the biggest psychological challenge when I opened this monster of a baby. Ten pages a day was oftentimes way too much and became either a pat on the back for doing it anyway or a red flag waving in my face to please take better care of yourself this day and just leave it alone for a day.

The deeper I dove in the book, the lesser I understood. I needed to experience this kind of loss of control, in the form of loss of intellectual understanding, and felt relief when I finally got honest with myself, stopped being angry for not getting what he was talking about and gave myself permission to write in my notes: ‘p.340-350: I don’t understand any of this’ p.610-620: ‘proud of myself for not giving up.’

I decided: If there is just one thing that I take away from this book, it’s a win. One thing.

I had so hoped that the writer could relate to my struggle, but he kept an upbeat tone throughout the book, using phrases like ‘it’s easy to see that..’ or ‘a simple recalculation would give..’ I was glad that he didn’t write: ‘Even a cow can understand that X..’

I had so hoped that he would have thanked me when he came to the last page, explaining the necessity of the assumptions for a Kruskal-Wallis one-way analysis of variance for comparing three or more independent samples. had I hoped that he would have applauded me for sticking things out with him, for seeing things through to the end, that he would be there with typed pompoms cheering me on to turn that last page where he would laudate me, telling me in black and white that he was so proud of me for finishing.

But he just ended his book when he was done.
He ended it with a black dot. A period. That was it. Period.

If his book would have been a movie, the main actor would have just walked out of the scene, not thanking his future audience, turned off the beamer, leaving me in the dark, no sweet music playing, and a bright light in the the movie theatre would have flicked on and I was rushed and ushered out of the cinema, because time was up. The whole thing sounded like some angry Thai woman: Movie finish, now you go.

If the book had disguised itself as belonging in my bathroom, it would have been a cold shower.

If the book has been a family member, it was the most boring uncle, age 73, that just wouldn’t stop yapping about wood carving in such detail. The man also never got a hint that he was coming over a little too often and when everybody closed the door, he just found a crack in the wooden fence to talk through.

If the book was a piece of clothing, the mirror and my parents would have immediately said: this is NOT the dress for you.

If the book was a holiday, this is one that will be talked about forever, where everyone immediately nods. Remember that time that we went to..?

It’s done. Finally done. Mama was almost just as relieved as I was and asked me if I will sell the book. I thought about that, since I highly doubt I will ever read it again. Yet I said no. It’s going on my book shelf, because it’s a reminder of how I am able to hold on and let go at the same time. I realized what I had just taken away from the book: what started as a burden had become a badge.

I thought it was a joke at first so I hesitated to bend down for a grab. I looked around for candid camera’s, but saw nothing. I looked around for people clustering together invisibly around the corner of the water tower, to observe what I would do and then ambush me. But I was there all alone. I then looked around for city camera’s, because what I was about to could be perceived as theft if someone didn’t know my heart disposition and my next step.

It was a brand new phone along the curb. It must have fallen out of someone’s backpocket or handbag I thought. You don’t lose this while walking because you would hear it fall, the person must have been on a scooter or something, making noise. I picked it up with as few fingers as possible, as if it was a dirty diaper that I was about to move out of smell distance. Everything in me said: Don’t give anybody who is a silent witness the impression that you about to steal this thing.

I have no problem picking up empty cans. They didn’t fall out of a backpocket, but they did belong to someone at first. They paid for their soda or beer, so it’s theirs. They also paid the deposit on the cans, so the ten cent is theirs. But somewhere along their route in life they deliberately opened their hand and dropped the empty can to the ground, or took a swing to have it land in the bushes. Picking that up, handing that in at the store and to collect ten cents from it I have no problem with. You didn’t lose this, you purposively discarded of it, now it’s everybody’s and therefore mine when I touch it.

But having a 2000 dollar phone in my hand that wasn’t mine?
That felt so wrong, even though my intentions were anything but.

I stood there for minutes, frozen, looking left-right-center. Nobody. Leaving it there wasn’t an option either, it would be safer in my hands, for I knew I was going to take care of it. This would be top priority and I would spend the whole day figuring out how to get it back to its owner. Inspector Gadget to the rescue!

From the moment I set out on my mission, the phone started receiving Whatsapp messages, which I couldn’t read, because the device was locked. And the code wasn’t 0000, after which I decided not to try to guess a second time. The only thing I could see that it had a motor scooter as a screen saver, notably white. It was photographed in a way that some people make their baby the center of their world. If this was his scooter, and I was allowed to profile (or stigmatize) then I would have expected the person to be caucasian, male, living or coming from a low quarter neighborhood, being a little bit of a scruff.

I waited for a while to see if someone came looking for the phone. Then I rang a couple of doorbells in the street, to ask if they have seen anything, to ask if they have a camera hidden somewhere on their balcony, looking down on the street, that may have caught the person dropping this phone, or perhaps they knew the owner of the scooter. But nobody came looking and nobody was home.

I decided to call 911 with the phone, that was the only part of the phone that was not locked, to ask them if they could see the number I was calling from and perhaps contact the provider for his address so I could give the phone back. They understood the loving gesture on my part, but said they couldn’t assist and advised me to just hand the phone in at the town hall.

The town hall?
If I would lose my phone the town hall is the last place I would go to.

I decided to walk home thinking who I could contact to ask if perhaps he knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who was able to break into the phone, so that I could call one of the contacts, to tell this person that his friend lost his phone. I would also try to Google Search the scooter. Another option would be to put his SIM card into my phone to see what number it had, and go from there.

Meanwhile the phone started receiving more and more Whatsapp messages, and I was getting worried that this would drain the battery. I upped my tempo to get home, because I noticed that I did not have a charger for his device – different socket.

Then it rang. It said ‘neighbor Rens’.
My heart almost beat out of my chest!
I picked up, immediately blurting: “I found this phone! It’s not mine, can you tell me whose phone this is?”

Mine, the male voice said. I am calling from my neighbor’s house.

And he told me exactly where he had lost it, around the corner from the water tower. I told him I would turn around and meet him there.

I am wearing a grey cap, what are you wearing, he said.

In a split second I thought I’m about to get robbed.. or worse.. I ignored the feeling and replied: “White jumpsuit.” And because I was strung out from all the emotions of my theft-not-being-a-theft I even said: “This almost sounds like a blind date.”

He laughed and we hung up.

When I turned the corner, I saw him. He was frantically looking around left-right-center. If I hadn’t known it was him, it looked as if he was waiting for his dealer, so antsy and obvious. He looked my way but probably never heard of a jumpsuit before because he looked away again. Then he looked my way again and when I held his phone up in the air, his deep relief showed in the fact that he immediately put one hand, fingers spread wide open, firmly to his chest, pressing it. Everything oozed relief.

He smelled as if he could use a shower, or at least his clothes could do with a wash. I asked him to tell me about the screen saver, to confirm it was actually his phone. He proudly mentioned his scooter and then showed me that he was able to unlock the phone.

I am so glad you took it, he said. Really? I asked. Yeah, because you returned it.

We both went on our way, and I continued my walk, in search for empty cans. I found one: 10 cents today!

Last night, on my way to filling in all the upcoming yet to be lived days of my fiftieth year alive, I finally felt the oldest of three siblings. It’s a feeling that if it wasn’t undescribable it would be described as self-sustaining, like a flower that in botanic terms introduces itself as a perfect flower, a creation that is self-fertile and can self-pollinate. The self-fertile part of her is a given, inborn. The self-pollination is a choice, if flowers would ever be people with free will.

And yesterday I did just that. I chose. I chose to speak. I chose to speak as my own, and whole, person. I spoke from the heart. I spoke from the hurt. Mine. I spoke up to my brother about the past year and finally took myself seriously in doing that.

I spoke with all the fingers pointing to me only, not blaming him for anything. Not condemning him for a full year filled with undeniably observable behavior after behavior stemming from his mind and recordable words coming from his mouth that formed one conclusive sentence in synchrony: ‘Saar, you are not that important to me.’ He even said it out loud once: ‘You are last in line.’

And for a year, I felt like that sister who stood last in line. It almost became my identity. Hello I am new to this group, my name is Sarieke and I am last in line.

Yesterday I finally dared to speak up. An in doing that, I noticed that this line he put me in? That wasn’t mine at all, it was his! All this time I had been standing in the wrong line. His. And by speaking to my brother, speaking up to him, I chose to step away from wherever he had positioned me, where I had docilely and slavely waiting. I chose to step away and formed my own line. And guess what? I was first!

I didn’t scold him for anything, I wasn’t upset, my focus was not on his behavior any more, not on his choices. My focus was on me, my emotions. My voice was calm, pretty sounding almost, melodically serene, nicely paced in between peaceful breathing.

