We met in the pouring rain, hiding under our moms' umbrellas at a track meet. We were the same age, but Lisa must have been almost a foot taller than me; at age 11, I was practically a dwarf. I can't speak for Lisa, but back then, I had a clear vision of what my life would be like in my early twenties. I would meet my future husband in high school, write a book before my 20th, get married and continue my career as a successful author. I would have life all figured out by the age of 23. As we all know, things did not go according to that plan.

Soon after we'd met, Lisa and I went to high school. We didn't see each other often, just at a few track meets each summer. The weeks and months between meetups didn't matter. Neither did the fact that we had such different interests; Lisa showed talent in the throwing events, I was more of a runner. She was more practical with her education, I lost myself in Latin and Ancient Greek. But our differences played no role in our friendship. We just clicked. From 2008 to 2014, we basically grew up together during track meets. Slowly but surely though, we started going our own way. Lisa worked her way up to college, studied in the south before moving to the east to finish her studies. I stayed in the Rotterdam area, dropped out of college to protect my mental health, built a new life at Utrecht University. The last time Lisa and I saw each other in person was in November 2017. Until she texted me out of the blue in October. "Do you want to go to the zoo?"

I was going through a rough patch when the text came. Since my grandma's passing, I often struggle with intrusive thoughts. Most of them are centered around what I haven't achieved yet, and I'm not talking about the unrealistic expectations I had at eleven. Let's face it: I'm 23, I still live with my parents, I don't have a job, I don't have a degree and I'm not in a relationship. I'm not good at my sport, I'm antisocial and my writing is mediocre at best. My life's achievements are nothing to write home about. That does get me down sometimes. From time to time I catch myself thinking: No wonder grandma never told me she loved me. I desperately needed a break from those thoughts. I accepted Lisa's invitation. Two days later, we met up for the first time in almost two years at Rotterdam Central Station.

Like so many times before, time between meetups didn't matter. We picked up where we'd left off. Degree courses, relationships, jobs, we discussed all of it briefly. I steered clear from the truly painful memories for the moment, and so did Lisa. We talked about lighter topics while tackling my fear of sharks at the aquarium, discussed the blessing to this world that is the pygmy hippo while taking pictures of one and told each other travel stories while roaming around the African section. When we'd seen every part of the zoo and every animal that showed itself, we sat down in what used to be known as the Riviera Hall. It was a nice place, a lot like a greenhouse with all its tropical plants and a pond in the middle. We set up a small picknick with water in reusable bottles and grapes. Then we put all our cards on the table.


Just three hours earlier, I hadn't been so sure whether I'd tell Lisa all that I was now about to say. To be completely honest, I was afraid to be honest with her. Of the two of us, she had always been the lucky one. The one whom all the boys liked. The pretty one, the talented one, the one I admired. Everything always seemed to come easy to her: driver's license, degrees, friends. She moved out long before I even though of looking for a place of my own. Next to her, I'd look like a complete failure... But even before we sat down in the Riviera Hall, I'd noticed that Lisa's life, no matter how great it sounded to me, wasn't perfect either. As it turned out, I didn't have life figured out by 23, and neither did Lisa. Our lives seemed so different, but we discovered that we'd gone through many of the same things: that first serious relationship that leaves you mentally scarred, mental breakdowns because you can't do everything at once, therapy sessions, the insecurities surrounding career prospects... For the longest time I'd felt so alone in all of this, but now one of my oldest friends was sitting right in front of me, admitting that she'd been there too. For the first time in years, I felt like I hadn't failed at life. I had just taken a detour, just like Lisa had.

We sat at the edge of the pond for a long time, partially because we had so much to talk about, partially because the pipes above our head made a lot of noise that we thought was the sound of a downpour pounding away at the roof the of Riviera Hall. It was cathartic to share all of my failures with someone who'd known me since my awkward preteen days. Yet it wasn't all doom and gloom, sadness and shame. No, sharing our insecurities and shortcomings made me also see how far we'd come. Lisa is a fulltime student with two degrees to her name, her own place that she pays for herself, and she's the best athlete in the throwing events that our club has. And she has a super cute cat. I, on the other hand, have no degrees, but I speak three languages fluently, Spanish badly, and I'm learning Hindi. I have a resume longer than my arm. I'm an honours student and most recently, I've learned to make peace with what I am and what I'm not. Between the two of us, Lisa and I have plenty of accomplishments to be proud of.

By the end of the day, I felt like a weight had been lifted. It was raining when we left the zoo, but the clouds that had been obscuring my thoughts for weeks had faded. As I hugged Lisa goodbye at the train station, I mentally thanked her for reminding me of all the good things life had brought us, and for showing me that I'm not the only one who is struggling. Sure, we'd expected different things from life. But that didn't happen. So here we are now. We don't have life figured out by 23. And that's okay.

Dear 2019,

I'm tired. So unbelievably tired. This morning I didn't think I'd have the energy to write you a letter. But here I am, doing it anyway. In previous years, I found that these open letters on my blog really help me put the past behind me. So here we go, despite exhaustion and sleep deprivation.

When I look back on the twelve months we spent together, my dear 2019, I don't see myself celebrating milestones, chasing dreams or achieving goals. This year wasn't about me. I merely existed, like a slightly deflated balloon on the rough waves of life. And that's fine. Life can't always be about me. It does make me sad though that I was not living - I was merely existing.

I can't be mad at myself for not making the most out of every single day of 2019. Not even three months into the year. my grandma was hospitalized. Flu, pneumonia, leaking cardiac valves; her body was simply worn out. 2019, you know what happened. She passed away in May. By that time, I was already an emotional wreck. I spent a lot of time racing from university to the hospital and back. I learned a lot about funeral planning. Spring slipped by without my noticing. I was numb for weeks. When I came to my senses, it was summer. I'd passed my first year of university, somehow still with flying colors. But something was wrong. I was so angry all the time. I was like a loose cannon. At that point, I decided to remove myself from the lives of some people who meant a lot to me, because I knew I'd do irreparable damage if I stayed. I felt completely worthless and even told myself I didn't deserve a happy life. Even when I was in the most beautiful parts of southern Africa, I sometimes still couldn't enjoy everything life gave me; I was too busy feeling worthless. This only got worse as the days shortened and the nights darkened in the Fall. I reached out to a therapist and got the help I needed to cope with the loss of my grandma. Talking about the way she broke me down when I was just a kid helped me deal with my negative and intrusive thoughts. Two days before Christmas, I wrote my grandma a letter. I went to her grave on Christmas Eve, read the letter out loud and let it go up in flames. Now I can move on.

The sad part about all this is that I let so many opportunities slide in 2019. I had big plans, but didn't put any of the required work in. Most days I felt too numb and exhausted to write, blog or paint. I now understand that my subconscious was too busy processing 22 years of painful memories that my grandma left me with. Even fun stories of my travels were too much of an effort for me to write; every part of me that is involved in writing was needed to heal the wounds my grandma made. I can't blame that on you, 2019, but I do regret we couldn't spend more time telling stories. I'm sorry I didn't deliver on all the promises I made in January.

