During the clinical treatment, I did not yet have the self-knowledge into how my problems originated that I show in the first chapters of this book. It was about figuring this out together in the treatment, so I will try to describe that process of searching as best as I can.
The psychiatric hospital where I would undergo specialized treatment was a clinic consisting of three departments where people with personality disorders are treated who cannot be helped anywhere else. The people who end up there have usually not felt unconditionally loved. In September 2003, I had an intake interview there! I was told that I could be admitted quickly because I was given priority due to the severity of my problems. I remember the first day well. Where on earth had I ended up, I thought. All these crazy people, with whom I had absolutely no connection. And then there were the therapists, these super-powerful people who immediately made me feel afraid. I spent the trial period I was now entering in a fairly intense group and was very shocked by a boy who wanted to end his life. That was a drama, and not a good start. I often walked around very gloomy, and tried to keep my fears under control by doing a lot of gaming, which for me had been a way of dealing with things all my life. One evening I really couldn’t take it anymore and I went to see a sociotherapist, where I burst into tears. I felt so alone and had so many problems. She said that all beginning was difficult and that I had to take small steps, not the big steps I was used to. She put her arm around me for a moment, and then I was able to face it again. I really had a hard time. Fortunately, I was already able to make a bit of contact with the other people. For example, I heard someone playing the violin, Janine, and because I had been so active with music myself, I went to listen, and so we hung out together regularly. I also got along well with Salma, a young Moroccan woman who arrived a week after me. Her Dutch was already very good and she tried to teach me Arabic script as a joke. But I only had one lesson because I was much too busy gaming on the Playstation…
I shared a room at the very end of a long corridor with three other men. A roommate of mine once told me that I would often lie in bed at night dreaming and kicking in the air. And every morning, Marvin, another roommate, would wake up the whole room with ZZ Top’s “Gimme all your lovin’” or Deep Purple’s “House of Pain” (appropriate for the clinic, haha) on his stereo. When I was alone in my room, I would often sing along to music by the band Toto, which I had on. And then I hoped that someone heard me. And sure enough, a woman who had a room across from me had heard me once and was very pleased that I had sung. And it felt really good that someone had responded positively to me, because I really felt like an alien. I knew Toto from a number of CDs that we had at home. A great compilation CD that we had once bought and that I had listened to countless times. It was the beginning of exploring my own musical taste, the beginning of my own identity in that area. Most of the things I listened to before that had usually been recommended to me by others, but this was really my own.
During the trial phase, I also had to take some tests, which I completed in a very short period of time, of course. When the trial phase was almost over, an appointment with my therapists was scheduled for one afternoon. The morning before that afternoon, I was playing a game and suddenly my trial phase therapist came walking in very intimidatingly. She was angry. I was on the computer again when I should have been having that interview, and they wondered if I was even willing to make the effort! I went with her to the interview room, where another therapist, Anke, was waiting. I found her incredibly powerful. I knew that I was actually supposed to have that interview in the afternoon, but I lost my own thoughts and feelings in this, because they came across as so intimidating and they were simply playing me for a fool. I first lost trust in them, and then I aimed my aggression at myself, sawing my own self-confidence from under my feet (they called it dangerous), a mechanism that I have carried with me all my life, and that was exactly what they described to me when I was sitting in their room so desperately and in tears. This really got to me and I got the sense that they saw me clearly. They also said that I had a lot of trouble with anger, that I was afraid of losing control of such feelings, and that the treatment was aimed at exploring these feelings in my interaction with others. I was a bit insecurely attached, as they called it. I was also very focused on others and how they treated me. I directed my aggression towards myself in the form of harsh self-criticism. Three main goals were formulated: ‘gain more confidence in others’, ‘gain more self-confidence’, and ‘learn to think realistically’, which was also very important to me because I had bizarre thoughts. A choice was made as to which department they would place me in. I would probably become too fearful in one of the departments, so I was placed in another. I was assigned to the friendliest group there was, group 2. And I was extremely happy about that. Anke van Brunssum became my main therapist.