I spoke about my hurt. I got away from under the constant apologizing for being hurt. I took my hurt seriously and for some miraculous reason this lessened the pain of it. I thought that if I would touch the wound it would become worse, but I found out that I wasn’t hurt hurt, I was bleeding. Bleeding dry. And by touching that open wound, I stopped the bleeding.

I stopped calling myself overly sensitive. I stopped condemning myself for my beautiful sensitivity. I stopped apologizing for being emotional and -yes- still feel that I have no brother any more. I stopped feeling like the psychiatric patient, who is always a bit cookoo, always the weird one in the family, like every town has its clown, always the one who sees things skewed.

I stopped taking the blame for my hurt. I didn’t cast the blame on him, I cast it away. I advocated for me being me and I heard myself say out loud that this is who I am.

My brother.. unfortunately.. didn’t hear a word.

I don’t know why. He just didn’t.

What I observed was crystal clear, without any alternative explanation: he didn’t let me finish, and gleaning from the way he started breathing, and how he started talking over me, raising his voice and tempo evermore, using profanities, like toxic and poison, I hypothesized that he felt attacked. Luckily he even confirmed that literally, saying that he didn’t appreciate me attacking him, blaming him, treating him unjustly, piling all my crap on him, portraying him as the villain of my village.

He called me nasty and selfish and said: ‘I don’t know what you are trying to do here, what weird thing you got going on in that brain of yours, as if you are deliberately pointing to things and even make things up so everything feel nice and fuzzy in your head again and you can blame others and not look at your own involvement in things. Let me tell you one thing: you only have yourself to blame that I didn’t come to visit you last time. You have been nothing but unsupportive this last year and I don’t want to invest time in people for whom I am not important.’

Right there it happened. I felt gutted. But I also felt the sharp sting of a tie being cut with the cleanest of blade, shimmering, severing blood, dividing not the newly fertilized egg, but making a clear distinction between brother and sister. As if someone finally unglued us, or uglued only me from him, with a force that could rip The Magdeburg hemispheres apart under the loudest of applause. Because I knew for a fact stronger than diamond that he was wrong.

I recognized my own voice in that applause. I did good, I spoke up, clapclapclap. I am so proud of what I did, hearhear!

When I put down the phone I saw how the blue flower that mama gave me for my birthday was opening up a little and I remember her words, wrapped not in a birthday bow, but in a mother’s hug. With thick tears in her eyes she had just listened to what had transpired between me and my brother that morning. And she didn’t take sides. She only exhaled and said: You have become an adult this year.

I finally feel the oldest of three. It took me 49 years – or one phone call – to see it: I have always been the first in line.

Twenty-three months and one day I go I had finally come to feel that inner psychological fissure, that separated a clean life from a life that would fill and kill itself with drugs. It was as if someone had put me on a T-junction. The road ahead wasn’t just blocked, it just wasn’t there. The choice to go straight ahead – albeit swirvingly – kidding myself that I could always stop the next day, was gone. The word ‘postponing’ walked out of the addictive dictionary. I saw myself faced with one decision that split itself like the fertilized egg mama once cherished in her womb, ever dividing: either you stop now, or you continue forever.

Quitting now means life.
Continuing forever means death.

That day I quit drinking. I didn’t wait until the next day, but that night I poured the deadly liquid in the sink, threw the bottle in the trash and went to bed.

And with that decision I apparently chose life. Life was the collateral damage of my decision to quit poisoning myself.
And in that life I met this group.
In that life I discovered the book This Naked Mind.
And both were and are gifts that I am still thankful for.

As I write this, it’s my birthday. I am jarig, as we Dutch say, meaning something like ‘agey’, ‘yeary’, ‘birthdaying’. Since I don’t like change, being jarig throws me off, because I am not Saar any more, I am birthdaying today and waking up made me sad, because I felt more alone than ever. It makes me realize that there will come one day when I wake up jarig, knowing that my mother won’t call me any more, because she used up her fixed amount of birthdays.

Being jarig stirs up so many emotions that I now have to handle without drinking. The pain of the memory of my sister not congratulating me last year. The pain of the memory of being prevented to spend my birthday with my brother in Sweden last year. The utter relentless love that my parents have or me outside of my birthays, and mama inviting me to go to wholesale today, have dinner afterwards, looking forward to flipping through my baby book with me..

Mama was 30 when she lost her mother.
I am now 49.

I am struggling so badly between the comfort, recognizability and safety of the pain of isolation versus the sheer pain of the exact same thing. If I close my eyes, aren’t there always T-junctions to be formed in life? Can I choose to go to meeting this afternoon, bring cake and tell them I’m jarig? Can I then also ask to please don’t sing for me, and please don’t come up to me to congratulate me with three kisses? Can I just be me, instead of jarig, share cake and go home? Another T-junction pointed me to my female friend-neighbor.. shall I ask her if she wants to take an evening strole with me this evening, to close the day with?

As I was about to reclaim my normalcy of just being myself, by making my bed (Saar style) and do my hair (punk style).. mama called.. I could hear in her voice that something was off, even though we chimed that 49 years ago I was still in her belly and how she is still amazed at how fast time goes, to have a daughter that is almost older than an adult. The more adult I become, the more daughter that I feel. The longer I live, the more I love her, my body isn’t big enough to contain the love I feel for her, it’s as if I never severed that umbilical cord and feel so connected to her voice. But this time her tone was off.. it’s my dad.. I heard the word hospital.

I cried. Not because of him. But also because of him. Not because of mama, yet also because of mama.

I cried for me.

Because I don’t want to have a T-junction right now. Can I just stand still for the day and walk to the greenery and buy flowers for mama, just because I can? Mama and I had to conclude that the only predictability of the day was the unpredictability of all of it, unsure of the time my dad was expected to be at the hospital, unsure of how long ‘it’ would take. Unsure whether mama and I will make that trip to wholesale. Unsure of flipping through my baby book. Unsure of dinner.

As she felt sorry for me, I felt sorry for her.

As I hung up the phone, deciding to buy the flowers for mama anyway, I noticed my neighbor had stuck something to my front door: a hand drawn picture of a sheep, congratulating me. The usually so scary unpredictability whispered to me that there is great joy in holding lesser expectations and that life isn’t always about making choices left and right. Sometimes you just come to these i-junctions – moments where you can stand still and simply enjoy.

I hate it when people don’t do what they say. I hate it with such an intense hate that it could incinerate a whole village living at the edge of a volcano somewhere on some yet to be discovered island of Italy, first burning them until they can’t scream any more and then leaving nothing but statutes of tarred ashes, that can’t ick themselves away from my bewilderment.

I hate it. On three separate occassions I received their message, first via some app I had to download, then again via my email address and some days later in the form of a letter in my mail box. It was a strand of three, forming an unbroken confirmation that the phone appointment was set at 2.40PM

But she wasn’t there, and because I had folded my day around that time, changing my pace from my daily walk to be home to a more hurried walk around the shortened block, in case she would call couple of minutes early, I had not only accumulated empty cans in nature, to deposit and collect money from later, but was also starting to bottle up a grumpy mood.

I hate that I need people, so in my head I blamed her for setting the appointment, for breaking in to my daily routine, for me to adjust to her presence. It’s the same ridiculousness as blaming the dentist for seeing me, taking him to court because he took time out of my day, even though I am the one with a tooth ache. Blaming him for sending me that bill even though I had to take time off from work and wasn’t payed for my leave of absence.

So, two things came together. Me being upset that I need help. And me being home on time, without her anywhere in ear sight.

A minute later she still hadn’t called.
Two minutes later, still nothing. I thought perhaps my phone was broken, or set to vibrate, or perhaps rang via my noice canceling buds.
Three minutes passed by. I thought maybe I was mistaken about the day, or time.
After four minutes my anger started fighting with my breathing rate.
And the minutes passed by multiple times, until they reached the number 10 and I was fed up. I called the organisation and asked for her, but she wasn’t available. I received a message that was devoid of any promise or reassurance, but just for the sake of politeness the most hollow of phrases people tend to use when they have nothing else to say: ‘She will probably call you soon.’

But soon isn’t on my clock, nor in my system of understanding, and for the emotional part of me definitely not something that I can deal with. Soon isn’t a reassurance, but abstract emptiness. Soon wasn’t the time that she set to call. The email didn’t say soon, it said 2.40PM. Soon is not between any hands of my analogue clock in the kitchen, nor dancing with the digits of my phone. Soon can be eternal if it never comes. Soon lives in a postponed forever by default. Only people with dementia think that soon is a promise, huggingly given by their nurses who know that their spouse is long deceased and won’t be visiting later.

