Previous two related posts:
Yes, the scientist in me observes and wants to analyse this. This whole thing was supposed to be about support for me but quickly became all about him.
By the way, when I refer to him “muttering” I don’t mean that I think he’s hearing voices. He’s muttering under his breath. Talking to himself.
Update 10 January 2025: Yes, pathological demand avoidance caused by feelings of extreme overwhelm and lack of control seems to have been the main problem. Any cognitive decline symptoms may be just another way of expressing this. His hearing is bad, but he also uses not being able to hear – or see – you along with forgetting things as a way of staying in control. Pathological demand avoidance is also where the fantasy world concoctions come from. He was often being rebellious and controlling, certainly increasingly toward me. I found it hard to see him this way and use these words because this is not really how I used to know him, as far as I remember (though there have been a few odd moments that made me wonder; my first interaction that I remember took place in October 1984 and it was strange and disappointing). He loves hanging out with the toddlers because he feels in control relative to them. He feels superior, not challenged by them intellectually or otherwise. I now am starting to wonder if this all began to spiral out of control after his first wife divorced him… The iMac thing was also purely because his wife moved the thing on the table😣. He seems to have stopped using it years ago but the idea that she turned it by 90 degrees and moved it by maybe 20 centimetres was completely unacceptable to him. I now think that pathological demand avoidance was also the reason for what happened in 2017. I’d noticed before, in the past two years, that he has a tendency to come up with “realities” that are more palatable to him than the actual reality. I’m stunned by how well he still tends to present, how convincing and balanced he can come across as. (This is also why I was worried about any stories that he might be telling others about me.) But I think that not even the neighbour who he trusts with his key is still convinced that everything is okay.
Thinking back to another mildly autistic person who I had known since 1982, I realise that I have also seen some pathological demand avoidance in her. Twisting the truth is a way of asserting themselves and regaining a sense of control. Her daughter (now a psychologist) told me that her mother had said that I worked at a supermarket. This was years after I had graduated with my master’s. (I stacked shelves on Thursdays for three years, until 1989.) Another thing that puzzled me was that she sometimes “accused” me of being a scientist when I had not graduated yet, but also rejected me as not being a researcher after I had graduated. I couldn’t make it add up. She was looking for reasons to reject me, it seemed. But why? (Because I am intelligent and because that alone can make some people feel inferior, I suppose. I already noticed that in primary school. She has said of me that I had a very clear sense of who I was.) I helped her clean out a closet once. Such things really help. What I did, forcing him to own up and seek assistance and for example have himself tested for a brain infection, made things unbearable for him. It all reminds me of the woman with Alzheimer’s in Florida, who I supported for a few days.
There’s something else that I have now started to wonder about. He’s convinced that he’s not divorced from his second wife yet. They first lost the paperwork, he said, because the matter needed to be transferred to a different court and now hasn’t heard from the court for a long time. He’s said that there needs to be a hearing that determines who is going to be living where. Is any of this accurate? (He also recently said that he was going to charge the others rent as of 1 January.)
7 January 2025, 18:40: This is actually pretty hilarious, as well as educational. They are totally lovey-dovey all of a sudden… The only thing that has changed is that she was “the devil” in his eyes, before, and now I am. ✌🏻🕊️😎
I’m witnessing scenes from the 1960s, almost. 😆
(Okay, that was me being childish.) I hadn’t realised how vulnerable this guy was feeling. He needed reassurance. He didn’t want me to confront him with what he’s going through. I looked after a woman with Alzheimer’s for a little while, decades ago, but that was a stranger. It taught me a lot, such as that it really helped her if I simply unobtrusively helped keep her track of what day it was, but it’s very different when there’s a serious cognitive decline in someone you know, I’ve now learned.