The first period was intense. My goals were to ‘integrate into the group’, ‘be active with group members during unstructured time’ and ‘express thoughts and feelings during therapy’. If something happened in my contact with my therapy mates and I withdrew to dampen rising feelings, I had to write about it. But of course I was the best boy in the class again, and I was now going to force myself to get out and socialize. So I could always be found in the living room. And there I would look for people to chat with who felt safe. I always made new people feel at ease; I usually got along better with them than with people who had been there longer (with some exceptions). In my first evaluation, I also mention that I was far too hard on myself once again.
In one of the first group sessions, Anke immediately made a critical remark that I still don’t understand, even though she repeated it later. In one of the other first sessions, she told me that I quickly went ‘underground’ and was therefore not transparent. And when I expressed my opinion in a Patient Staff Meeting (PSM), she made a remark about my behavior, that was too adapted/adjusted in her eyes. I felt like I was being publicly made a fool of and was extremely afraid of losing face. After that PSM, I had a very intense argument with Salma. (I had a kind of love-hate relationship with her: one moment I felt a lot of love for her, and the next I could have shot her). When Anke heard about this incident, she told me that I was actually angry at her and that I had taken it out on Salma, who defended herself as fiercely as I had. Usually I would try to make up afterwards, but it also happened that when we were making up, we would get into another argument, something we can still laugh about heartily. Every comment from a therapist hit me hard, and I interpreted it as if I was doing something wrong, after which I would try my hardest to do the exact opposite in order to meet the therapists’ demands.
In the first evaluation, I also describe that I have serious doubts about the therapy because it makes me so anxious and confused, but that despite this, I already feel better than before. I also describe that I see ‘Jesse’ in the mirror again, instead of an alien, and I hear ‘Jesse’ talking again when I listen to myself. In the second period, I would mainly work on expressing my thoughts and feelings, because there was still no link between my mind and my feelings. During this period, I also had to discover when I acted from the perspective of the ‘free child’ and when I acted from the perspective of the ‘adapted child’ (concepts from transactional analysis). And I also had to seek out contact with fellow therapy patients when I was feeling less well. I also worked very hard on this.
In the meantime, I also experienced many fun things. I can still remember a woman who was constantly getting annoyed with everyone. I also did this regularly and I always had to laugh when I noticed this in her, because she would pull these really strange faces. Once something happened that made her almost burst out laughing. She quickly left the living room and went to an adjacent room. I ran after her and in that other room we had a good laugh. Then she launched into a tirade about all the things she found terrible about some people. Another fun thing was that I started giving Salma cycling lessons. Moroccan women have not usually done this much, and neither had Salma. She often fell and made the same mistakes children make when they learn to ride a bike: not looking where they are going and becoming overconfident. At a certain point she was able to ride reasonably well and she went to practice some more on her own. I was sitting inside in the living room, watching with Michael. Sure enough, there she came, she even waved, but that was a bit too much, because she then started to wiggle the handlebars with one hand, and then she gave herself a big smack. Michael and I were doubled over with laughter, because it was really slapstick. Fortunately, she was not hurt, and it did not stop her from cycling often!
My second evaluation is a special one. I talk about how I already feel a lot safer in my interactions and that there is always someone I can talk to. But I also focus a lot on what the other person expects of me, which means I can’t hold on to the feeling of my own self for very long. What the other person expects of me also keeps changing in my head, which means I don’t have a stable identity. I also say that I constantly want to be the nicest and the best, and if I do not get attention for this, I can feel an enormous amount of anger towards someone. And that I constantly have the feeling that I am not doing it right, especially when I am given instructions. I also express my angry feelings towards Anke, who makes me very angry with her authoritarian attitude and her directness. When discussing this evaluation, I tell her for the first time that I have all kinds of aggressive thoughts towards her, in which knives appear. And this gave me tremendous peace of mind, because she responded very well to this, and that surprised me at first. A lot of tears flowed from me again. Anke insists (for the second time) on a systemic conversation, which I arrange immediately, and for the first time I get a nod of approval from her. She also says that I am going to have a very difficult time in the coming period because she will be sitting on top of me (figuratively), so I will need a lot of support from my group members.
