In comments on YouTube and other online venues but also in real life, people often talk about being alone.

For most of us, the only time when we are not alone is until some point after our birth. Anything else is usually merely an illusion. Spouses and children, friends and siblings can commit suicide (such as my brother in law), get killed in a crime or accident, divorce you, succumb to a disease or simply disappear.

None of this is permanent. Nothing is, except aloneness.

I became first aware of the illusion that the lack of aloneness is when I was working on my master’s. To test this, I hid from all my contacts for a while. Nobody noticed. Nobody called to ask where I was, how I was doing.

A little later, I got admonished while on geological fieldwork in Spain for not letting the others know where I was going. Just in case something happened. A few days later, I accidentally walked off my map and “got lost”. When I finally made it to the village where I was staying, after 10 pm, I saw people with flashlights.

I was touched! They had been right! People were looking for me!

Except, they were not.

The people with flashlights were strangers.

Nobody had noticed that I hadn’t gotten back yet.

That’s life.

It’s an illusion to think different.

(The hackers in my equipment are too often just messing with me and abusive by definition, because hacking is such a massive boundary violation. They may create a dependency, an illusion of company or support, but it’s based on a massive power imbalance and on the anonymity of the hacker. The hacker knows who you are. You don’t know who he is. You have no idea of his intentions or his level of information or intelligence. But there isn’t anyone else. That’s the big tragedy at the moment.)

As I am typing this, a woman walks past me, turns around, smiles, waves and says “Hola”.

Muy bien.

This is the only not-aloneness in life, isn’t it. The rest may be just an illusion.

I hadn’t encountered this in a long time. Just a friendly wave and greeting. No demands, no judgement.

No contempt.

We drown our aloneness on places like YouTube nowadays, in comments that sometimes make us seen for a second.

Thich Nhat Hanh said that one of the best things you can do for others is just be there for them. Listen. Don’t judge. Don’t shower people with contempt and criticisms. It’s so toxic. It’s like an acid attack and it can make people very acidic. It can make their empathy well run dry. It can make them very bitter. It can make them scared and force them to be on the defensive all the time.

I really became hounded after I moved from Amsterdam to England. Still, I think that England is where home is now, but that’s not the entire picture. Something is missing. And I certainly don’t want to be just any place in England.

The Netherlands clearly is not home, certainly not nowadays. That said, in terms of jobs (work atmosphere and attitude), there’s a huge difference, though it depends on the level.

It’s probably all a little hard to see for myself, after my time in the death trap. “Doet u maar rustig aan, mevrouwtje.” “U kenniet denkuh, mevrouwtje. U moet niet denkuh dat u ken denkuh. Dat doen wij wel voor u. Wat zeggu?! U wil wat? U mag niets willen, mevrouwtje.” It still makes me shudder. I seemed to be expected to plan and wait patiently for my death but not exactly much more than that. And live off 500 euro per month! They didn’t understand that I could not. I had only 500 euro a month for about a year. It kept me trapped there.

It was all so similar to what happened in Portsmouth. People doubted that I was capable of telling people who came for a COVID booster which door to walk to! The City Council Leader and I had the same English Ivy League university in common! (Not to mention that I used to work in tourism and hospitality before I went to university.)

Thus they push you into isolation and poverty, without realizing it, and they take that as proof of your lack of capabilities.

How do you defend yourself against such nonsense? I don’t know.

(Actually, I do. You leave. You go somewhere where you are appreciated.)

(Okay okay okay, in Portsmouth, the main problem was the stupid lock-picking and hacking. Couldn’t even use Face marketplace, reach out to people on their blogs or wish someone Merry Christmas or join a COVID support group because my hacker kept isolating me in an electronic cage. Behind my back, he told everyone that I had been in a car crash and god know what else. Nobody knew me. They believed him.)

(I still find myself often a little reluctant to share plans, also by email. I don’t want to have anonymous hackers on my tail anywhere I go. If anyone really wants to be my friend, he has to be that or learn how to be that. The anonymity alone is already really creepy about hacking, but I can certainly “use” a friend.) (But when my hacker moves the mouse to a comment I made about the local culture possibly being a little odd, does he mean that he agrees or that I shouldn’t say that in order to avoid offending locals? I think, the former, but I have no idea. I often even have no idea who’s in my equipment.)

I’ll find a way. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. I want to have a life again. Fulfilment. Support myself, like I used to! I can’t find enough reasons for staying in the Netherlands, though many for leaving. I can find several reasons for wanting to be in England, by contrast. Sure, England remains challenging. Any place would be. I need to have certain things in place, obviously, and that’s what I am working on now. I most definitely made the right decision on 14 August. I can’t find the words to express my horror at what would have happened to me, had I chosen differently.

But I am also terrified of the idea that the hacker will continue to mess with me.

At the same time, I’m also frightened of the idea that he will disappear. There hasn’t been anyone else in my life for a long time. He completely isolated me, but then again, once you stop benefiting people, stop being at their beck and call, whatever it is for, people often drop you like a hot potato. That’s just the way it is.

The mystery gift card that I received seemed to refer to my friend in the States. She did play an active role in my pestering for a while, but might she really be so crazy as to engage 4chan to pester me for years, on the other side of the world? For so long? I find that hard to believe.