Him insisting on referring me to a place that doesn’t exist, that too is pathological demand avoidance, I Iater realised. I have mentioned pathological demand avoidance in an earlier post. It’s hard to know what to make of such things at first. It’s also hard for me to figure out what is age-related and what is autism-related in this case. (Besides, it wasn’t as if I was in the best state of mind for dealing with something like this. Understatement.)
In any case, I am pleased that he and the second ex or soon-to-be-second-ex are much closer again. I’ve also gotten some answers through this series of experiences, about questions I’ve had for years. Chapter closed. Old stuff. Things are as I thought they were. I cut people too much slack sometimes. That is on me.
6 Jan 2025, 20:20: The kids are allowed out again… They are all acting pretty normal again. Sure, they pretend I am air but erything is normal at least… This tension around just him was very hard to be around, with everyone else secluded in their own little section of the flat. He gets so tense! (I’m always trying not to trigger anyone into anger here. Trying to make myself invisible.) That said, in hindsight, I think I became really concerned (nervous) after I realised that he genuinely believed that his wife had taken his iMac and shipped it to Africa as a donation without asking his permission, and that the iMac on the table wasn’t his.
That was so unhinged that I became really uncomfortable around him. It scared me. I shouldn’t have brought it up later, because that is when he flipped out and threw me to the floor, but it really worried me.
(Also, hilariously, they want me gone, but do eat food that I buy.)(Not him. He always eats the same things.)There seem to be financial pressures here and they are surely part of the tension that gets redirected at me. He did say he would be behind in rent by 2 months by early December – he was confident he would catch up soon as he had money coming in, but I warned him about the “vroegsignalering” abomination – and had tax debts among other things. Is it true or just another thing that he says that has no connection to reality? I have no idea how he might have ended up with tax arrears. (I did ask him.) He’s paying alimony to his first wife. He’ll soon be paying alimony to his second wife. He’s now just sold his car, which has surely helped. He shops at the most expensive supermarket; I got him to try bonus box, but he will associate that with me from now now and likely stop using it for that reason even though it offers interesting discounts. But maybe he will present it to others as something brilliant that he’s discovered. I hope so.
6 Jan 2025, 19:42: The dynamics have changed big time. See below. They are suddenly best buddies again. Good. 👍🏻
I’ve overlooked something. He’s an only child. (He told me to keep my mouth shut, this evening, as if I am a toddler, not a colleague. I told him the same. Of course I did!)
(Oh. 💡 This is about feeling needed. Yep, I do that to men. I’m fiercely independent – and I kept telling him to stop sending me links for things that I don’t qualify for. But this was not supposed to be about him. This was supposed to be about me.)
6 Jan 2025, 18:06: Something really bizarre going on here. She has been walking in and out a few times to switch off the kitchen light. I wondered what on earth she was doing. Then he emailed”kitchen lights on/off”. I happened to have just switched one on. My first thought: “What the hell? How does he know that I just switched on the kitchen light?” Briefly wondered if he was outside on his way home and saw the light go on.
She spent a lot of time in the kitchen today, then went to sleep at about 4pm or so. I’ve just realised that they are all asleep… This is what she did in 2023 too, when I still assumed that there is a large time difference with Liberia. (Nope) She would come out of her section of the flat as soon as he was fast asleep, and without hearing aids, in his room. Just to pester me, I later realised. To keep me from sleeping. I should have said something, then. The silly thing is that this kind of thing actually delays my departure now. No, they left! I had no idea. Good. They returned at 19:30. She and him are suddenly best buddies again, apparently. Good. Maybe I helped clear the air here. 😎
(She did not do any of that in the weeks before Christmas so there is no need for it. That said, the kids were up so late at least once, that they missed school. Well, the one that goes to school.)
Her adult son is okay. He sometimes comes home at odd hours and sometimes leaves at 5am for his shifts at AH (supermarket). That is a different story. He is not doing anything to pester me. He’s okay. (I feel sorry for him, actually, because this can’t be easy for him either.) He seems to leave the country often. Once every two months or so? He gives part of his salary to her. She doesn’t work.