My father, mother and brother were present at the systemic interview. My sister could not be there at that time, which I found a pity. Anke describes that I can once again enjoy things, which I had not been able to do for a long time. During the systemic interview I start to cry whenever the subject of my sister comes up. This is striking. I also have a conversation with my mother, who at times closes down, just as what happens to me in therapy. My father says he is also a perfectionist, to which Anke says that it probably does not bother him. My father says that we can look back, but that it is better to look to the future, and Anke agrees. We also talk about my outbursts of anger at home and how my parents and brother and sister have to deal with that. Anke says it’s better to take a time-out. And that aggression is strongly linked to identity problems, which is what mainly bothers me. She also says she thinks my parents haven’t made more mistakes than other parents. I’m very happy about this. I thought it was a good conversation and it brought together the world of home and the world of therapy. That was nice.
I can’t look into Anke’s mind, but she did try several times to find out exactly what it was that I was afraid of. Whether it was the fear of destroying someone else with my aggression, or the fear of being destroyed by someone else’s aggression. It was striking that in the period following the evaluation, she did not engage in conflict with me at all, as she had previously announced. I thought long and hard about what could be the cause of this. But I think it had to do with the systemic conversation, in which it was striking that I kept crying when we talked about Lauren, my sister. Because I think that showed her that I was afraid that my aggression would destroy my sister. And then it makes sense that you can’t sit on top of someone because that fear gets in the way. And I had the same fear of destroying the other person towards my mother, who didn’t defend her boundaries well and was easily hurt. That also became clear in the conversation. If I had not had this fear, and was only afraid of being destroyed, then it would have been good if Anke had challenged me by sitting on top of me to overcome this fear. This makes sense to me. In the third period, I continued with my goals from the second period.
I regularly went for walks along the river that ran alongside the hospital grounds with a few fellow therapy patients to relax. We also sometimes received visitors at the contact center or just went there to have a drink with a few people. At the contact center you saw people from all over the hospital grounds, including the other departments, and there were many people there who were quite far gone. Once we saw a woman there who had lost her diaper; that was really gross. And we also made contact with Jan, a schizophrenic man who was always talking about higher mathematics and regularly asked how his eyes were. He also always touched his stomach and showed how flexible he was by throwing his leg in the air. Of course we often asked him to show us again, which gave us another good laugh. We also regularly went to the neighboring villages to do our shopping. Once I went by bike with Vanja, a group member who went on skates. She was so tired when we reached our destination that I put on her skates and she put on my shoes so we could return to the clinic. I also sometimes went shopping with Salma, and one time was definitely the highlight. She wanted to go into a ‘underwear shop’. And she kept asking me to hold a bra while she tried on another one. I asked if I could judge the result, but unfortunately she wouldn’t let me. Once I was going to go rollerblading with Robin, who was in Salma’s group. I borrowed Vanja’s skates, put them on and went outside while she was still getting her skates on. It took a long time, and just as I went back inside to see what was keeping her, I heard a deafening noise. I went to have a quick look and saw her lying there, floundering. She had dragged an entire cabinet with her. It was hilarious. Fortunately, she could laugh about it too.
At the time, I also hung out with Erik, my new roommate, a man with a great sense of humor, and we were always joking and laughing. The sociotherapists called us Frick and Frack and wondered if it was wise for us to be hanging out together in the context of the therapy. So Erik and I started teasing the sociotherapists. Later he also spent a lot of time with Salma, and I was always terribly jealous when Salma paid him attention too. Then I felt the same jealousy I felt with Anna, my girlfriend from high school.
In the third period I would learn to express and verbalize my thoughts and feelings better and better. I think about it all the time, even when I am lying in the bath at home. And this made me a lot less stressed. In that respect, it is an advantage that I learn so quickly. A sociotherapist who had not been following my progress for a while complimented me after a few weeks on the great progress I had made in this area. Whereas my stories were initially incomprehensible because they were so confusing, I could now clearly explain what I had experienced over a weekend and how this had affected me. I had already become much more aware. I had learned, as it were, to ask for attention directly, which meant I no longer needed to use all the indirect methods and I became much calmer.