Right now, I'm still working on the stories I couldn't tell in May, August, December... Writing is somehow still difficult, but 2019, you gave me enough good memories to actually have something to write about. In fact, you would have been an amazing year if grandma hadn't died. After all, I finally went to Africa. I saw the Sacré-Coeur in the snow. I became an Honours student. I broke that magical barrier of five-minutes-per-kilometer in my very last race on the very last day of the decade. So many great things happened; I just didn't have the capacity to fully celebrate them or share my happiness with the world. Luckily I have this blog, where I can still share my encounters with elephants and attempts at climbing mountains.

2019, it's time for me to say goodbye. I've covered all the important parts of our relationships, now it's time to move on. I don't blame you for anything, no. I'd rather thank you for all the lessons you taught me and all the adventures we had. In 2020, I'm turning it all into art. But first, I'm taking a long, well-deserved nap.

Thank you for everything.

Let's face it: I'm in way over my head with this whole university thing. For some reason I decided to become an Honours student, conduct research on perceptual dialectology in South Asia and become an editor of an academic journal. Mistakes were made. Because on top of that, I'm still a runner, a damaged granddaughter and a blogger who is hopelessly behind on her content. It's been a hectic year, with little time to share my travel stories. But we all know mental health is more important than a conspiracy theory about the Titanic. So today I decided to slow down for once and write something fun. Something outside my usual niche. Something that we can all have a good laugh about. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to tell you about the beautiful disaster that is my Spotify Wrapped.


I discovered Spotify in 2014. The laptop my grandma gave me for my college career had the app preinstalled. I loved it right from the start. I still prefer CDs though, because I like to have physical copies of the music that I absolutely love. Since 2014, Spotify has kept me from so many financial disasters in the music world. Getting a feel for artists before buying an entire album is my favorite thing about Spotify. This year was a little different though. In January, I discovered the Desi category. Since that day, I've been looking forward to the complete mess that 2019's Spotify Wrapped would be. And I'm not surprised that even though Spotify claimed that my taste changed with the seasons, all of the are heavily influenced by Bollywood. Winter still looks a lot like what you'd expect from a basic white girl, with Mike Posner represented twice. Spring is when I started learning Hindi and decided to listen to the Bollywood Blast playlist on the train to university. It escalated from there, but Spring was also when I really started to get into The 1975. No surprises here.


Summer is more of the same, like Spring but amplified. This is how I'll remember 2019 when it comes to music. I listened to Bollywood Blast all the time while studying for finals. My friends thought I'd finally lost it, until I explained that listening to music in a language you don't speak is ideal if you want music in the background of your study sessions without it becoming a distraction (and then I shot myself in the foot by learning Hindi). Spotify, however, decided that this slide should be accompanied by a fragment from Pressure by The 1975. With good reason. I listened to this song on repeat in the early days of summer. After my grandma's death in May, I became a bit of an insomniac, prone to nightly episodes of pure panic. I'd sit for hours at my desk, just staring at my laptop and panicking badly unless Pressure was playing on repeat. That's how I'll remember the summer of 2019; The dark half of twilight and Pressure. I'm okay with that, bittersweet as it now seems.


Then Fall came. And I literally don't know of the artists shown on that slide. Here's the thing: I can't afford Spotify Premium at this point in my life, so whenever I'm out and about, I am forced to listen to albums and playlists on shuffle. At some point, I just stopped paying attention to the artists in playlists that weren't my own. As a result, I know that I must have listened to these artists; I just can't name any of their songs.

Moving on to my favorite artist of the year. I was worried about this one; the forced shuffle might have skewed this category in favor of some Indian dude as well. But I needn't have worried. My artist of the year is The 1975, which none of my friends will find surprising. Apparently I listened to their music for 17 hours just on Spotify. Not counting the times I listened to my physical copy of their album. And definitely not counting those endless days out of the African roads, when I was listening to So Far (It's Alright) on repeat all day. These 17 hours are just the tip of the iceberg. What's worse: I can exactly pinpoint those 17 hours. A few nights in June and three weeks in November made up the bulk of them. By the way, I'm very skeptic about Chocolate being my favorite song of theirs. You know, the sleepless nights with Pressure and all that. But I digress. And no, Spotify, I don't want to thank The 1975 for being my favorite artist of the decade. There's nothing more awkward and anxiety-inducing to me than tweeting a popular band. They have more than enough random fans bothering them as is.


My World Citizen slide once again confirms that I mainly listen to South Asian music and The 1975. Spotify's pick for my US artist is hilarious: They picked Khalid. I haven't listened to the guy's music in ages. To make it even better, they paired his picture with Halsey's verse from Eastside. Great job guys, great job. And then this gift keeps on giving: I get Davina Michelle for my Dutch pick, and I listened to one song of hers maybe four times before the radio killed it. My fifth country to show up here is Puerto Rico, represented by a guy named Farruko. I have literally no idea who this man is. Neither his face, nor his name, nor his song ring any bells.


The next slide might not be able to top the absolute mess that the previous one was, but it sure is a beautiful mess too. Spotify tries to claim I'm genre-fluid, but they really had to work hard to come up with more than three genres. Pop, I understand. Latin, sure, I have a vague memory of a few trips to uni with Spanish instead of Hindi. But then we get a lot of variations on Indian pop. Good effort, Spotify, but you really didn't have to call me genre-fluid when I so clearly do not fit the label.


Finally, I can get to my songs of the year. I only recognize Mike Posner's Move On at first sight, and Leah Nobel's Coffee Sunday NYT. Leah Nobel was my favorite artist when I first got dragged into the weird world of Caroline Calloway. Her song fits the lazy influencer vibe that Calloway gives off. It calms me down when I'm panicking. It's a good song. The same goes for the Hindi songs on this list. Okay, maybe half. The other half just somehow always pops up in the forced shuffle.


So 2019 was... interesting in terms of music. But Spotify Wrapped doesn't end there. No, I suddenly get to hear Sheppard as the start of my decade recap. A true blast from the past - the last time I listened to Sheppard must have been July 2018. My interest in the band decreased rapidly after 2016. It's not the only thing that has decreased over the years though: My time spent on Spotify is also significantly less than it used to be. I love the graph with this information. It shows exactly when I was stressed and miserable. The moment I started university, I didn't need to rely on music for my happiness anymore.


My songs of the decade are accurate. I moved on from my favorite band from my high school days, Train, to generic pop to depressing pop to awful Dutch rap music. Then came George Ezra and I ended up with South Asian tunes and The 1975. I've grown and changed a lot, just like my list shows. I'm no longer the girl who listened to Train because it reminded her of home in the US. I'm now that weird old university student who listens to music in a language she barely speaks. It's all good though. This really is who I am. But I do feel attacked by 2017. I was going through a lot when I listened to De Jeugd Van Tegenwoordig. I didn't need a reminder of that lapse in my judgment!


Spotify saved the biggest surprise of them all for the very end: My artist of the decade. And it's SHEPPARD. My first guess would have been Train. The 1975. Even De Jeugd Van Tegenwoordig would have made more sense since the dark days of June 2017 were full of Sterrenstof, the only song of theirs that I can tolerate. But Sheppard... I loved them in 2015. I still like their music. But I rarely listen to them. I have no idea how they became my artist of the decade. Oh well. Weird things happen. Let's focus on next year now. My main goal when it comes to music: Making my Spotify Wrapped for 2020 and the next decade even more chaotic than this one.