She had a cleaning job briefly, a few doors away, at a dental practice, but quit soon after she started it. That is what her husband told me, however. It may not be accurate, in view of all the nonsense that he tells me about me.
My impression is that the couple are taking their relationship issues out on me. Displaced aggression because they see me as inferior. They’re behaving like a bunch of small children.
Initially, in early December, he tried to bond with me by painting a “them” against “us” picture. Used “we” in this context.
That was not at all what this is about. I don’t want to fake this kind of thing just to keep someone “siding with me”. Said that I could sleep in his wife’s bed and during the day in his if I wanted to. No, thank you.
This is a really dysfunctional household. Complete with lots of mouldy food, I should say. I’ve thrown some of it out. I felt I had to. There was also a moldy filter in the coffee maker in early December. I threw that out too.
Am I the only adult here?
I do my best to stay above the silly pettiness. I’m succeeding.
(I’m sorry that I allowed myself to get dragged along for a while.. I’m not doing that again.)
6 Jan 2025, 11:27: Nothing from GoFundMe yet. Time to go check emails, okay an outgoing payment and do other stuff. I’m still not getting many of my bank’s emails, about outgoing payments. (I’m a nervous wreck. I’ll get over it because I can’t afford to be a nervous wreck. She came back while I was in the shower, I don’t know from where. She has been shouting angrily again, on the phone, for a long time, as usual. He left a few times and is still gone.)
6 Jan 2025, 09:52 Still waiting for them to be finished so that I can start the day. Still in my PJs. Utterly exhausted.
09:40 As of this morning, she is switching off the light in the kitchen, playing silly little games, as if I am forbidding her to use any lights while I wait for everyone to do their morning things before I can start the day myself.
I need to stay above this. It’s all so childish.
More muttering.
Telling her that I refuse this and that. Bullshit. I’m not eligible! And in one case, what he insisted exists, doesn’t even exist.
(This is actually pretty despicable. Why does he keep doing this? Is it wishful thinking? It was frustrating enough to have to deal with that myself, but why does he also tell others this bs?) (But to me, he complains about them. Only yesterday, he moaned about the mess around the table after my tablet disappeared, had slid into the mass of soft toys. The toys don’t bother me one bit, but they really annoy him.)
(My dad was like that too when we were little, my mother told me. Hated having toys in the house. Got really angry over it, so much that my mother discussed it with the GP. My dad shared traits with this guy, I realised a few days ago, when I realised that I am often very nervous around this guy because he has so much tension in him, so much pent-up anger. Not always. It depends on his moods. I’ve started to wonder if my dad may have been autistic in combination with relatively low IQ. I’m looking for differences now. I always thought that my dad had undiagnosed borderline. Did he really?)(Scientific curiosity)(doesn’t matter; I said goodbye to my dad over 40 years ago, no longer willing – and able – to deal with his antics, plus the guy is deceased, and I’d rather leave him rest in peace now)
(That said, I don’t want to have to be everyone’s mommy. I’m not his mother.)
Btw, before Christmas, he handed me a paper about concealed gun carrying in the US. When I was puzzled, he was annoyed so I just thanked him and said nothing further.
6 January 2025, 9:00 : He’s just told me that I need to be out of here by the evening. (I had just checked my bank account, nothing new has come in yet.) He also said, however, that I could leave some of my things here. (What the hell? Knock on the door every day to ask for clean underwear and socks or whatever, pretty please?)
Yesterday, he said the opposite.
Only three days before Christmas, he still wanted me gone by Christmas Eve. Then he changed his mind again, without even actually telling me. (He turned out to have sent me an email.)
When the crazy Werk & Inkomen staff in Purmerend went into a neighbour’s apartment to access my balcony via his (intimidation/retaliation, no explanation, no apology), and suddenly stood in front of my open balcony door, really scaring me, and I sent him an email about it, his baffling response was “H’s mother’s name is Doris”. (He often dismisses or twists unpleasant truths, I think.)