I also started to investigate when I behaved in a more adapted manner and when I behaved more freely. What I noticed was that I behaved very adapted when therapists were around, but felt very free with fellow patients. I also looked down on some patients, and I remember one older woman who was standing by the office of the sociotherapists tying her shoes with her rather big ass in the air. I walked by, and an aggressive thought crossed my mind: to kick her in the ass. From that time on, I caught myself having these feelings/thoughts more often, but they felt wonderfully strong, especially when I discussed them in therapy and felt that it was okay to have them. Vanja, my group member, described in my third evaluation that the free child has been released!!! And that is how I felt too. I felt the power gradually rising higher and higher in my body and I also felt it in my head. Because I had no escape routes at all, and my fears were exposed, and at the same time I received good guidance, healthy ways of dealing with these fears emerged. By discussing everything, I became a lot calmer. I had never talked about my fears of illnesses and my sexual fears at the clinic, and they were never asked about either, although I assume they were aware of them. And I was actually quite happy about this, because the more I started to feel ‘myself’ and my strength, the less I suffered from these fears. I also became stronger sexually. It therefore happened regularly that I fantasized about some of the women who were at the clinic. I felt less and less guilty when I did this, and I was very happy about that.
It had been clear for a long time that the clinic was going to move to a new location in a neighboring city. And the move was fast approaching. Before the move, Anke informed my group that we would have a new head therapist named Desmond Prinsloo, whom we had already seen as a psychiatrist. That was a bit of a shock because I was very used to Anke, but fortunately I quickly got used to Desmond too, and Anke was often present at the group sessions. We called Desmond the pill gnome. He was a small man with a South African accent and he came across as very reliable. I can still clearly remember a session at the old location, just before we moved. Desmond wondered why I didn’t express my anger easily. Of course he already knew that this was partly due to the fear I had for my sister, but this fear can only exist (I found this out later) if I had gotten the idea in my contact with my parents that my anger was not seen or was disapproved of. So Desmond was really fishing then. He spoke about me to my group members in a challenging tone. “Why would Jesse be so afraid to express his anger? I think he’s afraid he’ll get a beating!” I found it irritating, but at first I wasn’t really impressed, and decided to sit with an angry face for the rest of the group session. But it stuck in my head when the session was over and I was sitting down in the living room. I decided to look for Desmond so I could talk to him about it and tell him I was angry. I went upstairs and knocked on his door, but he wasn’t there. I repeated this three more times, but he was still not there. I didn’t dare ask anyone where he was because I didn’t feel comfortable at all. I wanted to talk to him about it because I was incredibly embarrassed, I think, and I definitely didn’t want to talk about it in front of my group mates. When he wasn’t there, I decided to move on to other things and I was so distracted by other things that were happening and that I could talk about that I forgot about it and didn’t come back to it…
And then it was time to move. Of course, we didn’t have to pack many things, just our bags. And I drove with a group member to the neighboring town, where we had visited the brand-new building complex a few weeks earlier. Then in the pouring rain, but now with beautiful weather. The complex consisted of three houses, the two outer ones for people with personality disorders from the three former departments, and the middle one for the anxiety and depression group and crisis care, if I remember correctly. There was also a large therapy building. It was quite a challenge for me to get used to it there. There were so many new people. I was given a room to myself, which I was very happy about.
And then the clinic was opened by Queen Beatrix. I had asked in advance where she would be walking, and had prepared well so that I could take photos with my camera. I had a good view from a room at the top of the house. But I was also able to be inside when she walked past one of the houses. I had the photos printed immediately at a one-hour service, in duplicate. One stack for me and one for Salma. And I still enjoy looking back at the photos.
In the first weeks in my new home, I did occasionally walk around with my head in my hands, as my group members noted in the third evaluation, but I did try to work on my contacts so that I would start to feel safe. I also had great support from my group and knew a lot of people from the former department in my own house and in the other house. I would start to feel more and more at ease as I got to know all the new people, and I would dare to speak up more and more, even when unprepared. In the unstructured time, I was often singing along and tapping my hands and feet to CDs, mostly Toto. There was plenty of room for this!