I never understood the concept of hate following. Actively dedicating part of your time to looking at content you don't enjoy seemed the most pointless thing ever to me. Besides, with a climate crisis, Brexit and Trump's possible impeachment on our hands, I like to keep my social media feeds a bit more light-hearted and positive than our current reality is. Hate follows do not fit those criteria. So picture my surprise when March rolled around and I found myself hate following Caroline Calloway.

Caroline Calloway caught my attention in the early days of this year. Like many others, I'd never heard of this New York-based influencer before a Twitter thread about her "creativity workshop" went viral. The workshops were supposed to be part of a tour, which was canceled, uncanceled, called "a scam" by internet dwellers and was ridiculed all over social media. I followed every second of the drama that ensued, laughed at Calloway's lack of skills in the event management department, lost it when she got stuck with over a thousand mason jars in her teeny tiny studio apartment and made sure to share this beautiful mess with my closest blogger friends. I checked Calloway's Instagram stories at least twice a day, until the drama blew over (at least on this side of the Atlantic Ocean). That's when I finally hit the follow button.

At first, following Caroline Calloway was just about being the first to see the next installment in the Scam Saga. But after a week or two, I was following with genuine interest. The hate, which is a strong word for me anyway, subsided. I was confused about the content she put out and absolutely unimpressed, but interested nonetheless. Later on, I learned that I'd joined the madness long after Calloway rose to fame with her long captions on posts about her time as an American student in Cambridge and that her current content had little to do with her original brand. Not that I cared. Because the things she does on Instagram now are oddly fascinating.


I can't say I truly like any of the things Calloway makes. "Like" is too strong a word for how I feel about her content. I'm also not interested in any of the things she's interested in. I don't obsess over art unless it's been spraypainted on a wall and I don't care for Oxbridge and the prestige linked with it. Neither do I like sharing every single little detail of my life online, the only thing Calloway seems to be doing these days. It dawned on me that I was hate following this girl just to see her make more dumb mistakes. I wasn't proud of this at all and told myself to unfollow her. But I couldn't do it. I kid you not, as my finger hovered over the button, I thought to myself: "I'm going to miss the plant content..."

I couldn't do it. I couldn't unfollow her. So I didn't. Just for her plants. Deep down, I did kind of like what Calloway showed the world in her Instagram stories: the small studio apartment, all the plants, her art. She showed me a variation of the life I was dreaming of, a life full of creativity. I hated to admit it, but I wanted that kind of life too. Minus the unexplainable Caroline antics. Every few days I found myself looking at her content and going WTF out loud. There are plenty of articles and Twitter threads to fill you in on all the weird and questionable things this influencer has done. Believe me, it's all highly entertaining. I often find myself laughing out loud over how disconnected from the real world she can be. And, in a weird way, that inspires me.

You see, Calloway sells her art on Instagram. It's not my cup of tea. If you want my uncensored opinion, I'd say that it's nothing more than an overpriced crafts project. She used to sell minimalist paintings of boobs for $40 and is still making copies of Matisse's Blue Nudes, which are usually priced at $140. Most of the time I just roll my eyes and move on when I see these pieces of influencer art, but sometimes I see something so bad that I just have to make my own version of it, to prove that anyone can do it, and that I can do it better. In some weird and twisted way, Caroline Calloway is now my muse when it comes to painting.


The first time I made Caroline Calloway inspired art, it took me two days - a long time compared to the two hours it takes her to cut out a shape created by Matisse, glue it onto store-bought paper and slap a $140 price tag on it. My own project started as an attempt to prove that you can be inspired by Matisse while still adding your own flavor to the work. I kept the position Matisse's Blue Nude is in, but redrew it in my own style. It took me an entire day to get the figure right, mostly because my drawing skills are a bit rusty. Since I do like the paper with stars and constellations that Calloway used when she first started her Matisse series, I kept with that theme and placed the figure in a black night sky. By the end of the second day, I had my own "dreamer bb". Art inspired by Caroline Calloway's Matisse-inspired art. Very meta.

During those two days of being artsy, I kept checking on Calloway's Instagram stories. It was almost like I was making art with someone else, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. This realization pushed me into a bit of an existential crisis: I didn't genuinely like Calloway's content, did I? It all felt so paradoxical. I couldn't figure my own feelings towards this influencer out, so I did the only thing that seemed to fit the situation: Make more art. I sketched two more figures in different positions and painted their silhouettes onto pages of an old book that was on it's way to the dump, creating a triptych. I daydreamed about selling my art at reasonable prices. I learned more about anatomy. I learned how to handle my paintbrush better. I learned how to make a speed paint video. I learned so much.

In the end, I came to the finish that it really doesn't matter how I feel about Caroline Calloway and her content. The world keeps turning, no matter what I do. I don't have to support Calloway financially, which I won't, and I definitely don't have to follow her. But I choose to follow her, no matter how conflicting my feelings about her content can be, because at the end of the day, it leads to me making art and enjoying it. As long as it doesn't come from a feeling of hate, but a feeling of curiosity and confusion, I think it's a wonderful thing that could only come out of an era like ours.

My grandma was hospitalized in early April. My family and I weren't too bothered; Grandma had been hospitalized quite often in the years since her younger brother's death, which pushed her into a state of apathy towards life in general. Yet every time she was hospitalized, she looked Death in the eyes and said: "I don't think so. Not today."

While my grandma was recovering from pneumonia, I traveled to Austria. Slovakia. Ireland, Nothern Ireland, Belgium. While I was in Belfast, my parents were called into the hospital to say goodbye to grandma. But once again, grandma looked Death in the eyes and said: "I don't think so. Not today."

May rolled around. I spent a weekend in Ghent with Ella from Ella Was Here. I woke up in the early hours of Saturday morning, thinking there was something wrong with Grandma. My parents didn't call me though, so that night I watched the Eurovision Songfestival with Ella as if nothing serious was going on back home. Australia's song struck a chord with me. Its lyrics were based on the singer's experience with postpartum depression. "It feels like zero gravity". In the weeks that followed, that line would describe my entire emotional state.

My grandma turned 86 on May 19th. She'd been transferred to a hospice three weeks earlier, her health deteriorating every day. I refused to say goodbye to her on her birthday, although grandma had already made up her mind. "You guys have to clean up well today," she told us, "because I won't be here tomorrow."

The next day, my grandma passed away. She passed away in the town where she was born, on her own terms, on the day she had in mind. And we were left behind. I cried in lectures. I missed seminars. I addressed almost 50 envelopes with mourning cards. I arranged the pictures for the funeral. I wrote a eulogy. I did more to organize the funeral than my family had expected. I floated through the days. It did indeed feel like zero gravity.

Time stood still for me, but moved on swiftly for everyone else. I remember standing next to grandma's coffin, more than 80 pairs of eyes on me as I read the eulogy out loud. I remember my nose starting to drip and tears streaming down my face as I told about grandma singing me songs about horses and saying "So!" when she was proud of me. I remember falling sick after the funeral. I remember breaking down from exhaustion.