When she finally did call, I was so upset that she got the worst part of me, which may even have been a good thing, because now I didn’t even have to verbalize why I needed help, or what for. As if I had been holding my pee for three days, I just let it rip.

We had 30 minutes for the intake, she said. That turned into 60, which made me hope that I was the last client for her that day, otherwise the person after me would be twice as grumpy that she didn’t call on time, and perhaps a partner would be upset that again she was home late.

This is a lesson in trust. Or a force to trust. Or an invitation for trust. Or just me having a f*ck it attitude towards the whole thing, because I filled 60 minutes with everything I thought she needed to hear, which was important for them to know, things I didn’t want to share with anybody, let alone to an anonymous voice, things I didn’t want to say out loud to an unknown me because then the things become more real. The trust part came also when she thanked me for being so open, and said that during the call she also had jotted a couple of things down every now and then.

Every now and then? That concept lives in the same brain village as soon. Because what did she write down? Did she write down the things that I thought were important? My hour had been of capital importance, not the smallest of jot. I was fighting for my life there! I presented my complete brokenness. Everything was important, not just a couple of things. Every minute counted, not just every now and then.

I have grossly barged over my boundaries, I said. I have told you things that I didn’t want to tell you, that will affect the rest of my day immensely, and probably couple of days. We hung up, me deliberately not wanting to hear what she had to say about what would happen next, what she would discuss with whom and when that would be and when I would hear back from her. It would be bureaucracy, paperwork, distribution of caseloads, nothing to do with my wounds or despair. I had given my all, I felt shattered.

And because I had grossly barged over my boundaries, I didn’t protect myself when the phone rang again. My body was on autopilot and picked up. It was the goldsmith, who had my broken ring in front of him and said that after a more thorough inspection that there was a little more work to do than they originally thought. And this time I had no problem hearing what he actually meant when he said a little more work, because today, I had paid a huge price, be it psychologically, not with the intention to drain myself, but with the intention to get something fixed.

My ring broke! Well, a tiny diamond is gone, probably because of some prongs being worn down. As I self sooth with my nail piercing, I also get confirmation about my existance by the tactile feedback of feeling the ring with my pinky about a thousand times a day. My left pinky even has a more of a bend inwards than my right pinky has.

This ring is one of the first symbols of choosing for myself. I was in a relationship with a man who refused to buy me a ring. Years and years went by. The more I asked, the more he refused. The less I asked, the less possibility I saw for actually ever receiving one. Same with certain sexual things by the way, which struck a big insecurity about my eh.. well.. you know.

One day I told him: one day I will put a ring on this finger myself and then I am taken and it’s too late for you to put a ring on it. That also didn’t seem to do anything for him, neither did it work to physically force him to do what I so desperately wanted him to do in bed, or please just explain why he didn’t want to do it. Oh, the strength of free will!

So I bought my ring. It was such a victory of putting jewelry on myself in the absence of the willingness of a man doing it. In a tiny sense, I wedded myself with that gesture. Little did I know that fifteen years later I would do the same for my other finger, after I finally broke free from a relationship with a different man who did go down on me but also almost ate my spirit. I barely made it out alive and I needed to lock myself in on never having fingers available for a man to hook me.

This morning I went to the only place that I wanted to go, even though it was quite the trip and I was still in my adult-strike mode wearing a summer dress that is completely inconsiderate of the not so summerly temperature. I went to the jewelry store where I bought that second ring, for I had such an amazing connection with the seller lady, who could relate to how difficult it is to leave a manipulative man, who makes you even doubt your own sanity and makes you sell your worth. When I walked in, she recognized me and immediately walked up to me.

“How have you been? You look good, she said. Something about you.” I think that if I had initiated it, she would have stepped in for a hug in the middle of a fancy jewelry store. Seller and customer.

I almost thought did I get pregnant somewhere to have that glow they always mention women to have? Me looking good? My heavens. Is it the product in my hair? The lip gloss? I feel ravished, entrenched in war zones. I thanked her for the compliment, and didn’t want to say that life was quite the task these days, so I couldn’t really understand how I looked good, but then I realized.. last time she saw me I just broke free from my abusive ex and I was still drinking. I was my own before-and-after picture in the flesh (and in the store). Of course I looked good today!

I was so glad that it was her who worked that day, to give me that confirmation that although I feel a piece of me is missing, I am so much better off than back then. She took the ring from me, carrying it as if she was carrying some of my heaviness away. When she came back up, from what for me felt like a morgue, will I ever see my ring again?! she switched hospital locations to the operating table and said it´s totally fixable. Couple of prongs need to be re-tipped and they easily can set a new tiny diamond. No biggie.

She said that she would call me if repair would exceed a certain price so I could decide if I still wanted to have it fixed. I nodded, but decided inwardly that this ring is worth more than its fixing price.

Today I am ringless on the left, ya’ll! It feels naked. It startles me every time, leaving me to look down to make sure I even dressed myself. Did I enter the correct house? I know I already had my oatmeal but I feel so incredibly hungry of all the excitement! I am also going a little overboard with my emotions because this morning I found Q on Facebook and sent him a message. Even the color of the red lillies seem to have turned orangy bronze and refuse to remind me of when everything was normal and I had two surviving rings on my fingers and no man that turned or at least tickled my head.

Both of my exes have moved on with another woman. I have moved on without them. For both I still have feelings, even though the first one was my first love and the last one my worst. Both rings are because of them, but both rings are mine. They are two of my prongs in life.

Can’t wait for the ring to come back to me, whole. It’s never been away from me, just like my sheep always sticks around, either proudly standing on the balcony of his own two story home made of wood, or he is between my fingers telling me he is so sheepishly proud of me for not freaking out about the whole ring thing and act like an adult and have things that can be fixed fixed. And if Q doesn’t text me back, meh, no biggie either, that only sucks (no pun intended).

I recognized her from her footsteps in the hallway behind me. From the way she walked I could hear she was coming along with her pregnancy. She knows what chair I always choose in the waiting room, she knows I am always on time. I know that she will always call my name before she sees me, or me her: Sarieke.

Her voice is angelic, but firm.
Inviting, but not friendshippy.

We did what we always do. She walked back and I followed behind her. She walked to her office, then stepped to the side to let me enter first and then she would walk in behind me. We probably sat down at the same time, different seats, me on the patient’s side, in one of the new white chairs, her behind her desk, her babyboy growing visibly underneath her shirt.

Because the store was close by, I thought to do chores in one walk, and first buy what I needed and then go to the doctor’s. But because I didn’t bring a bag with me, I had to carry the small can of chopped tomatoes under my arm, because I was already holding my keys and my phone.

So I entered her office with the can under my arm and I figured it would look quite strange in a conversation, so I set it on the table, which didn’t diminish the strangneness at all.

I said: ‘I thought it be a good idea to bring tomatoes for a change.’ She agreed: I agree.

We talked about my upcoming intake at the mental health care facility she referred me to last week with so much urgency that the 18 month waiting list magically shriveled up to one week for them to see me.

I am scared, I said.

Scared that if I give them my psychiatric resume, that it will chase them off, which is maybe even my intention, but also my fear. I am scared that if I tell them my diagnoses, that they see me as a label and present me with a one size fits all treatment, molding me into this weird box, in which I don’t feel seen any more, or at least squared for life. Scared that if I say I want to start with a blank slate, they don’t sense the urgency. I am scared that they don’t know how to help me. Scared that if I don’t tell everything in detail, they only look at the big picture and I receive the wrong treatment. Scared that they can’t look past the protection mechanisms I am unaware of or still unwilling to let go. Scared that they will only hear that I have become my own psychologist by now and that they can learn a few things from me instead of the other way around. Scared that they don’t see the urgency in things because often my facial features, bodily posture and tone doesn’t match the heavy content of what I share. Scared that they will pass me along like a hot potato, because they don’t know what to do with me. Scared that I forget to mention things that for me aren’t big issues, but that they automatically assume I will mention because to them they are major.

I remember one time deliciously misunderstanding a question.
It was about self-harm. The person sitting across from me asked whether I suffer from self-harm. I said no.

She looked at my arm and said: what are those?
I said: scars.
She said: did you do that to yourself?
I said: yes.
She replied with: so you do suffer from self-harm.
I said: no, I don’t suffer from that, you asked me if I suffer from it, and I don’t. There is no suffering involved.

Totally misunderstood her suffer-question there. How can I trust that they will hear what I say? How to trust my understandings of their language?

My doctor smiled and said: Tell them that. All that.
I exhaled for the first time in 40 minutes of talking to her and asked if she had some other good advice.
She looked at the table: Maybe don’t bring the tomatoes.