One evening we were all asked to gather in our own homes. Gerard Stoffels, a man with a high position in the clinic (I don’t remember exactly what), came to the house and made a terrible announcement. Michael, my former group member, who was now undergoing part-time treatment in the same clinic, had committed suicide. Everyone was in shock… I had often been able to laugh with Michael, especially in the last months that he was in my group, and we sometimes made fun of others. He had been found in his car with a hose connected to the exhaust pipe that he had fed through the car. I was stunned again, and I immediately thought of Chris, my friend from high school. I sought support from various people. Many people who knew him were crying. I wasn’t at that moment. At the time, I regularly hung out with a girl named Floortje, who wrote me letters regularly and slipped them under my bedroom door. I really grew from such attention. She had a very hard time there, and when Michael died, she suddenly took my hand without me asking, and rubbed it very gently, and I did the same to her. And so we sat there for a while. It felt very intimate to me, because I had never experienced that with anyone in that clinic, because everyone was very harsh on each other. This was a very soft and gentle experience, in the middle of a battlefield of criticism and misery. Very beautiful. But the treatment Floortje received was not good for her, and she had suddenly disappeared the week after this event… which I found very unfortunate.
Michael had also disappeared in the meantime. I thought about how far things could have gone. Vanja and I went to say goodbye to him during the wake in the cemetery hall. And then came the grief, a lot of grief. The funeral was to be the next day, but I didn’t want to go, I didn’t feel obligated. I had had my moment with him, and I thought that was enough. And now it was important that I continue with my therapy.
In my therapy I discussed that I also had anger towards Chris, and now towards Michael. I had thought about it very deeply before I started therapy, but I couldn’t really understand why a person would end their life. Why didn’t they just fight themselves out of it, like I had done? I will come back to this.
One night I couldn’t sleep… I kept thinking about my sister. It felt very intrusive and very important, as if I were at the source of everything. I went downstairs and started writing. About how I felt stuck to her. That I want to develop separately from her, but that this makes me terribly anxious. An important part of developing yourself apart from someone is that you are allowed to have negative feelings (aggression, for example) towards that person. I felt so much love for her, but also so much hate and fear towards her. And an enormous conflict, because I was terribly afraid of destroying her if I went my own way. The next day I took what I had written to the group therapy session. Desmond and Anke started asking me questions like: “What would you like to do to her?” To which I said: “I would … er … shove her under the bed” (which came out very awkwardly, and it didn’t make sense either), to which Desmond and Anke said: “I think you want to do more to her!” and they clearly stimulated my aggression towards her. After this, the way was opened for the big change. I actively engaged in fantasizing about acting out my aggression on my sister. When I felt her in my head (and that was very often), I would blow myself up and go on a rampage in my imagination. Later, in therapy, I told Desmond that I also felt my parents in my head. Desmond said that I could also allow my aggression towards them. I felt that my parents were in opposed to me (not behind me), and my sister was next to me. I had less trouble with my brother in my head. Before I made this change, my therapists did wonder whether I could distinguish fantasy from reality, and I could! Otherwise, you can’t encourage someone to behave in this way, which is completely understandable! A long period of mourning followed. I was now separated from my sister, and this made me feel incredibly lonely. I had also now freed myself from my own ‘critical parent’, another concept from transactional analysis.
The change in personality was not the only result of the therapy. In recent months I had also undergone a huge change in behavior. As I said before, I obsessively set to work on all the criticism I had received, and made sure that I met the therapists’ expectations exactly. So on the one hand, I had embraced my maladjusted feelings and lived them out in fantasy. And on the other hand, I had learned to adapt to the therapeutic environment with its therapists and clients, so that I could just be in contact (while I acted out my aggression internally), could contribute, could tolerate feedback/criticism, could think realistically, but could also give feedback/criticism very well, without judging anyone. I had learned to handle my aggression, so to speak! And above all, I was able to fully enjoy life again, I no longer devoted my fears to the people around me, but to a trauma in my childhood, and I had a clear sexual identity. In short, I had a very solid foundation!