He’s also the guy who offered me a way out in 2017, told me that I was welcome to stay at his apartment in the Bijlmer until about Christmas when she would be visiting from Liberia. I would have my own room. He absolutely reassured me that I would be able to register there, no problem, no, no problem, thus be able to get back into the Dutch system, get back on my feet, pay a little out of my pay or social security benefits to compensate him for the effect on his pension payments. (He would be at the university during workdays.) When I took him up on the offer, stood there with my luggage, he had either changed his mind or forgotten about it. I had to borrow money from two other people to be able to return to my crazy coercive-control-type situation in Portsmouth.
I felt so let down.
I later ascribed it to his memory issues and forgave him, but I am not sure that I am still buying that explanation. Like his hearing problems, they seem a little too selective at times. (Pathological demand avoidance?)
I should not have let him pick me up in December. Because of the virus I caught here, I couldn’t even make calls for a while because I lost my voice. And I looked awful. (He can pretend all he wants about me “having gotten ill on the streets”. It’s bs. It was here where I got ill and the sleep deprivation here didn’t help one bit.)
On the 20th – no, I think it was the 19th; the 20th is when I talked with Fatima Ata for the first time – he smashed me into the floor because of his pent-up anger over his wife. Unleashed it at me. Bloody hell. Talk about displaced aggression. “It’s because she moved my iMac on the table.” The iMac that he never uses. The iMac was a symbol for something. I’m not sure what. He said that she had taken his iMac one day and shipped it off as a donation to Africa. (I think he actually wrote that to me a few months ago.) The iMac on the table was one that she had found in the streets. Could I help him set it up? “Oh, look, there is all sorts of stuff on it.” Yes, his own files. What on earth was I supposed to make of that? I found it pretty unsettling. I guess that’s the autism. I decided to forgive him. But after he threw me to the floor in a sudden fit of rage, I could no longer afford to trust him.
He pretended that this was a perfectly normal thing to do to me. I think that that shocked me even more.
(What was I thinking when I allowed myself to rely on this person? That may be the main question. I think the answer is very simple. When you have no money and your life stops looking glamorous and you can no longer be at people’s beck and call many abandon you.
Yesterday evening, he joked about me putting on weight. I should put on more weight. Hell no. It affects my spine issues. I have at least three bad discs and currently the tailbone issue. Carrying more weight isn’t good for me and tends to affect the nerves too. He’s been doing this, this devaluation thing, quite often. (Is part of the Asperger’s, as far as I know, but that doesn’t make it enjoyable. This “what you want and feel is wrong or incorrect or disapproved” gets a little stale.)
His soon-to-be-ex wife keeps declaring war on me. On 5 January, she started ramping it up. Just like she waged her hostile little wars in 2023.
I wonder if this time, she’s actually just terrified that what’s happening to me will happen to her after the divorce, that the Netherlands is not the wonderful paradise she thought it was (just like I too remembered it, I suppose). I wonder if I am a constant reminder of her own vulnerability this time.
Scores of regular people like me are now homeless in the Netherlands without support. Many are the victims of these horrific attacks with explosives. They are in fact punished for being victims, treated as the cause of the attacks, even if they have no clue what the attacks are for or who’s behind them. It’s awful. (It’s also incomprehensible that the Dutch police are as powerless and clueless as the victims of these attacks.)
She’s more timid than she was last time. A little more human. (But I also think she’s manipulative.)
Last time, she was probably worried that her scheming might become exposed, I guess. She was hostile from the get-go.
She doesn’t realise that her antagony has returned to her like a boomerang. If it weren’t for all her antics last time, I wouldn’t actually be here now. I’ve only just realised that.
(I should not have done that. I should not have taken the first place I could get just to be out of here. That is fully on me.)