Okay, so I have a confession. And I hope that when you hear my confession you won’t tug on your rosemary beads, or just say thank you for sharing and close that wooden see-through panel that separated you from me if this was a church situation. I do feel safe enough to share this with you because the panel is digital, the wood is an LCD screen, and you can’t see, or hear me. The confession is fully mine though.

I am slowly noticing something that I need to get off my chest because otherwise I will wrap it in all kinds of rationalisations that it’s not all that bad, the same way that I thought my first drinks in my teenage years were harmless and wouldn’t lead to anything I couldn’t recover from.

I have a disturbed relationship with my past when it comes to sexuality. I always went all out, balls to the wall, and in the rudest sense possible I think I must be thankful that I ‘only’ got pregnant thrice and that the one STD that I did contract could be treated effectively. It truly never dawned on me that unsafe sex could lead to pregnancies or diseases. I am still stunned at my naievete about that.

Also for me sex never had anything to do with intimacy, it was aggressive, rarely gentle, sometimes painful or even against my will, and because no man ever asked me whether I was enjoying myself and my only reference was seeing rough porn (first in magazines, later on the internet) I did what I thought was expected from a woman. When drugs came into play I was just on the prowl. I remember drinking and feeling my brain set on hunting, I really didn’t care who it was, as long as I had at least one man for the evening. Because no man ever turned me down, I thought I was the queen of the world. Little did I know that they only took it because I offered it for free.

The only man who refused to have sex with me was the man with whom I had a 11 year relationship. He held off in bed for months. I felt utterly rejected. Didn’t he find me attractive? Did I smell weird? And the second and last example was someone who just wanted to kiss for a full hour and be in the moment. It got me thoroughly confused. I was crazy in love with him and him with me. Was there something wrong with the rest of my body, I thought, that you don’t want to have sex?

My body has been programmed in a sense that when a man touches me, I know it will lead to sex. It caused me to not be able to relax in a massage because a man always went beyond that and saw it as foreplay. This is the reason I nowadays PAY a professional to massage me because at least then I can trust he will only do what I pay him for.

At the same time I also remember almost always zoning out when men did exactly what men always do.. their predictability in where they kissed me and for how long, where their hands went.. it was like a boring book that I had long read. Only thing left to do was wait for him to finish so I could go about my day.

So. That’s context, that’s not even the confession. Perhaps a couple of readers have shut the panel by now, or perhaps have lost their religion, so now it’s just you and me.

To be honest? I am curious of intimacy. I would love to find out how it feels if I am the one who can explore my boundaries and not have them overstepped by someone else. But intimacy scares me, it confuses me, feelings overwhelm me. My body is incredibly sensitive, all my senses are. Scent, vision, audition. If I even touch my own skin I can almost hear my skin cells either scream from relief or sigh in delight. Since I became a Christian I have the inner conviction that one way to honor my body is to just not give it away willy nilly (excuse the pun). But them stupid hormones, or perhaps it’s them stupid recovery from that stupid addiction thing that has me side-eying men a tiny little. Jason Darulo’s smile? Yes please! I even scroll through videos’s of buff black men roller blading in sync on Instagram.

One of the reasons I went to a meeting yesterday was that I hoped to see Q. A now 27 year old man (hello cougar me) whose brain I found so attractive when I last saw him four years ago. And when I heard the chair person open the NA meeting last night with saying that the meetings are not meant for hook-ups, I felt personally scolded for and openly outed in my desires.

So, the thing is this: I see that I am not a hundred percent dealing with life in a positive, constructive, recovery kind of way. I don’t really speak my mind to the persons I should actually speak up to (my brother being one of them). I see that I still tend to hide in (prescribed) benzo’s if things get too rough round the edges. I run to food or deliberately run away from it if my inner turmoil just overflows. And now I notice a fourth thing: men. And I am afraid that I will switch one addiction for the other if I do happen to run into Q and wrap myself in this fantasy of him and me.

He’s not even that attractive! It was the way he used to phrase his thoughts that aroused me. And I thought it’s pretty cool when your name begint with the letter Q.

I have been sober for almost two years now, but I don´t think I am ready to be dating, because I see that the foundation from which I want to reach out to men is still broken.. maybe that’s growth right there. But it still sucks. Again no pun intended.

When I walked into the tiled hallway of what used to be a monastery building with chapel and sacristy, built almost a hundred years ago, now open for meetings of any kind of anonimity when you don’t want others to know what you are addicted to, or admit it to yourself, I saw him standing against the stained glass window. He had so much calm around him, exactly as I remembered from four years ago, the last time I saw him. But back then his calm was always laced with this scent of a deeply troubled soul, somehow things had cleared up since then and I only noticed calmness.

He was talking to someone I didn’t know. All the faces I had encountered till that point were unfamiliar for me, which made me almost think he was new too. I felt so out of place, would they see me as the odd one in? Or out? He greeted me with a kind of automatic nod that didn’t show recognition. It made me almost do the same and walk past him, but when I turned my face for a second look, it not only registered but pulled open a registry: it was H.

Hey girlie, he said, come here. And I came. He hugged me. Not just a casual hug, as if he needed to cross it off his list so he could continue his conversation, in the same incomprehensible way that people can ask you how you are, but implicity need you not to reply with ‘thank you for lending me your ear, for I am having the suckiest of days.’

I am somehow so vulnerable for big male energy right now (is this my last egg crying in its crib before we shut the whole production system down?). His hug was beyond time, it was a comforting one, he wasn’t just holding skin, he was holding me. His chubiness touched every part of my skininess.

When he let go, I saw that the person he had been talking to was gone. ‘Can I just please have another one,’ I asked while I bowed my head in shame. I cried in his neck as he held all my brokenness together, but not firmy or frantically, but incredibly lovingly. His arms made me feel at home in my own body.

Earlier that day I told my doctor that right now I would nothing more than just be in mama’s womb for a while. To wobble along with her pacing during the day, to trust her heart beat and adjust mine to hers, safely rely on her choice to keep feeding herself, thereby nourishing me. Her continuous breathing would provide me the right amount of oxygen that led me to relax so much that I didn’t even need to breathe myself. She would walk a little slower when she noticed I was sleeping. And I loved hearing her voice from her insides. It surrounded me everywhere, in every position I took. Sometimes I felt her hand on my bum when I was upside down.

But now that I received this hug, I must admit that this felt good too. Adult-unknown-scary, but good. And immensely overwhelming. I have been without contact for so long, that I need to get used to it again. It made me think of how much destruction I lavished upon myself by being so promiscious from the moment I believed the lie that engaging in that kind of behavior is needed to be accepted, cool and loved. I did myself the biggest disfavor. It was yet again another part of life where I knew I had to play pretend. I can’t really remember anyone with whom sex was enjoyable. Amount of orgasms: zero. I thought everyone faked it and that was what women were supposed to do.

Now that I felt the fragility of a hug, I feel so retrogradually sad for me: how could I ever had sex with strangers like that, so often. There never was a no in me, not even when it hurt. I thought it meant to hurt and I was just too sensitive. Looking back at that part of my life I see that I destroyed myself long before I started drinking.

H. was the one I needed to see yesterday. He said my name, slightly wrong, but good enough. He feels like an older brother. A mentor. A father. A pillar. As if his sobriety keeps others going too. He is one of the most humblest people I remember from the chambers. I was surprised to find out he is barely older than me. Heroine probably made him live such a life that he worked overtime to survive.

Then someone else came up to him, asking him how he was doing, he answered with a nod, closing his eyes a little too long, saying: ‘Doing’. I immediately knew that in that hug he either put his feelings aside to be there for me, or that he also received a hug back from me. Later in the meeting I heard that earlier that day he had been at a funeral of a fellow who not only quit using, but who also quit life. It came to a shock to so many people. It seems he was doing so well, everyone said. Yeah.

That hit home, in a way I wasn’t ready to share yet. And during the meeting I dared crying and let my face be covered with tears without whiping them off, because I needed the salty hugs on my cheeks. I closed my eyes. A male voice spoke and said exactly what I always thought nobody would understand about me. How he was afraid to get close to people, afraid to get hurt. Feeling understood feels incredibly foreign to me, and the first thing I thought was: I am being played. They’re all in on this delusion of mine and they are speaking my words so that I don’t even have my secrets in me any more.

I have such a big wall around me, I said silently.
From across the room I saw his eyes nod.
And if it’s not a wall, it’s a big glass window.
I saw his head nodding almost unnoticeably.
And if it’s not a glass window, it’s a tiny film of plastic covering me.
His exhale nodded.
How is that you can relate, my tears asked.
Because I am addicted too, girl.