Three weeks after the funeral, I was far behind on all my university assignments. Once I'd finished those, I finally had time to cry and mourn. It didn't help much. My grandma and I had a strained relationship. She never truly acknowledged my achievements, instead changed the topic to those of my cousins. I never truly tried to connect with her, because she preferred my cousins anyway, I thought.

Almost all of June was spent in my zero gravity state. I was angry. I tried to forgive my grandma for the way she'd treated me, because I know she was a product of her time. But I spent nights crying and asking an empty room why, just why couldn't she tell me that she was proud of me, that she loved me, that I mattered. Why?

I crashed down to earth after handing in my final university assignment. It signaled the end of the ordeal that started in April. So here I am now, not knowing how to start over again, where to go, or how to deal with all the unresolved issues that grandma left me with. I guess, as always, that this just means I'll continue posting on my blog to escape life. I guess, for now, that that'll do.

It's 2005. I'm nine years old and I love athletics, especially the high jump. Today, it's not going as well as I'd hoped though. I'm doing something wrong, but I have no idea what. My trainers are nowhere to be seen. An older man comes up to me. On his jacket, the logo of athletics club Ilion from Zoetermeer can be seen.
"Try to start your run-up from this point instead," he advises me. I put my marker on the spot he's pointing at. In my next attempt, I jump to a new personal best.
"Well done!" the Ilion trainer says when I tell him I just jumped a new PB. I go on to find my own trainers. When I tell them, I hear that it's "cool, but Kimberly jumped ten centimeters higher".

It's 2008. I'm 11 and my interest has shifted to the long jump. I'm not the best jumper around, but I've improved a lot over the past year. For once, a trainer of mine actually sees me jump at a track meeting. "If you jump over 3.5 meters, I'll buy you ice cream," he says. I'm elated. He's often made this deal with his other pupils. Never before with me. In my next attempt, I fly to 3.52. I never got my ice cream.


In 2009, I meet Lisa in the pouring rain. Like me, she does not have a big group of girls to train with at her club, AV'47 from Boskoop. We become good friends in no time. Soon, I'm dumping my spikes and clothes near her stuff and often sit with the AV'47 group during track meetings. I feel welcome there. I've never felt that way with people from my own club.

2011. At fourteen, I join the training group for older teens. I regret it within a month. Whenever we have to do something in pairs, I'm always the one left alone. Everyone is focused on the shot put and discus, so I'm always doing my long jump exercises by myself. At track meetings, there's no one there to give me advice. No one, except a trainer from AV'47. Sometimes I wish I was a member of that club.

It's now 2013. I've been practicing with the javelin for the biggest track meeting of my season: the heptathlon on my home track. I break the magical barrier of 20 meters that summer. Suddenly, the trainers are very interested in me and my progress.
"You did so well today!", one of them says.
"Thanks," I say crudely, knowing this interest is temporary. At the next track meeting, my javelin falls just short of 20 meters. No one even looks at my final attempt.


Two months later, I twist my ankle while playing soccer at school. I can't run, but I can throw a javelin if I wear my high top sneakers, no problem. When my trainer notices, he says: "What are you even doing here?"

I fall off my bike in 2016. My toenail turns blue and wearing shoes hurts. I start a 3000-meter race anyway, because I love to run. I've given up on jumping, as no one wants to be my trainer. No one wants to train a runner at this club either, so my dad has taken that upon himself. I have to be fair though: there's one trainer who would train me, but my college classes make this impossible. Secretly, I don't mind. I remember the way the group treated me in 2011 and this trainer hasn't even asked what's up with my current injury.
My toe makes me give up on the race after less than 1000 meters. The only person who asks me what's happened is, once again, a trainer from AV'47.

July 2018. I've decided that enough is enough. No one wants to train me, no one wants to train with me, no one respects my decision to stick with running. Why am I still a member of this rotten athletic clubs? Go where you're celebrated, not merely tolerated, right?
I decide to switch clubs in April, so I can run one last 5000-meter race in October, possibly attack my PB. I never run that race, since I'm still recovering from the antibiotics that ravaged my body after my wisdom tooth surgery. Six more months of being a member of a club that won't even acknowledge my existence. I count down to April 1st. I buy a top with the AV'47 logo on it. I fill the forms on their website out. I tell Lisa we'll soon be members of the same club. Mentally, I distance myself from my old club as much as possible over the course of the winter.

Today. April 13th, 2019. I've officially run my first race in my AV'47 jersey. Where, you might ask? On the track of Avantri in Schoonhoven, the club I joined 14 years ago, the club that treated me like shit for 14 years. I took the bronze. It felt like I'd given them the finger. I'm moving forward, away from Avantri's arrogance and cliques, and I'll never look back.

Source

The Charleston Church shooting, US.
Bataclan, Paris, France.
Zaventem, Belgium.
Manchester Arena, UK.
Christchurch, New Zealand.
It's happened often this decade: a brainwashed madman picks up a firearm and shoots people like fish in a barrel. Sometimes it happens close to home, sometimes a bit further away. But it never happens in your city. Right?

On the 18th of March, I get on the bus at 7.39 am. I'm annoyed. I usually catch the 7.22 on Mondays, but the bus drivers are striking and this is only the second bus passing through town today. I'm going to be late for my 9 am lecture at Utrecht University.
After 20 horrible minutes on an overcrowded bus, I get off at the subway station to catch the B-line to the train station. I'll be able to get on a train to Utrecht at 8.15 am. Then I see that the subway personnel is on strike too: the next subway won't leave for another 17 minutes. I think about my options, my two Monday lectures, the 4.5-hour break between them. Then I do something I normally wouldn't do: I turn around and go home.

It never happens in your city. After all, your city doesn't even make the news often. If it does, it's because the local football club is doing well, or because the university has won another award. Sometimes there's an article about chaos at the busy Central Station. Your city is doing quite well. Good things happen there.

"There's been a shooting in Utrecht," mom tells me, her eyes fixed on the screen of her phone. We're having a coffee at the kitchen table. I desperately need it; I've been working non-stop since my failed attempt at going to my morning lecture.
"Oh," I say, not too surprised. I'm used to Rotterdam, where shots are fired every now and then. "Where?"
"24 October Square," mom says as she looks the address up on Google Maps. "Is that close to university?"
"No. Uni is here." I point at the screen. "Quite far away actually."
Mom puts her phone down. "Maybe you should call grandma."
"Why?"
"She'll get worried when she hears about this."
"You think?" I know mom is right. Grandma does worry a lot about me whenever something like this happens. "Okay, I'll give her a call."

When the news breaks, you don't think much of it. Of course it's awful, but your city is still a big city. Shootings sadly happen. You just hope this incident wasn't inspired by Christchurch. More news trickles in. The situation is more serious than it first seemed. The shooter gets away. People are dying in the streets. The T-word gets thrown around: was it an act of terrorism? Do we have a terrorist attack on our hands?