I was supposed to have been out of here on Christmas eve, when everything was supposed to get resolved. (Until then, all I could do was wait for the next appointment with the civil servants… Ugh. Almost nothing else. Besides, things were going to be resolved, were being resolved. Everything was going to be okay. Then on Christmas Eve, they told me the opposite.)
The holiday season is over as of today, apparently.
Things are slowly coming together but I can’t break iron with my bare hands as the Dutch say. Each time, I have to wait for GoFundMe donations to arrive in my bank account before I can take the next little step. Nothing happening on weekends either.
My tailbone still hurts and is a constant reminder of how precarious my situation is.
I mustn’t let this get to me. I can’t afford to.
- Sigh. I need to be out of here asap. I can’t even work any kind of job from here, unlike what he thinks. Unlike last time, I can’t even go sit in a shopping mall or library all day just to get away from her and her silly stuff. If it weren’t for the GoFundMe donations, I’d be so screwed. But the donations aren’t enough yet to get me back on my feet. They do give me a little hope.
I need to stay above this. Rise. Not get dragged down again by her antics. Thankfully, I’m a lot stronger than I was last time after all those years of coercive control. I’ll be out of here and back on my feet again soon, goddammit.
She, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to do a damn thing. I don’t quite buy her orphanage stuff. Hard to tell, though. Certainly hard to reconcile with this.
6 January, 8:06: Loud whispering a few feet away from me. She is talking to the 5-year-old. (Sounds like he is not allowed to go near me to get his toys?) Yes, she is up to her silly antics. She sent one of the kids in before one evening to declare loudly that I had to leave. She is 2 years old!
Not my problem!
This woman is not my problem. My problem is wanting my life back. My problem is not her life, not her silly antics.
She said she was going to call the police. (About what? About she being a schemer and a scammer?)
I so want out of here.
I feel sorry for him. He’s in the middle of this. So are the kids. Yesterday, she barged into his room in the middle of the night to complain about me just after I had thanked her for having turned off the light. I told her that making me increasingly sleep-deprived is not going to get me out of here faster. (Last time, it mattered less as all I was doing was waiting. This time, I need to be able to connect, come up with ideas and solutions and present well.
(How the hell does she think she can run an orphanage if she doesn’t understand empowerment?)
I also feel sorry for her adult son. He too is in the middle of this, but his girlfriend is pregnant and they will likely soon have a place of their own and get some peace. I hope so for their sake.
She often sleeps during the day.
In the morning, each time, I have to wait until they are all done just like I can’t start preparing for sleep until I am sure that they have gone to sleep. They don’t let me know. Ever.
This, it was supposed to be about helping me, but it’s become all about other people and what is on their minds. Their silly fantasies. This was supposed to be about me resolving my situation and me moving forward.
It should never have become about needing to defend myself against all kinds of nonsense accusations and silly little wars.
I hate posting this kind of thing but when you are entirely on your own, you can be in a position in which you sometimes have to defend yourself.
Initially, I was worried that if he is going around telling other people that I registered at this address against his wishes, he may unwittingly be painting me as a scammer. (I’m not registered here.)
He did something similar in 2023, without realising it. I get it. Also, I blame myself for that. I should have given him clear information that was accurate and much more palatable. I overheard him tell someone, literally, things about me that were neither accurate nor helpful. I get it. Yes, I do get it. But it’s why H was going through my garbage every day, with a stick. Among other things. (When I didn’t turn out to be the weak waif H expected, ouch.)
To me, he said that I had been pioneering, in my business. That wasn’t accurate either. I’m no Elon Musk, nor did or do I want to be. I just wanted to live my life, doing things that I enjoyed and was good at and that were able to support me and that gave me a lot of freedom. (What he probably meant is that he could never imagine being self-employed himself. That it would be way out of his comfort zone.) (He’s never needed to apply for a job, he’s told me. Not once. He got hired on the spot right out of his Master’s, in the academic boom years, and stayed in the job. So yes/no, he has no real solutions for me either, no useful ideas, but that goes for most people. You’re on your own.)