I am on a break today. A break from what I think I should be doing. A break from listening to my own thoughts. I am deliberately not caring one bit about the weather and I chose wear what I want to wear, and if that means I can’t go for a walk, because my summer dress is way too optimistic for what we currently have going on outside then that is just how it is, because I will NOT adapt to the weather today. It also means I am inside my house with goose bumps (which Dutch call ‘chicken skin’). But the dress stays on! For I am on adult strike! Also I put my hair in every direction that I needed it to be, for today I am a punky-pine!

And today I will give in to my cravings. Totally and fully, completely, eagerly, happily and unapologetically, lavishly and lushly. I crave a semi-permanent regression to when I was a kid, when mama allowed me to take the pink flowered duvet downstairs and I would almost disappear in it while sitting on their green cushioned couch. When did I stop doing that as an adult, drag my duvet with me where I want it to be.. who taught me to stop ignoring that beautiful child part of me.. I miss her. If she were my daughter, I would take her on my lap, smell her and love her to the moon and back and tell her that she lives in every corner of my being. I would promise her that I would outlive her so that there is at least one person to lover her to her death and who will mourn her after.

So. No adult stuff for me today – with the exception of dealing with the monthy feminine issue. I made a conscious decision to flood one sense (auditory) with music-on-repeat via my noise canceling buds, which turned out to be an excellent Christmas present that I gave myself, which even drowns the sound of my fingers hitting the keyboard and that somehow makes me want to say the word swaddle again, because repeat is more than soothing for me, it’s more yummy than Dorito’s or seeing the Dallas skyline.

Repeat provides me physical boundaries that I currently lack. I come alive in things on repeat. Or at least find some recuperation possibility. Feed me spaghetti time and again. Make me wear these slippers all year around. And let the world always bring forth good comedians.

For some reason I thought of something that happened when I was a toddler. I bit kids in kinder garten. And one time the teacher took me by the wrist and bit me back. I am not sure if I have actual memory of that or I remember this because mama mentioned it. To this day I have never asked more about it. Did mama see me do it? Maybe the teacher told mama that I bit other children? Maybe I told mama that the teacher bit me? Was I upset after she bit me? Did anyone even explain to me that what I did was wrong? Or was I just hurt by someone who should have taken care of me?

What was I thinking back then? What was happening in me, to me? Was I overwhelmed by the amount of children around me, maybe I was asking for attention? Was I experimenting with the concept of cause and effect to see if I do this, what will happen? Maybe I was expressing emotions? Frustrated perhaps because I didn’t have much words?

I suddenly know why I remembered this. Because I noticed that lately I have been biting myself, and it reminds me of the same playful way that my Staffy could sometimes put open his mouth and have his teeth touch my skin. Man, I wish I had known him better, for I would have definitely wanted to have engaged in rough and tumble played with him more. I notice that I bite myself when I am around my mother. I bite my hand, my palm, wrist. Only my left hand. It borders on a weird upside down arousal for me, like soothing. It’s as if it is some sort of emotional lightning rod and at the same time fuelling me up. Maybe that is my way of regressing back to that age where I forgot to take a kid part with me and the only way to get feedback from her is to bite the only person I have been missing so much lately: me. Am I still here? Bite. Ah yes, here you are. Here I am, hello hand! Can I come really close and talk to the wrist too?

So. Today I am officially on adult strike. I refuse to pay a bill. I answer no phone call. I open no email. I don’t flush after I pee. I will ignore people ringing my door bell. I will not pick up the fallen red lilly peddles off of the floor. I will not read in my neuroscience book. I will put zero effort into controling any facial muscle today. I will clap my hands several times for no reason. I will digitally visit IKEA just to look around. And I may put my wrist in my mouth while doing that. Because when you’re on adult strike everything is possible and allowed.

Yukkedeeyuk, how what is lush for the eye can leave just the bitterest of taste in your mouth. I tried a nonalcoholic beer yesterday, and I chose the perfect glas for it, thick-rimmed, more hexagonal to the grip than round. The weight is just orgasmicly perfect, like ASMR to my fingers and palm. This is how glass must be.

The sound of pouring the liquid into it reminded me how I always preferred wine. And that memory even came to me in present tense, where I susprisingly thought: why can’t I just have one glass of wine today, because beer is so boring! There is something so dull about how beer uses gravity to do a freefall into glass. It falls too slow or something, it’s more scattered than wine, more sloshy than smooth, and flows in a style that I can only describe as the opposite of greedy. Its sound too mushy, expressionless.

If beer would be a person, he would be the one never initiating anything, responding to questions in a monotonous way, always the last one to be chosen to play with or sometimes even forgotten to be picked up after school. That kind of kid who is embarassed by his mama, because she still wets her finger to wipe his mouth. In plain sight.

When I was done ignoring that kid and looked at my glass again, I saw that even the foam of the beer was off. It should have been a firm dancing wave of thick whipped cream cloudy white-with-oxygen-bubbels. Instead it was more like that last wave a sea has to offer. A wave that is sheerly exhausted from existance and throws himself to shore, leaving a greyish foam with a fishy smell.

I tried another sense and closed my eyes. Maybe my nose would speak. And it did! The content smelled more than promising, like caramelized orange peel pie or something, with a field of vanilla to frolic in. There was something 3D about the scent. I could even hear the door of a wooden shed close against a wooden frame. And when I extended my arm to mama’s nose, she had one letter for it that she extended melodically in a beautiful bell-shaped curve, going from low to high to low: mmmMMMmmm.

I was excited with her and thought lets’ do this then! Celebrate August 1! Let’s just forget that this day I was wearing my winter coat again because we were flooded with rain and overclouded by gray sky. Let’s just cheer with beer to love and life!

But the first gulp down turned into a let down. Not sure if my alphabet even had a letter for the sound I made when I had my whole mouth full of the first sip and made my first swallow. It’s one of those emotions I have almost no control over, nor do I want to have that control. I needed to feel some release of the tension I had been holding onto because of such profoundly painful situations that have been swirving in my life lately, I completely let go when I put the glass down again; drowning myself in the display of full disgust washing up on my shore line.

Mama saw my face almost convulsing, the wrinkles in my forehead deepening, my cheecks contracting in this weird smile that was the opposite of happiness. Immediately she stepped away from her cooking, took two steps in my direction, took the glass away and tossed the content in the sink as if she just got rid of all the bullies that this weird kid ever had to deal with on a daily basis.

I felt so taken care of by that gesture, seeing mama wash the glass so firmly with running water and with both hands, as if she was cleaning me up in other bitter places. When she wrapped the glass in a towel to dry it, outside and in, I felt swaddled, bundled and cared for. My mom will probably always love me this way. Before she handed me back the glass, she even took a second look,, turning it in all the hexagonal directions and smelled it to make sure. I felt so incredibly loved in that gesture.

I bought you Crodino, she said, it’s in the other fridge.

Unexpectedly and at the same time almost overdue from being welcome, my staycation ended yesterday, as my mother called me to tell me they were on their way home from an upper north Scandinavia. When I looked at my phone to see where they were, they would have arrived that same day, had my father still had three young kids sleeping on the back seat, forty years ago. Then, yes, then he would have driven that distance in one day, with the same nonchalance and normalcy -and later a bit of pride- with which he told me how he once drove 1367 miles to Spain in 24 hours. I remember how mama and me both had a flatline in some part of our brain associated with arousal, hearing these numbers and just taking them face, or ear, value. But my brother immediately knew how fast my dad must have been driving minimally, knowing that it wasn’t all paved highways all the way. I remember his eyes when he heard my dad say it, unsure of whether he should feel pride having a dad like that, or bummed out that he himself had never driven that fast, for that long, nor owned a car built for such speed.

But my dad has slowed, greyed and aged. When mama called me, he was taking his afternoon nap. And after he would wake up, he would say ‘let’s take another 2 hour drive, shall we?’ to then stop again and enjoy the scenery and each other, have something to drink and to nibble. Their trip home is part of their holiday, and that’s how it has always been. When we went to Greece as a family, the five of us, the journey WAS our holiday, especially when we licked on a cone filled the dirtiest ice cream at Гевгелија, before we crossed the border into the land that would forever be our first love.

My staycation in my parents’ house felt bland this time. Dead. Useless. A puppet show where only my hands moved. It was filling up time and space more out of necessity than desire. I felt like an orphan somehow, not just an only child, but a child without parents, being alone in that empty house, pretending to the neighborhood but especially to potential burglars, that the house was still inhabitated, by every day moving the car to a different spot on their driveway, closing blinders for a couple of hours, turning different lights on or off.. It didn’t feel as it normally felt when I was there during their holiday. This time it left me without stories. I sat in their tub more than once, hoping to feel some relief, but all I felt was pruny.