But every time I acted out my aggression in my head, a wave of fear washed over me. An unfocused fear. I discussed this in a group session. Then Anke asked what exactly I was afraid of. Was it fear of not being seen, or was it fear that other people disapproved of my anger! What happened next was very important. I felt a great fear at the word ‘disapproved’, and instead of describing this fear, I ignored it, I fought against it, and said: “No! It is the fear of not being seen.” I denied it, and in the ‘not being seen’ I also recognized myself very much after all! I was also ashamed and subconsciously thought that Anke and the group members would be disappointed in me if I told them about this fear of disapproval. I pretended to be stronger than I was. But what matters now is that these words, in addition to Anke and Desmond’s previous thoughts about me, determined whether I would have to do follow-up therapy part-time. Anke also said that if I was afraid of disapproval, then I was done with therapy. And if it was purely fear of not being seen, then they would gladly refer me to the part-time follow-up therapy. But all of this went so unconsciously for me that I didn’t give it a second thought. I also did not think back to the times I had knocked on Desmond’s door, which was really about the same big question. Besides, I wanted to get rid of that fear, so I wasn’t ready yet and was looking forward to the follow-up therapy, not knowing that it would be my downfall. But it would be years later that I would remember this important session…
I experienced many fun things during my therapy, especially in the last few months. During a psychomotor therapy session, for example, Jos, the therapist, challenged my group. He described how sick we were and called us patients. I reacted angrily to this, to which he replied: “But it’s true!!!” It touched my vulnerable part of my illness-related fears, and I was hurt. When the session was almost over, we were allowed to do whatever we wanted (a pillow fight!!!), so I picked up a pillow and focused all my attention on Jos. I have never gotten so much under someone’s skin, and afterwards he gave me a big thumbs up! And I was very satisfied.
Something else fun in the last months was the following: After a week of hard work, it was time to go home on Friday afternoon. Bas, a group member, always dropped me off at a metro station in the city. Summer was in full swing; often the weather was nice, and we drove with the windows open. On the way, we would listen to the album Eye in the Sky by The Alan Parsons Project. At a certain point, we knew all the lyrics by heart and sang along. It was the best! And we deserved it after a tough week. That summer, I also rode my bike with Bas a number of times to a fortified town near the city where the clinic was located. There we would eat an ice cream and walk around a bit, and then cycle back to the clinic at top speed. How I felt was a world of difference from before the therapy. They were two extremes. At such moments I had no fear at all and could enjoy myself intensely. I felt powerful, I had stamina, I did not tire easily and I had a lot of fun. It was a very good time and I felt better than ever!
Friends from secondary school also visited me in the clinic: Frank, Theo and Lenny. I was in touch with Theo more often and he sometimes brought me to the clinic after we had arranged to meet on a Sunday. It was actually the last time I saw Frank, although I did see him again shortly in 2006 on the bus home from the city. I saw Theo and Lenny more often!
The fourth evaluation was also nice, but it was also the last evaluation, so that was also sad. Because I would have to finish the therapy. During the last period, I had mainly focused on making contact with everyone around me, and I had looked into follow-up treatment that would connect to my therapy process. I would follow this part-time psychological treatment from the mental health services in a city closer to home, the same city where I had gone to school and where I had been diagnosed previously. I had an intake scheduled for a month later with Eelco de Smet, who had previously referred me for clinical treatment. A big compliment in my evaluation came from the drama and creative therapist Dinah, who had been with me since I moved. She described how I had made history in the drama therapy in a short period of time. “Noisy, playful, a clown, mimicking, attention-seeking and overacting, but also quiet, inward, touched, inquisitive, and the courage to be truly vulnerable. It’s all Jesse and it’s all allowed to exist.”
And then the last week of my therapy at the clinic arrived. Anke complimented me in a Patient Staff Meeting (which all people of the department attended) on how much I had changed: at the start of therapy I was so incredibly preoccupied with myself, and now it was the exact opposite: I was incredibly preoccupied with others, and she thought that was a quality. That last week was very nice, but I was also a bit down because I was leaving the clinic. I remember Anke saying, “Enjoy it.”