I want the hell out of here.
Tension rising again. I think it started a few days ago. From about the same day, or a few days before, the kids are being kept away from me as if I am some kind of leper. (Okay, okay, I have had a lot of negativity recently and may now often be seeing it where there is none. Maybe they just felt that needed some peace and quiet.)(I have said several times before that I need and want to recalibrate because my expectations are undoubtedly a little skewed at times. On the other hand, holy cow, my native country has changed tremendously. There’s genuinely is a lot of negativity around.)
He stopped talking. Only uses email now. Kept sending me these nonsense links by email. Keeps asking me the same questions. Frustrating. Making remarks that I usually don’t even bother replying to any longer. It feels pointless. I do my best not to respond. I should not even look at his emails. I should not reply. Replying is pointless. Explaining is pointless.
I try to tell him as little as possible because he either forgets instantly anyway and/or doesn’t get it and/or gets really confused.
It’s very frustrating, a burden that is very hard on me right now. Yesterday I had enough.
He confused the hell out of me when he suddenly told me that I am registered at this address, the day before yesterday (ergo had access to xyz, xyz being a place that I had been to previously and seemed really useful but was a lot less useful than it first seemed; they admitted that my situation left them fairly powerless in terms of what to advise or how to help).
Was his mind stuck in May 2023? I was registered at this address back then. He knows very well that I am not registered at his address right now. I didn’t know what the hell to make of it.
When I brought it up yesterday, he said that this was so, that he thought so, because my postal address is here. It’s not!
It’s so baffling!
A few months ago, I did ask him if it was okay if my postal mail would briefly get redirected to this address. (There’s barely any but it seemed best.) Yes that was fine. He triumphantly handed me the confirmation when it arrived when I happened to be here. “It’s working!”
When the first redirected letter arrived, a week or so later, it confused the hell out of him. I had to keep asking questions for an entire week to figure out what exactly was going on. I then decided to instruct him to just bin any letters arriving for me. It seemed so much easier… I didn’t want him to open the letter just to avoid being the cause of even more confusion. It didn’t sound important anyway.
Similarly, he brought up some local place that I should go to in this suburb, for weeks, but he sent me no link. I could not find what he told me to Google, no matter how often I tried. When he brought it up again, after the first incident (when he threw me to the floor), I asked him to show it to me on his phone. He did. It was merely a search result but it said very clearly that it was in a major city elsewhere. Utrecht. I was baffled. He occasionally paints me as obstinate and as uncooperative and refusing to look into things… Yeah right. That is because they either don’t exist or don’t apply. (Usually, I’m not even eligible, regardless of any other questions.) It’s really frustrating.
There are some similar fantasies going on about my coughing. I think he’s been telling himself that I fell ill elsewhere. No, I fell ill the week before Christmas because there are six people here who interact with many others and I picked up a virus from them. I was a little sleep-deprived and my resistance was likely low.
In my current situation, it’s bloody exhausting to deal with his fantasy world and his memory issues. I know he can’t help it but it’s frustrating.
When I tell him I’m coughing up lots of mucus, he’ll say that it doesn’t sound like it, that it sounds like a nervous cough. When I tell him that it will pass, he will comment on that. (Because my cough annoys him. Of course. I get that.) But he’s often invalidating your experiences or feelings. (He probably feels the same way about the people around him.) It’s frustrating. This is also why I tell him as little as possible, if I can, but it’s very unnatural for me to be surrounded by people and not talk with them at all.
A day later, I came home to his (second) wife using some kind of cleaner on the flooring that almost instantly affected my airways. I had to get the hell out of there but the damage had been done. That is, I had to wait for the response to calm down. Nobody died.
I’m also having rising stomach acids so there is also mucus coming from the esophagus.