My phone starts going crazy. My grandparents and dad have been called. They were very calm when I told them I was safe at home - that was before news outlets reported that the shooter is still on the loose. Now, everyone is worried. Classmates are checking up on each other in group chats. I get messages from the UK, Belgium, and of course Utrecht. My friends tell me how lucky I am that the strikes kept me from going to university today. Still, I'll have to go there today: I have an assignment to hand in during my afternoon lecture. I don't want to go though. I don't feel safe. I feel sick.
I text a friend who's in lockdown in a university building to tell her that I'll be coming over.
"Like fuck you are," she texts back. "You're staying home. I'll fight them if they penalize you for not handing a hard copy in while there's a shooter on the loose."
She's right. Of course she is. I'm staying home. I send my teacher a quick e-mail explaining the situation. Then I go back to what's most important now: texting everyone who's near and dear to me.

You sit down on the couch, phone in hand, and turn the tv on. You text your family and friends.
"Are you safe?"
"Where are you at?"
"Is there anything I can do for you?"
"Don't worry about me, I'm home."
Some reply immediately. Others, those who don't live or study in your city, bombard you with questions. A few haven't heard the news yet. You put your phone down a million times, only to pick it up the next second in hopes of seeing a reply from that one friend who hasn't answered yet.

Mom's skin is showing red patches. She says I have them too. We don't know what to do with ourselves. I guess we are in shock. We try to understand what's going on in Utrecht, but news comes slowly and half of it turns out to be false within 10 minutes of its being shared. The police are searching for a red Renault Clio. The license plate numbers are shared in a university group chat. The shooter is expected to head towards campus. Utrecht University officially closes its doors.

You slowly lose touch with reality. You're just sitting there on the couch, watching an endless loop of the Prime Minister saying that the situation is unsettling, that he's going to a crisis meeting. You see anti-terror units burst into houses, police officers pulling their weapons near a bank. There's talk of shots fired near mosques, multiple shooters, shouts of Allahuakbar. You just want it to stop. You become numb to the sight of the dead body under a white sheet next to the tram in which it happened. It's vehicle number 5014. You wonder if you'll find yourself on board number 5014 in the near distant future. You wonder what the shooter's motive was. You want to know more. You want to know less. You break.

Just before I can start crying, I get off the couch. One death has been confirmed, there are possibly as many as nine wounded. The city is in lockdown. I've been watching the news for four hours. I can't take it anymore.
"Mom, shall we sow some seeds?"
I just want to do something productive. Something positive. The seeds for our vegetable patch need to be sown anyway.
Mom and I fill tiny pots with soil. The tv is on in the background. We hear that the suspected shooter has been identified, but not found. We focus on our deeds. With every seed I sow, with every new life I plant, I think of the victims of the shooting. This is how I commemorate them.

You try to get away from it. You try to do something else. It doesn't work. You can turn the tv off, but your mind is still there, in the chaos of your city. You look out of the window and fail to understand how everything outside seems so normal. You ignore the news for a while, but you still worry about your friends in lockdown. You try to distract yourself. Nothing works.

At 6 pm I watch the news once more. Nothing has happened, nothing has changed. I see the deserted streets of Utrecht's city center. I hear my university's name. Sadness washes over me again. Then, in the middle of the news bulletin, the reporter is interrupted: the suspect has been arrested!
I sigh with relief until my lungs hurt. My friends can safely go home. We'll finally know what exactly happened.

As I go to sleep on the 18th of March, the suspect's motives are still unclear. Three deaths have been confirmed. I am still in shock. I don't fully understand what's happened, but I soon will. The shooting had characteristics of a terrorist attack, but the nature of the shooting hasn't been confirmed yet. It's a dark, dark say for my city, my people, my country.

It never happens in your city. Until it does.

A quick look at my Instagram feed could lead people to believe that I spend most of my time traveling. In reality, I'm stuck in university buildings for lectures and seminars five days a week. "Stuck" is a bit of a strong word though. It implies that I'm not enjoying my time as a university student. And if there's one thing I did in the second block of my first year, it was enjoying my classes.

Block 2 started in late October. I took three classes (Literature, Linguistics and German), was completely stressed out about the amount of work I'd have to do (seems to become a tradition at the start of each block) and went on to score some top grades on most assignments (my first score of 100% became a fact in the second week of block 2). To my own surprise, I didn't fall into a state of half-depression when the sun started to set earlier and earlier. Everything was pretty great throughout November and December. Sure, I had a lot of stress on deadline days, but I'm actually at my best when I'm running on stress hormones. Before I knew it, Christmas break started. I'd made a schedule for those two weeks so I'd be able to finish all my essays at least a week before their deadlines, which were all coinciding with final exams.
I stuck to my schedule for three days. Then I spent Christmas with my family, Lydia from Mademoiselle Women came over to Rotterdam, my boyfriend celebrated his birthday, I ran the traditional "Oliebollenloop" on December 31st... All of a sudden it was 2019. I'd finished one essay. On Sunday before university would start again, I set up my workspace to start writing about Doctor Faustus. I sneezed once. Twice. Three, four, five times in one minute. Two hours later, I was sick.

I spent a full week in bed and on the couch. I had the flu, like many others around me. Even though I was feeling awful, I went to university once. I had to give a presentation on the German graphic novel Endzeit, which counted heavily towards my final grade. To this day I don't understand how I managed to score 81%, as I forgot half of my presentation. The two essays I still had to write were thrown together in what felt like a fever dream at the last moment. The entire process was horrible and stressful. By the time I'd more or less recovered from the flu, it was time to hit the books: I had less than a week left to study for my finals.

Looking back on it now, I have no idea how I pulled it off. I winged my German exam, which I passed mostly because I'd taken similar classes in college. I scored 100% on my accent analysis test for Linguistics, the only exam I'd properly studied for. Literature turned into a living hell though. Literature courses are a struggle for me anyway, but it got even worse after missing two seminars. I panicked, blanked, and ended up writing as much as possible even I wasn't sure if the topic I was writing about had anything to do with the correct answer.

It's now been two weeks since that dreadful finals week. I went to Paris to get away from all the stress for a while. Not being able to study and work at full capacity had dealt a huge blow to my self-esteem. I felt like I was constantly behind on schedule, constantly missing out on important information. I hadn't felt so low in two years. A short trip abroad was just what I needed. Receiving e-mails to confirm that I'd passed my German and Linguistics classes made me feel much better when I came back home.

Since then, I've started block 3 of my first year. The second week of that block starts today. Time really does fly. As before, I'm taking my personal holy trinity of classes this block: Literature, Linguistics and German. As before, I'm overwhelmed by the amount of work that lies ahead of me. But I'm sure it'll all turn out fine. It always does. Even the Literature exam I took with the bare minimum of preparation wasn't the disaster I expected it to be: just after I finished writing the draft for this post, I received confirmation that I'd passed with a 71% score. Now I can fully focus on this block's classes. Especially Linguistics is very interesting now, with phonology joining the game. I'm the kind of geek who wants to make recordings of key words so I can measure the frequency of vowels in my speach and turn them into a vowel diagram. It's challenging and totally awesome.

Just a year ago, I doubted if going back to school was the right way to go. Five months ago I doubted if I'd be able to pass any of my classes. Now I know I made the right decision. Linguistics is the love of my life and I'm grateful that I get to study so many other subjects as well. It's cheesy, but it's true: I can't wait to see what this block will bring me.

Dear 2018,
I'm going to be honest: I never planned on writing this letter to you. I felt like there'd be nothing to say when you were over. You never screwed me over like 2017 did, so there was no reason to send you a Howler like I sent 2017 a year ago. Then I realized I should acknowledge the good things in life more often. There were plenty of those in the 12 months we spent together, so here I am today, writing you a letter to say thank you.