During the last music therapy session, we listened to the CD that my group had made for me. They had each chosen a song. And it was very beautiful. After listening to everything, there was a truly meaningful moment of silence. Very beautiful. But also scary. Gerna, the therapist, asked if I would like to sit and enjoy the moment for a few minutes. But I said, “No!” I ran to the drum kit and went wild one last time, and the group members stood up and danced to the rhythm! And then I said goodbye to Gerna with three kisses, because I had become quite attached to her too.
Anke gave me a stone in the last group session that she had found on the beach on her vacation. She called it ‘the philosopher’s stone’. The stone had two different sides and she had a description of them. One side of the stone was very cool and untouched and symbolized, she said, the fact that I did not allow myself to be touched in my contact with others. That was before I started the therapy there. The other side of the stone was rough and damaged, symbolizing that now, after the therapy, I did allow myself to be touched in my contact with others. I carried this stone with me in my wallet for a long time. I had to let myself be touched, especially in the follow-up therapy that was planned, because that was good for my further development. And I often thought back to this. I thought it was a very sweet keepsake. My group members took another photo of me with Desmond and Anke. I could feel that Anke was looking at me proudly, but I didn’t dare look back at such close range. After the therapy, I went to my room to write cards to everyone and to a number of therapists to say goodbye. Suddenly there was a knock on the door, and there stood Anke and Desmond. Anke said that she wouldn’t be there tomorrow, the day of my farewell, so she wanted to say goodbye now. I asked if she could wait a moment, so I could write a card. I quickly wrote a text in which I told her how much I had feared for her at the start of my therapy, and how free I now felt, and that this was a world of difference, and that I was very grateful to her. I went to her room and gave her the card. She was happy with it, we talked for a while, and she got three kisses from me. It was a beautiful farewell.
That evening, my group and I had our own party! We ate separately from the rest, so we could say our goodbyes properly. The group gave me a present: four colored t-shirts. I always wore boring white t-shirts and black pants because I always felt like someone else when I wore other clothes. They hoped that I would be less self-conscious now and that I could wear something different. And I did. The next day, the day I said goodbye, I wore a bright green t-shirt, and I showed it to Desmond once again when I went to say goodbye. He gave me the letter of referral for Eelco de Smet. I saw my full diagnosis for the first time and had to take a moment to process it, but I recognized a lot of it. We talked for a while, I gave him my farewell card and then I shook his hand firmly!
The rest of the day was very special. My fellow group members, who were all dressed in black pants and white t-shirts, had given me a booklet in shape of the same black pants and white t-shirt. This booklet contained farewell messages from each group member, as well as photos and a message with a photo from my therapists Desmond and Anke, telling me that they were proud of me and that I should carry my “philosopher’s stone” with me. I also received a booklet with farewell messages from some of my fellow clinic residents, including from the other house. I still treasure these, it is a wonderful conclusion to a wonderful time. I was picked up that day by my father, mother and grandmother, and that felt very familiar. I gave everyone who was standing outside a hug to say goodbye, even the people I had barely had any contact with. And then my group walked with me down the driveway to our car. One last group hug and lots of kisses, hugs and handshakes. And then my family and I drove away to my hometown.
I had been at home for about four weeks now, waiting for my follow-up therapy. And I only did a few things: getting up late, listening to loud music and singing along at the top of my lungs. At that time I was still listening to a lot of Toto, but I also listened to Marillion, singing along at the top of my lungs. I had mentioned them before when writing about the sound card we bought for our computer when I was young. But at that time I went looking for the album that the song Kayleigh came from, because someone played it at the clinic one evening, and that brought back memories. I listened to the album Misplaced Childhood over and over again and the second to last song on that album, Childhood’s End, would become very familiar to me after my next therapy session. At the time, I was often angry and thought everything my family said was nonsense! I was not fun for them to live with, but it also was very confronting, living at home with my family members, for whom I felt so much hate at the time, even though of course I loved them very much too. In one of the last weeks, when I told Anke that I was often so angry with my family, she said: “Don’t do it! They try so hard for you!” And that was true. But it was such a structureless void when I was suddenly back home that I became very irritable and could show little love for them. In the clinic I was often angry in the last weeks, but I didn’t feel I could do that at home, and that reinforced the fear and anger.