It made me look back at 50 years of morphing, folding and stumbling into me and perhaps I am wearing the wrong glasses but I couldn’t help but notice that trend – again – that I am deeply flawed when it comes to certain social contact, and that when there is no reciprocity secretly hidden underneath I do amazingly well, but once there comes some expectation, either from me or the other person, there is noise on the line, the Greek even use the word parasite for that expression.

The procedure against my former therapist has somehow gripped me by the throat, for her response is lie, deny and justify, when all I asked for was would you please see things from my side. Would you please acknowledge that I got hurt in the process of your good intentions? She either isn’t big enough to own up to that, or she is just too small to see the bigger picture. I hoped that at least she was willing to see that her well intentioned interventions became outerventions for me, leaving me to feel unsafe, unseen and unheard, but instead of doing that she blamed, framed and shamed me.

I feel so sad for myself that I was lied to, it borders on victim’s guilt, as if I am saying I am so sorry that I got assaulted. How can a person do that to another person and go on with their life? How do they even enjoy their dinner knowing what they did? Do they relax when they sink into their tub, and then go snuggle up with a blanket and feel utterly content and happy that another day has passed where they completely fulfilled their purpose in life and contributed to someone else’s wellbeing? Does she lay loud asleep, while I lay silently awake at night, knowing that what she accused me of is outside any domain of humanity? Can she wash off that filth when she showers? Does she show her true colors now that I finally advocated for myself?

The sadness spilled over into showing another part of my life, pointing me to another place where I should voice up more, and that was when I saw the beautifullest (I know, wrong conjugation) of lillies ever yesterday. A kind of red that resembles a color more alive than blood. They should make a wedding dress with that color, it looks like wine, but with a certain lightgiving shining on it. It’s a color that makes you want to have hope in life again. It made me so happy to see my greenery finally selling lillies again, and at the same time it made me sad because I bought them for mama, and not for myself.

In one hour my favorite store will open. And I decide right now that I then will open up too, voice my needs and advocate for myself: I want these flowers too. For me. I need this color today.

It needs time, someone said. Oh, and love.

But I don’t know how to do that. What does loving your grieving process look like? How do I give it time, or even space? When will I be done? How do I know when I’m done?

It reminds me of my eleven year relationship with the man who said he first wanted to figure out what he wanted in life before he would take that first step and how I always replied that things are the other way around; life is already happening.. Life by default will be colored by figuring things out as you go and you’re dead when you’re done. Or done when you’re dead. It would be like saying: I’m going to train to become an expert in this field and sign up for a competition only if you assure that this is what I was supposed to do in life and promise me that I will win.

My grief looks beyond horrible, it’s the backside of un unfinished embroidery work, it’s the opposite of what I consider to be my core. It’s as if I carry with me a dead piece of flesh that I can’t seem to cut off of me. It’s more than messy and they should make an extra superlative for it: messiest-est. It feels as if there is something wrong with my color perception and I’m missing a certain frequency, making everything around me look different from what it used to be, the same way that the words through and though are pronounced differently by taking just one letter away. It’s as if someone has put muffs over my ears. I wonder if my heart would still flutter if someone says my name.

If as a cathartic exercise I had to paint my grief, I would first search for music echoing back to 1995, and turn the volume way up, then stare the therapist down, cut the canvas with a Stanley knife, set fire to the left side of the frame and then throw the buckets of paint on the floor with such force that it would splatter all over the place, not noticing it was me scattering on my own canvas, because of my distorted color perception.

Grief is everything that I as a person am not.
Grief comes with needs that I need for myself, so all I can give is empty.

Grief is an unwanted guest. In my bed, my house, my eyes, my heart. It makes my breath smell, it shows up between the rice and beans on my spoon and interferes with the way I open the balcony door in the morning. It lives in the muscles of my brows, eyes and mouth. Grief is married to gravity and is pulling me downdowndown. Every smile that I do have only reminds me how after every jump on the trampoline, you eventually fall back. My smiles don’t slowly fade after they appear, like they would have previously, but they switch faces back to the inner disturbedness that I wake up with. Smile on, smile off. How do I love something that I hate? I not only hate grief being here, but I hate it more that he refuses to leave. Oh, and that he doesn’t seem to want to talk.

This morning I wondered if there could be a different reason to why I keep reading my over the top technically difficult book on statistics. By now it’s becoming more formula’s than words and I am getting genuinely upset with the writer using phrases such as ‘and from this, it’s easy to see that…’

I thought: It has to do with control. At least with this book it’s me who decides to indulge into something that I don’t understand, the book is even starting to talk in a different language, having used almost all the Greek letters of the alphabet by now to distinguish between all kinds of variables or coefficients. It’s self-inflicted torture, wrapped in pages. But I know that eventually, if I keep flipping, it will be done and I can close the book. It’s a victorious escape from reality, so I don’t have to deal with not knowing how to deal with my brother being gone, for I lack the words for that, even in Greek. There doesn’t seem to be a formula for dealing with grief, so my wish to understand it can’t find a place to exist, the same way victims of a crime always utter the one question that most of the time has no bearing: why me? Why did you kill me?

They all say it’s grief without a grave, for my brother is still alive, but out of reach or touch. I am too afraid to think about an alternative: what if.. for me.. love can only exist in a place where no detail ever changes; if you change one letter, the word even loses its meaning, or purpose for existing. No book contains the definition for the word lve. And glove is something entirely different too.

Be gentle, they said. Well, okay.. for today this is what gentle looks like for me then, perhaps in the funniest form of deep happiness, ripped loose from everything worrisome that is going on in the world: I discovered that the shop where I have been buying my nail piercings for the last twenty years still has them. Last year they said they didn’t sell them anymore, but for some weird reason I kept coming back to ask (or at least to check), and the other day someone actually went looking in the back, and she found a drawer with a plastic bag with ‘my’ piercings, waiting to be tossed out, for the new owner had decided on selling a different collection and couldn’t make a profit because hardly nobody ever bought these piercings.

It felt as happy as I once was surrounded by all my plush sheep, James being one of them, perhaps in the same way someone can feel life-giving completeness by working in an orphanage. I saw all these rings and my smile became as big as my pupils and I asked if I could buy them all. Only then she saw my hand and said: “Oh, I recognize you! You were the one who always bought these.”

When I walked out, I noticed my smile was still there, fading slower than my pace.

I am in hoodie-protection. What I am doing this morning I should have done yesterday evening. Darn me. Darn me and my unskilled gate keeping gate keeper. Where can I file the papers to fire him? Or file papers to hire someone to train him? Darn me in the colorful playground being stuck in a swing, going back and forth between black and white. I should have taken it more slow, and just take the day off, maybe considering doing two meetings per week, not full throttle myself into a ‘from now on I’m gonna go daily’ decision.

The rationale was also: let’s just get this over with, and attend all meetings, so at least I have seen at least the regular attendees at least once and when I have dipped my foot in every water and I can decide what kind of meeting I’m going to dive more into, NA or CA or AA and what day of the week.

But it so happened that I actually met someone I knew from my daily swimming. At first I didn’t recognize her with her clothes on, standing upright, with her hair done and with make-up on, for I only know her in a bathing suit, wet fizzy hair, with only hear head sticking out of the water, greeting me when our waters touch. I always reognized her from across the pool, for she swims as if she is in recovery of a paraplegic accident. I had never seen her in any other situation where she had better control over her muscles. It was because she recognized me that I halted my pace in the hallway. The color of her cheeks told me she somehow felt exposed by us meeting there. Oh, I didn’t know you came here too, she said, while turning away her eyes. Yeah, kind of. At least I did years ago.

The meeting was way bigger this time, again with only few familiar faces (three if I add the swim girl). And I remembered what I so liked about being there: the silence that was carried by the whole group that embraces something that doesn’t need to be voiced and takes away pressure to speak. It touches the core of me: keep your distance, I will retract if you come too close.

It goes back to other waters, when I was still in mama’s womb and the doctors said that I took too long to be born and that if labor didn’t start soon, they would have to induce mama. Mama said: Saartje will come when she is ready. It was even before she knew I was a girl. The words that she spoke over me are one of the golden threads that have woven their shimmer into almost every aspect of my existence: I will come at my own time.