Thank you for letting me catch my breath. In a way, you were uneventful. Exactly what I needed after the rollercoaster of 2017. I needed some time to reorganize my life, my thoughts, everything. I'll admit that I still have no idea what I want to do with my life, but at least I'm not down in the dumps anymore. All because you didn't throw one life-changing event after the other at me. At some point, you started to drag a bit, but looking back on it all, everything worked out exactly the way I wanted and needed it to work out.

Thank you for second chances. Although I know that going back to university was completely up to me, I feel like you made it easier on me. Once my job as a translator became boring (yay for computers taking over my work!), it was so much easier to return to education and it made me so much more determined to get a degree and make something out of myself. Utrecht University is a great place and I felt right at home from the start. There are so many interesting courses to take and I'm glad you allowed me to follow this path, 2018!

Thank you for all the adventures. I may have called you uneventful, but at times, we did go on great adventures together. Not all of them were huge adventures abroad: Going to a football match with my friend Stefanie was an adventure too! I explored Düsseldorf and the touristy part of Amsterdam with my boyfriend. And of course, I have to mention my trip to Cuba, the Palestinian Territories, Israel and Jordan. I saw so many amazing places that I've been dying to visit... It's almost unbelievable.

Thank you for the adrenaline rushes. I can still feel my heart beating against my ribs from the time I climbed to an illegal viewpoint in Jordan. Or that time when I decided to take my longboard down one of the very few hills in my country even though I'd only been practicing going in a straight line for a week. Adrenaline rushes were rare during your 365 days, 2018, but when they came, they were just too good.

Thank you for all the new experiences. I got to meet so many bloggers or met up with others for the second time. I did my first ever sponsored post in Amsterdam. I saw Banksy's work on the West Bank Barrier, where I learned so much about the situation in the Palestinian Territories by talking to locals. I lived alone for a month. I actually managed to keep a houseplant alive for more than two months! 2018, you taught me so many good things.

There's only one thing I won't thank you for: The wisdom teeth situation. 2018, you were definitely the Year of the Wisdom Teeth. My dentist noticed the problem in April, the first operation took place in July, that wound got infected in August and the antibiotics they gave me to fight the infection caused a chemical imbalance better known as clinical depression. I'm eternally grateful that my depressed episode lasted no longer than two months, but I know things could have been much worse. The second operation took place in November. Again, I faced complications because the roots were too close to nerve endings. This time everything went right. Still, I won't thank you for that, 2018!

But seriously, thank you for everything else. You won't go down in my personal history as the most exciting year ever, but you were just what I needed. You were good to me. I wonder if 2019 will follow your example, but I'm not going to worry about it. We'll see what happens. I'm sure it's going to be a good one, especially after you helped me get back on my feet!

The past few weekends saw me staring at the blank pages of my blogging notebook. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't fill them with words about street art, comic books or upcoming trips abroad. I realized there was only one thing I wanted to write about: my experiences at university. I've hesitated multiple times, put my pen down countless times, told myself it's not interesting for the audience every single day. But hey, my blog, my rules. We're gonna talk about that student life of mine.

As you might know, I started studying English Language and Culture at Utrecht University after an involunaty gap year. I spent most of my time in the first few weeks worrying if I'd be smart enough to pass my classes, if I wasn't too lazy. Now, after the first out of four blocks is disappearing in the rearview mirror rapidly, I can confidently say that I am capable of dealing with whatever information university throws at me.

I took three classes this first block: literature, linguistics and German. I passed all three with flying colors. Linguistics is a bit of a touchy subject for me though, because my teacher accused me of plagiarism. He also said I have an obvious Dutch accent (apparently those Americans in Jordan didn't think I was American, they were just dumb?), but I've already upgraded my accent to "passable" without changing a single thing about my pronunciation. Apart from that, I've been told my way of speaking is unnatural and unpleasant for my audience. Thanks mate.

Despite my "problems" with linguistics, I'm not extremely worried about academics anymore. I'm currently in the fourth week of block 2, in which I'm taking three classes again. So far, everything is going fine. It's quite different from block 1: I'm now wisdom toothless and actually know my way around Utrecht. Every Friday I rent a bike to race through the city center on my way to class. I'm enjoying every day in university, though I'm aware of the challenges ahead. I've been playing with the idea of doing a double bachelor (English/German), but I'm not entirely sure about that. My tutor says it's impressive that I'm already thinking about doing the double and taking extra classes; she has no idea I've studied German for three years, so getting that double bachelor wouldn't be very difficult for me.

The biggest challenge I'll face in the near-distant future is boredom. Even though I'm already taking an extra class, I'm bored out of my mind. Sometimes I think I could have done this entire course in half of the time if I'd been allowed to work at my own pace. Since I'm stuck at this snail's pace, I'm looking for other things to do. One of them is blogging. I haven't paid as much attention to this place in 2018 as I would have wanted, but that actually gave me time to think about what I really want. I've come to the conclusion that I'm not above rambly posts like this one, or pictures that aren't perfect. Over the past couple of years, blogging has gone from a hobby to a desirable career for many people. I'll be the first to admit that I'd like to make money doing what I love, but if that means I can't ramble anymore, I'm out. University has given me the chance to spend more time doing things I like and I don't want to start hating the things I like because I turned them into a competition.

Anyway, I have a bunch of sonnets to read. I don't know about you, but for me it was quite refreshing to write a life update the way every blogger ran their online space back in 2013. I might make this a thing. Or, you know, disappear again for a month or so, because that's what I've been doing all year. That's a joke. I'm actually working on a lot of writing projects at the moment. My Instagram feed is coming along nicely as well. So watch this space. There's some interesting stuff up ahead.

Once upon a time, quite long ago, I decided to publish a blog post every Monday and Thursday. That schedule worked pretty well for me - except for the four times this year when I took a break without warning. Over the summer I was actually getting ready to settle back into my routine though. You might have noticed that I failed. These past few weeks I only managed to publish one post a week at best. This time, however, I had a good reason to be slacking off: I started university.

If you've followed my blog for a while, you'll know I was forced to drop out of college in May 2017, because of circumstances that were out of my control. The deadline for applications had already passed, so I couldn't get into another college or university right away. I went to Southeast Asia that summer and started working as a translator when I came home. Months flew by, and before I knew it, I could apply again. Even though I liked my job, I wanted to go back to school sooner rather than later. When August 2018 came around, I officially became a student again: I am proud to say that I study English and German Language and Culture at Utrecht University.

After a full year of working in the 'real world', it took me some time to get used to life in university. So far, I've survived five weeks, which means I only have two weeks of classes left until the end of the first block and the start of my first week of finals. It's been fascinating, surprising and a true rollercoaster. The whole adventure started when half of the freshmen went to the east of the Netherlands for an introduction camp with a medieval fantasy theme. We spent two days making memories - and loads of embarrassing videos and pictures for group challenges. Within a week after that, I'd become the go-to person for anyone in need of a Smeagol impression.
To my own surprise, I did pretty well in all the awkward social situations that come with starting a new degree course. I've talked to loads of people in the first five weeks and have made it my goal to sit next to as many different people in lectures as possible. And the lectures and seminars themselves... Let's just say they make me feel like I've finally come home. I fell in love with linguistics in no time. The way sounds are made and how a slight movement of the tongue can change everything fascinate me. Literature, on the other hand, is the class in which I have no idea what I'm doing, but apparently my weird interpretations of Rich and Dickinson are pretty decent. And then there's my one German class, which I follow to keep my German at a decent level. For me, that comes down to sitting back and relaxing. Now, every day I come home and bore my parents to death with random linguistic facts I learned in class.


Still, it's not all rainbows and unicorns at Utrecht University. I spent the first two weeks in a state of complete panic, not knowing when I was supposed to take which books to which class. Or where that class was going to take place. All normal things new students have to figure out, but my perfectionist brain found it unacceptable that this situation lasted over two weeks.
Getting used to doing homework again also took me a couple of weeks. With one German class added to my timetable, I had a lot of trouble finding the balance between work and the rest of my life. Actually, I still struggle with that every Friday (I just can't put my work down), but I'm slowly settling into a routine. Soon I hope to come to the point where I can regularly blog again, but I'm not all that bothered about it. My grades are more important to me now than any digital numbers.

To be honest, there is only one thing that does bother me that I can't change: the immaturity of a lot of my classmates. A lot of them are fresh out of high school and you can tell they've never seen the big bad world for what it actually is. Now naivete isn't a crime, I know that, but I couldn't believe my eyes when a girl in my class almost went into hysterics and wanted the teacher to kick me out of the class because I'd casually cursed. Can you imagine that, a grown woman using the F-word? Oh, the horror!

Seriously though, I'm nitpicking. If immaturity and imbalance are the worst things about being back in school, I have no right to complain. In fact, most of the time I'm thoroughly enjoying my time in Utrecht. I hope I'll be able to combine my studies with my blog, but if I disappear again, you'll know what happened: I'm probably buried underneath a landslide of homework and would love it if you could send a rescue party. Thanks in advance!

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With swift movements, my hairdresser started cutting off about 30 centimeters of my hair. It was a spontaneous idea, born the minute she picked up a few strands to examine my curls. I immediately agreed to her plan. Every time I looked in the mirror, my hair reminded me of the shitty chapters of my life that I wanted to leave behind for good.

Since late 2015, I've worn my hair long. Very long, usually till halfway down my back. I think I had a grand total of three haircuts between then and now, and I always stuck to the same hairstyle. My hair was long when I went through a serious break-up, my hair was long when I was more or less forced to quit college, my hair was long when I was in therapy for my inferiority complex. And it was long when I started hating blogging for becoming overly commercialized.
Somehow all these negative experiences and feelings became entangled in my long curly hair. My hair represented every trauma I wanted to leave behind. Instead, I was confronted with them every time I looked in the mirror. Eventually, I started avoiding reflective surfaces, especially when my parents were traveling in Canada and I was too busy keeping the house habitable. Those were some strange weeks. My body was busy, but my mind sat idly in the corner. I spent most of those days slowly making a plan for the future. I didn't blog so I wouldn't get distracted. Neither did I write or read much. Pretty soon I was focused on getting ready for university. And as the pieces of the puzzle of this new time in my life were presented to me, I decided I don't want to be a blogger. I want to be a storyteller, and this blog will be my medium. The minute I came to this conclusion was the minute I felt like I could finally chase my dreams and make them come true at university.
Yet on the rare occasions when I saw my own reflection again, I was reminded of the unhappy, failed blogger who'd dropped out of college. I'd fall back into a gloomy pit of destructive thoughts. The past swallowed me whole whenever I looked in a mirror. I knew I could not let that keep happening. I had to make a change. And that's why I decided to cut my hair off. So I could let my life begin again at university without constantly being reminded of the past.

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In a few seconds, my long hair was gone. A few minutes later, I had a short, wavy bob. I couldn't help but smile when I saw myself in the mirror.
My hairdresser showed me the ponytail she'd just cut off. 'It's really heavy,' she said as she handed me my hair. It weighed way more than I expected, as if it really was saturated with all the pain, all the hurt and all my demons from the past few years. I grinned as my hairdresser dumped it all in the bin. 'You're free.'
'I'm free,' I said too. Free to start over, free to begin again. Finally. I'm ready to turn the page and start the next chapter. Will you join me?

'Envy, did you know that the people of Ancient Greece and Rome believed the gods assigned each human being a maximum number of words to use in their lifetime? You're burning through yours awfully quick,' my Latin teacher once said. It was his polite way of asking if I could please, for the love of the gods, shut my big mouth for once.
'Well,' I answered, 'I guess the gods blessed me with a tremendous amount of words, so I'm not worried.' And even though I don't believe in the likes of Zeus & co., I do believe that I was blessed with words. Lots of them. A steady flow of words passes my lips, but also the tip of my pen, every single day. I write journal entries, short stories and blog posts. But, as you might have noticed, it's been over a month since I posted on here. The words I used to use so carelessly completely stopped flowing onto the pages of my blogging notebooks. The gods of Ancient Greece and Rome and their word count had little to do with it. My office job all the more.

It wasn't until last week that I realized I had been living life on autopilot since March. That was the month I learned I was more or less redundant at work. Back in December, a computer took over about 40% of translation work within the company and by the time I came home from Cuba, it was clear that we wouldn't have much to do most days. Instead of translating product descriptions like I was supposed to, I got to write articles to improve our visibility on Google. All of a sudden I was an "SEO expert". I work for a company that sells clothes, so I had to write about fashion for days on end. I hated it. There's a reason I'm not a fashion blogger. Being forced to write 2000 words on topics I couldn't care less about, like shapewear and men's moccasins, stumped my creativity. At the end of each day, I'd feel numb. Completely drained from all energy, motivation and inspiration. When I went to Amsterdam and didn't feel the urge to write a single post on that trip, it started to dawn on me that I maybe needed a break from writing for my blog.

I did not take a break from blogging. I pushed through because I enjoyed writing. Back then, I really did. But once again, my job interfered. Remember the whole SEO thing? Well, every now and then I got a break from writing SEO stuff so I could translate a blog post for the company's website. I loved doing those, until my boss read my translations and roasted the living daylight out of my translation and writing skills.
'There's no flow in this blog post,' she'd say. 'Would you really say something like this? Use those words? Try bringing the message across in your own words.'
Then, when I did bring said message across in my own words, she'd ask me again and again if I'd really phrase things the way I did.
'If I wouldn't say something like that, I wouldn't use that sentence in my translation, would I?' I told my boss at one point. She looked me in the eye and concluded that I lack a certain something when it comes to writing blog posts. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is when something broke deep down inside me. My words didn't completely stop flowing though, oh no. They came in short, angry bursts, and all of them were hideous. My sentences were incoherent strings of syllables, my posts nothing more than an ugly mess. I couldn't look at my own writing without being ashamed of how utterly talentless I was. It was halfway through May when I stopped writing. It was time for a serious time out.