I could have sat there the whole meeting and just enjoy the fact that I was surrounded by people who said nothing. They were not there for me, and because of exactly that, I felt space to be there. No expectation to speak, how freeing is that. I could just hear the brakes being pulled on my racing thoughts, until I came to a halt fully and closed my eyes thinking woah oh how I have missed this. The collective consciousness of a group that only comes together because they choose to, not because they are governed by anything. A group that is fully driven by egocentrism and therefore becomes altruistic, for if they had chosen not to come, I would have sat there by myself. I saw how a couple of people had taken off their slippers, and felt jealousy, how I wished that my feet would touch ground too, but I didn’t dare doing that yet.

When the meeting was over, the swim girl came up to me and we got to talking and I noticed how my social skills have atrophied over the last couple of years and I heard myself say things I didn’t want to share, I could just feel my facial muscles work overtime to mimic the emotion that should match the content of what I was sharing, rigidly flipping through a script thinking what is appropriate to tell and what is not, how much eye contact I should make and what kind of a question can I ask back. I felt like a robot again and something inside me had become incredibly silent again. I am doing something I’m not ready for..

And when she said: shall we meet up some time, I heard myself say yes, ignoring that screaming silence in me that I need more time. I just got out of prison, I have no idea about the outside world, I am a master with words behind a screen, but I fall apart outside of its view. I have lived in “soulitary” confinement for so long that the walls are still visible on my retina, the same thing that surgeons experience when they have looked at blood for too long, they have this after image seeing green spots and blobs everywhere their eyes wander, hence their green gowns. I still have after images of my confinement. Because of my yes to her question I lost control the muscles of my free will and I knew what the script is for such a thing, because I have seen others do it: 1) you take out your phone 2) check if you heard her name correctly, 3) type her name in your contacts to then 4) hand her your phone so she can type in her number. I felt like a f*ckboy casually picking up an easy chick.

Not sure what to do, it led me to swinging the pendulum way back again to never going to meetings again, but I got my feet wet already, so now what..

I will probably always run into people, who are also out in the free world. As I wanted to sign the paper to fire my gate keeper, I noticed that someone had scribbled something on the back: Gates don’t always have to be fully open or closed, Saartje. There are little peepholes as well.

Okay, so I did it!
I went.
To a meeting.
Yesterday evening.

I can hardly speak my lengthy sentences any more for I am so overwhelmed by it all. I came home feeling as if I had reclined alongside of a busy interstate, after being forced to count every car that rushed past, I slept as if I had to overcome a jetlag, woke up at 2AM, drenched in sweat, hungry for cashews, dreamt about someone from a television show who changed his carreer from DJ to ice cream seller, and when I looked down, I saw that my dress had a naked female skin colour and contour, so I had dressed myself into nakedness, fell back asleep, woke up with a head ache, not really enjoying the taste of my coffee and seeing that I am 2 pounds lighter than yesterday. Maybe last night I lost the weight of loneliness?

But I did it. And for me this step is the weirdest mixture between victory and defeat, between catering to a need while hoping that I was born needless, shamefully and scaringly admitting that I am lonely and that it is slowly shriveling me up on the inside, becoming a problem and quite unliveable, only to celebrate not using drugs, but that’s about it. My skin hurts because it hasn´t been touched by another human being for so long. My heart hurts because it hasn’t throbbed for anyone else but my parents. My mouth aches to speak, even though I share my stories here, but that’s always digital and therefore -comfortably- silent.

These last couple of weeks, months, have probably been leading into this, for I saw myself become destructive in other ways than with alcohol. I bought heaps of sand, to stick my head in. I could have started my own desert and charge people money for visiting me. The sand got stuck everywhere, my bra was filled with grains of denial that I was fine and that am just a loner kind of a person and I rather do things on my own. Besides, it’s pretty cool to be so free as I am.

I need to hear me say it out loud for it to make nonsense to me: I never thought I would stoop so low as to go and be with people because I needed to be with people.

I went to a place I thought I would never go back to, because of so many reasons, that nowadays I am almost always able to neutrally summarize as ‘AA is not for me’. My recovery took off when I put down the bottle for the last time in 2023 and when I read the book This Naked Mind which solidified my decision to quit.

My life is black and white. I either hold or hate. Cling or push. I don’t do half work, even my addiction showed that. My principles are so strong that one time I asked myself a hypothetical question.. what if a person who hurt you real, real bad, but really real bad, what if this person was the only donor and you are in need of a transplant? What if this person steps forward and offers me their organ? Out of stubbornness I think I would refuse. I don’t want you in my life, I don’t want your pain in my heart, your memory in my head, your name in my mouth, and I definitely don’t want your organ in my body.

I would rather die than accept something I need to keep living.

That’s how my yesterday evening felt, I had to make that choice, to accept something that I needed to be human and feel alive, knowing that it had to come from someone else but me. I am the only one who can’t look myself in the eye, except for a mirror, but that image will always be backwards. Sometimes I hate that I have to bow down to my body being hungry for food, or sit down because I am physically exhausted. Now I have to bow down because my soul is starving too? Do I even have control over anything?

Being the oldest of three, and perhaps leaning on my personality too, I always had this throbbing vein in the back of my head, saying: I am the oldest, I am the one who needs to have her shit together, I am the one who needs to do it on her own, by herself. Coming in for a hug is defeat, it shows how weak you are. I think I got an extra hit in the stomach when I discovered that as the oldest sister, I couldn’t be there for my younger brother emotionally when he emigrated last year, because I myself was hurting too much because of him moving away.

I decided to walk to the meeting. I needed to take all those steps, to get me closer with every step that I took, to make the transition go slow and smooth.

When I got there, I saw a familiar face at the door, and when I entered the chamber (oh yes, I almost forgot, the Dutch call it kamer, which is more like a chamber than a room) I saw another familiar face that immediately lit up when she saw me, arms stretched out. Our boobs touched. Then another familiar face. A man. Hug. No boob touch. Another familiar face. Hug. Long time no see, how long has it been, three years? Good to see you again. Yeah..

I didn’t say anything the whole evening. And that was more than enough. I poured myself tea. After the meeting I inquired about a couple of people and was reminded of the destruction of addiction. J? Oh, she died, deliberate overdose. Q? Started dealing to his sponsees. M? She quit coming, she lives on the street again.

And there I was, in my blue-purple sunny dress, with my bra on, teeth brushed, hair looking messy-good as always, smelling of Yves Saint Laurent, nails reminding me of being a woman. For one second I thought: these are not my people, I am not addicted any more, I don’t fight my daily cravings, I don’t belong here, it wasn’t that bad with me, was it?

The boob-woman looked at me: We all come here because we need something. You came too. Take what you need.

Two things came together this week — one seemingly big, the other small — and I tried to put the past few weeks into words.

I had hoped to transmute my anger, but I saw it morph into cynicism, and it startled me to see that bitterness gush through my fingers onto the screen. For that reason I deleted what I shared a couple of days ago in this group.

What an ugly defense mechanism that is, cynism, just like anger can be, or even humor. A kind of underdeveloped protection to avoid sitting down at the heart of the matter. I don’t enjoy being around people who are overly cynical, so I shelved the story for a while. It has ripened (and grown in size) since then.

The seemingly small thing was that I bought a new psychology book. And since I’m currently reading two technically dense books — one on cognitive neuropsychology, the other a statistics book that’s almost unreadable without additional tutorials — I was craving something a little more fun on the side, for that had been my 2025 resolution, hadn’t it? To read things I actually enjoy.

But this statistics book is becoming brutally more difficult chapter by chapter, and I saw my summaries shrink week by week, along with my enjoyment of it, less by less. I think that by now I am only reading it to brush up my English and because I believe that no book deserves to be left half-read on a shelf. Maybe it’s a pride thing too: I won’t be defeated. At the very least, in a few weeks I’ll be able to say I finished it.

But I remembered the difference between January and now, and how much I had enjoyed reading an introductory book earlier this year — and I wanted that enjoyment again. It clashed with a voice in my head: Why another introductory? You are already introduced. Pick something new, something on group dynamics or the philosophy of science. Forensic psychology, persuasion, anything but an introductiory book.

It reminded me of my ex, who once clumsily and inept commented on my green paintings: Why don’t you choose a different color for once? They’re all green.

But I saw the subtle differences in shades of green, hue of green, in color movement, in the pressing of the brushstrokes, and most of all I remembered the pleasure of making them, where my ex only saw green.

At the beginning of this year, I promised myself I’d read for joy. And if I stayed faithful to that desire, I had to admit that I just wanted to read another introductory book — by a different author, even if it was to see what topics he would choose to fit into 700 pages to give students a first taste of the field, and how he would word things. Why can’t I read about the same topic twice? Don’t I also go back to the restaurant where I had a pleasurable experience and order the exact same because it tasted so good the first time? Isn’t that the reason also that people stay together? Because they enjoy that person again this new day?