I started out doing nothing with the extra time I suddenly had on my hands. Then, out of the blue, I started doing all the things I had been putting of for months. So even when I felt like my break had been long enough and my battered ego had recovered enough to allow me to pick up a pen, I was too busy to sit down and write a blog post. Even when I wasn't physically busy, my mind was occupied. I'm still in a dispute with my former college, which is exhausting. I called the government institute dealing with my student loans and was told that I don't owe them any money. I went to Utrecht University and decided to go back to school in August to study English. A few days later, I handed my notice in at work. I was busy, happy and also afraid to write again. So I didn't. I made some notes in my journal, but that was all. I decided to live in the real world for a while. The internet is fun, but I'd booked a trip to Israel and Jordan, and since my writing was awful anyway, I decided to leave the blog for what it was.

Last Sunday, my plane from Jordan's capital Amman landed at Schiphol International Airport. The only thing I'd written in all twelve days of the trip were journal entries, but at some point in the Jordanian desert, I'd felt it again: the rush in my head, the quickening of thoughts that tells me that it's time to write. Back home, I put pen to the paper of my blogging notebook for the first time in over a month.

Right now, I'm still not confidently writing any of my blog posts, but my time away did help me recover. Thanks to my boss, I will feel like my posts suck for a long time though. At least my break gave me the time to live a little, and the best stories are born that way. And you know me: I can't help but share my stories. Which is exactly what I'll try to do again, no matter how worthless others might find them.

One year ago, I embarked on the scariest journey of my life: I started therapy. After a lifetime of denial, I faced the fact that I was gifted. I did not handle that fact too well. Looking back, I don't think I could have handled it any worse. I broke down completely, then finally asked for professional help. And so I ended up in therapy.

Therapy is scary. Starting it is scary, finishing it is scary and everything in between is scary as well. It makes you look at yourself, find the flaws and fix them. It changes you. I think that is what scares us as humans the most in this life: change.

I had no idea how much of an impact therapy would have on me. I sort of knew it could change me, but didn't expect anything drastic to happen. And nothing drastic did happen in the first two sessions. In fact, my therapist had trouble diagnosing me in those first few weeks. I'd come in to find help accepting myself and giftedness, but my therapist felt there was more than met the eye. Depression was ruled out: I was too optimistic and active in every aspect of life to suffer from depression. I didn't have a serious personality disorder either: I didn't show any sign of having one. Eventually my therapist came to the conclusion that I had an inferiority complex with a hint of anxiety. The latter explained my extreme hyperventilating in high school.

Getting an official diagnosis, a label, affected me in two major ways. First, I only felt relief. I finally understood myself, all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place, I finally knew what was wrong with me. Then it hit me that something was wrong with me. I saw myself as a broken toy that needed fixing. I bawled my eyes out because I had a huge problem that made me feel completely worthless. Accepting my diagnosis was no easy feat.

I can't say I'd fully accepted that I had an inferiority complex when I started working on getting rid of it. Acceptance took me about a month. In that time, I learned more about my diagnosis and how to tackle an inferiority complex. The thing about an inferiority complex is that it warps your perception of reality. Your neighbor didn't say hi to you this morning? They probably hate you. Another blogger has a bigger audience? Probably because your writing is awful. Every single thing you see, every thought you have, it all becomes a personal attack. You feel worthless all the time. Just not good enough. Never quite good enough...

In the next couple of months of therapy, I learned to identify the thoughts that were full-on attacks. I learned to notice them as they were starting to form, instead of long after they'd ruined my day. I had to take a close look at every single thought I had. What was the reason I had a negative thought? How did the thought make me feel? Was there any concrete evidence that this negative thought was the truth? Slowly but steadily I started to change the way I think. I replaced negative thoughts with positive or at least neutral ones.

While I was working on changing my thinking patterns, which was an intended change of course, I also noticed that I was changing in other, unforeseen ways. I cried a lot more. Literally anything could get the tears flowing. Diaper commercials, travel pictures, a text from a friend. Anything. To this day, I still have emotional outbursts like these every now and then. They're not all that frequent anymore, but they're there. I think that's because I learned to acknowledge my emotions instead of ignoring them because, as was my logic at the time, it didn't matter if it was me who felt that way.

Far scarier than the sadness were my angry periods. Every two or three weeks I'd explode. All the negativity would come out in one big burst. I think it was a side-effect of therapy: back when I wasn't fighting the inferiority complex, self-loathing came out of my brain slowly. Slowly but steadily, like a polluted spring. Then, when I started challenging the inferiority complex, I basically blocked the outlet. Every now and then the pressure became too high and everything would come bursting out. I was very hard to love whenever that happened. I lashed out at everyone, provocating them, drawing them out in hopes of them saying something hurtful, so I could point at them and say: 'See? I don't have an inferiority complex, people really do hate me!' It was a weird and painful form of denial, which lasted longer than my time in therapy did. But now I'm getting ahead of myself.

Spring became summer as I continued battling all my negative thoughts. I was about as stable as a nuclear meltdown and suffered a major relapse when I realized how badly my college had damaged me over the three years I'd studied there. These months were awful. Progress was slow, painstakingly slow. I'd become aware of the flaws in my thinking patterns, but wasn't strong enough to prevent myself from making the same mistakes over and over again. I started looking for coping mechanisms. One of them was simply asking questions. Sometimes, when I was so deep into my own little spiral of negative thoughts that I couldn't find a way out anymore, I'd simply ask people if my thoughts were true. 'Mom, do you hate me because I'm so emotionally unstable?' Asking a question like that takes some courage, but it helped me a lot. I still do this nowadays. Life is too short to doubt someone else's feelings. Better ask for clarity.

Asking questions was some sort of last resort for me. If it didn't help, I'd accept defeat, tell myself to try again tomorrow and seek distraction for today. Reading and writing sadly didn't work for me. The tornado of destructive thoughts was too loud for that. I found solace in YouTube videos. Short enough for my chaotic brain to focus on, loud enough to drown my thoughts out and also visually distracting so my eyes wouldn't wander to things I didn't need to see at that point in time. Jacksepticeye and Markiplier got me through 90% of my bad days.

By the time I turned 21 in July, I was able to turn my negative thoughts around or cope with them on difficult days. August came around and I ended therapy. Finished. Done. Yet I was still emotionally unstable as could be. On top of that, I had to bring everything I'd learned immediately into practice during my gap year. The gap year had never been part of the plan, but I was forced to take one thanks to my former college. However, I was lucky enough to land a job in translation early in September. That's when I noticed just how much I'd changed. With a new environment, new people and new possibilities in my life, my inferiority complex came back swinging. This time I was prepared though. In the months that followed, I had a few angry outbursts. I felt worthless every now and then. But I never feel the way I did a year ago. If I get close to feeling that way again, I write everything down the way I learned in therapy. It's not always easy, but at least the inferiority complex doesn't control my life anymore.

Looking back on the past year, I can barely believe how much I've been through. Therapy was challenging and painful, so much so that I couldn't write about it until just now. I had to take my time, not just in accepting my diagnosis and changing my thinking pattern, but also in being open and honest about my situation. That's why I've waited a full year to tell my story. Because even though my time in therapy ended months ago, it also took me months to find emotional stability again. Months to get over the anger, frustration and sadness. Therapy shakes up your entire life like that.
It is scary and changes you more than you can ever imagine. But in the end, it's all worth it.