So I carefully picked a title and placed my order through the site. But the book never came. Nor did I hear from the seller. The site sent her a reminder email and a message via WhatsApp. Nothing. Two days later: still nothing. And so it went on. I started to feel angry — purely from a place of not understanding. You offer books for sale and then… don’t send them? And don’t even explain why not? The site sees this and does nothing.

Why isn’t the world more logical? Why don’t people just do what they’re supposed to do?

Eventually I got a message from her, promising to mail the book on Monday. That, too, didn’t happen.

The anger it stirred in me had nowhere to go. I could either wait for the book — it would probably arrive eventually — or get my money back and buy it from another student. There were several copies available, in different conditions, for various prices. In my rage I considered cancelling the order and — in a kind of irrational revenge — intentionally buying a more expensive copy from someone else.

Complete nonsense.
Anger, it seems, wants only to feed itself, insatiably.

I decided to wait. After thirteen days, the book arrived. And the only thing I could do with my anger was leave a review. Oh, boy, and did I have a review ready in my head! But the site gave me no room for that, I only got a a five-star scale and three questions.
“How satisfied are you with the packaging?” — five stars.
“Does the book match the description?” — five stars.
And then came the question: “How satisfied are you with the communication from the seller?” — One star.

I wished the rating system went from 1 to 10,000 — then my one star would have weight. I wanted to give zero stars. Or stars below zero. Or rate it in Fahrenheit. But I had to choose. My mouse hovered, and landed on the 1. One star.

That was the biggest climax, and also the thinnest expression of a deep, raw emotion of indignation. The only place I could channel my fury. It’s like wanting to be the fastest accelerator when the light turns green while making sure the full fish tank on the passenger’s side next to you doesn’t slosh over. It’s like being subjected to the world’s greatest injustice, and the judge allowing you only a yes-or-no answer, no explanation, no tirade, no room to speak. Are you Sarieke? Here’s your pen ma’am. Please tick one box. Is that your name? Yes or no. And stay within the lines, please.

I remember how one of my professors had drawn a box around every exam question, telling us: “Your answer must — and can — fit within these four lines. If you write super small to squeeze more in, I’ll mark your answer wrong.”

The seeminglybig thing — where I failed to stay within the lines — is that I ended my therapeutic relationship. I could’ve ended it more gracefully. I could’ve drawn my own line, offered a sincere thanks for the time it was helpful, and left it at that — a clean ending for both sides.

But I couldn’t do it.

I think it had to do with a heap of old memories — situations where I so badly wanted to speak up but didn’t, withdrawing into a bitter silence.

I recall the face of one of my aunts, I was still in single digits age, when I saw her at my grandmother’s: those tight, stern, pressed-together lips. Like she was bitter. Like she was constantly bracing herself. Always angry — at someone or at life itself — never at ease.
I remember thinking: I never want to end up looking like that when I grow up — so bitter. Lips somehow seem to say it all.

And yet that’s exactly how I’ve been feeling lately: lips pressed shut, not knowing what might come out if I do speak. Speak about memories of jobs that fell apart, volunteer jobs that didn’t work out, friendships that ripped, relationships that broke, church experiences that hurt, and — the final bead on the string — a brother whose emigration painfully revealed that my idea of our relationship was entirely different from his.

All that pain came to a head when my therapist increasingly shifted her own limitations onto me, claiming space in our sessions that, therapeutically, was meant for me. When I occasionally voiced my concern about that, she brushed it off with, “I mean well.”

That sentence has me worried — and I think it’s reinforced by the internet, where it’s so easy to say “That’s not what I meant” or even delete your comment altogether, as if it was never said.

But if you drop a vase and only say “I didn’t mean to,” the shards are still on the floor.

It’s as if good intentions have become the holy grail — shifting focus toward empathy for the causer rather than to the effect on the wounded. The wounded person is expected to understand the one who didn’t mean to hurt — but don’t both perspectives deserve space? The intention of person A, and the impact on person B?

I thought of someone lying in a hospital bed with a broken back. The specialist, moved by the story about the accident, gives him an encouraging little pat on the shoulder. The patient screams in agony. The specialist, who read a book that weekend on boundaries and personal responsibility with regard to emotion, says: “That pain — it’s yours, not mine. All I did was give you a little pat on the back. Hey man, I meant well, why can’t you see it from my side?”

But a specialist should know that shoulder taps — no matter how well-intentioned — don’t go with spinal fractures. Just like I believe a therapist should be more careful with someone she knows has a rupture in her soul. When this therapist wasn’t careful, that — finally — was my last straw.

I filed a complaint against her, but when someone asked me: What do you hope to achieve with your complaint? I fell silent. Because I’ve noticed that themore people agree with the validity of my complaint, the angrier I get, so validation apparently is not what I need.

What do I want? At first, I thought: I want this therapist to admit I’m right. But when I imagined that hypothetical moment — it gave me no relief. It made me even angrier.

What I want is for it never to have happened.
Or… a delete button for the pain.

These past weeks I’ve looked at alcohol more than once, shook my head, and walked on — not really knowing any better way to handle it than by lashing out at a woman who isn’t my match in any aspect, and therefore feels like a “safe” target. She’s getting hit with far more than she deserves — and that stings morally.

Even if the complaint is valid, the motivation behind it is grounded in something else. My complaint against her… is a complaint against life.

In sharing the situation with my dad, he ushered me to think about the financial loss should I lose my case. But in thinking more about the word loss I realize that my my costs are emotional. It is costing me my peace. My soul’s rest. My joy in small things. My hopeful, naïve view of the world. My sleep — despite the new mattress. And my relaxed face.

It costs me the image I have of myself.
Because I don’t want to be a vindictive person, perpetually ringing the alarm of injustice that only keeps me up at night.

It should have be enough to draw my own line and say to her: to here and no further, and then walk away. Because what would I really win, if I win this?

As I am writing this, I have my newly bought book behind me, on the bookshelf, a book I waited thirteen days for, weighing 2019 grams, paging 700 in number. A book I really wanted and know I will enjoy. A book that became a silent witness to the fact that perhaps the best thing to do with your big anger in life is a small thing: just give it one star.

If the story had a title, before it was written even, not as a summary but a starting point, immediately two words presented themselves, twins, as if they where the only duo that showed up for the interview, and were the perfect candidate for the job opening as ghost writers. When they sat down to introduce themselves, they said in one accord: ‘one star’.

I will give her one star. One star out of five. That is the ultimate revenge. Also the only thing I can say about her for not sending me the book that I bought. At least not within the mandatory time window. It wasn’t about the money, for the platform she used for showcasing her second hand study books would reimburse me and even remove her as a seller. It was about her not keeping her word, because on two separate occassions she promised to send the book a certain day. When that day passed, another promise came for another day, called tomorrow. When tomorrow became my yesterday I didn’t know what to do with my anger.

If it had happened during a phone call thirty years ago, I would have slammed the receiver against the hook so hard that it would be the equivalent of actually slapping her across the face. Now all I was allowed to do was wait for the book to arrive and then wait for the opportunity to rate her on a scale from 1 to 5 stars. I didn’t feel starry at all and actually hoped I could rate her in degrees of Fahrenheit.

I wanted the range to be from 1 to 1.000, for at least then my 1 would stand out. In my head I wanted to take her to court, arguing in front of the judge -me- that violating a promise is a brain crime and eventually brings damage to society as a whole, it goes against all the rules of language, screws with your heuristics and if it happens often enough (or starts young enough) it leads to trauma. It makes the world unsafe. It makes people untrustworthy.

You can always count on me. But when I showed up with my abacus, they were not home. Or my math didn’t add up.

So, a meager one star is it. It’s as if someone is lovingly handing me a straight jacket and says: you can only calmly say your full piece when you’re fully restrained. And maybe that’s the lesson of the week. That I need to start to deal with the fact that things happen in life. That things happen to me. That I sometimes get hurt, sometimes even on the upper far right side of the scale.

No amount of stars can undo what happened. It it is a soft reminder perhaps amidst of a bigger issue, a current messy ending with my former therapist, me refusing to put on that straight jacket and instead straight take it to court for real, us now being in an official procedure, where I have to wait for the adversarial hearing. But chances are that it will lead (me) nowhere, because I lawyered up with a DJ, who pushed the repeat button on his Denon turntables, where I keep hearing: “It should have never happened, your honor.” That’s not what happens in court: that things are turned-back as if they never happened. What if the judge does say: you’re right, it should have never happened?

Because it did happen. The same way the book seller broke her word. I am aware it’s just a book. But when people keep breaking promises, vows become a verdicts. And I need to start living in a world where I can give zero fucks, or.. one star.