My gallbladder got congested but I got it going again and I had it have a bladder infection but I seem to be able to keep it under control. (I think I’d had it for a while. Developed in the past year, I guess?)
I’m not getting enough sleep, the place is really dust-laden, the air is really dry, no airing is done, the air often has all kinds of heavy cooking fumes, but for example of bleach too, I’ve been eating 3 times what I normally eat and very different foods, and I’m not getting any exercise, whereas I am normally very active and I started putting on weight before I knew it. It’s hard on my feet and spine. (I’m working on it.) I can’t do a thing here.
I have been analysing why I made the decision to move into that horrible place in Purmerend even though I really didn’t want to.
This is a household with a LOT of anger and a lot of resentment and a lot of tension and to some degree, I was the source of that, but certainly not exclusively. I just wanted the hell out. I was spending my days sitting at shopping malls to get away from all the anger. All the shouting.
I may understand that anger. Not sure. Hard to tell, really.
I wanted to be able to move forward and felt so desperate that I literally took the first place that I could get. This is a very unpleasant environment. I thought that I had short-changed myself because I let their interests come before mine. No. His wife has been very hostile from the start and she does little more than shout very angrily all day and all night, at others. For hours and hours and hours and hours and hours. Not at me. She pretends I don’t exist.
She threw me a smug smile when she left for her naturalisation ceremony in 2023, as it later turned out. I had wondered what that weird smile had been about. He later told me where she had been. Shortly after, she announced that she wanted a divorce. The kids aren’t yours, she fessed up, but he had known that from the start. He did a DNA test on the first kid. So why he’s so angry with his wife that he smashed me to the floor in a sudden explosion of rage is beyond me. He went along with it! He okayed it! He was fine with it! “Ik ben erg op haar gesteld” he wrote to me as explanation. Did ask me at some point why on earth she didn’t want the kid on his medical insurance. Asked me. (Now he seems to come up with an alternative explanation for this if you ask him, probably one that fits his fantasy world.) She went away each weekend, like clockwork. (Because he was home on weekends?) Others weren’t supposed to say anything… We were probably supposed to go oooooh and aaaaah because an exotic woman 38 years younger than him fancied him… It must have felt like validation. Yes, many people do this. It’s nothing new. It’s got nothing to do with neurodiversity, even. Agreed. Okay. But I can’t for the life of me understand it.
Yesterday, we had an argument. It was good to get a few things off my chest but utterly useless.
I have no idea who gets up when to do what. When I get woken up, I mean. It varies wildly. It can be 2am, 5am, 7am, 8am, 9am… I can’t even just go to sleep in the evening. I have to wait until the usually very loud TV goes off at 11:30pm usually but it can also be 10pm or 00:30. (When I haven’t been able to sleep much, waiting until after midnight before I can sleep again is hard. I have had trouble not falling over, literally. It’s very hard to stay healthy this way.) Then I have to wait and see if people keep popping out of their doors or have really gone to sleep before I can start changing into my nightwear.
I so want out of here.
I’ve never felt more alone than here.
Can you imagine how the others feel about me being here and stopping them from living their lives?
(The kids are gems.)
He’s told me that he’s charging the others rent as of 1 January. I don’t even think that he can do that. Certainly not at a few days’ notice.
Thank god there’s finally some movement on the gofundme. I really need that to work.
It’s basically what I have been asking for since 2016, oddly enough. I needed a leg up. I can do a heck of a lot but there are limits to what you can do without money.
I want my life back.
Right here and now, nothing is being resolved. The gofundme is my only hope.
16:20 I am very tempted to share an email with him that I just sent, but that I realize that this would be just to show him that I really am exploring options and opportunities. I’m so not going to do it. 😎 I’m an adult. I’m a mature adult. Some people treating me like a five-year-old doesn’t change that.
There’s another thing. Letting me stay here from Christmas to New Year was not about me. It’s about him and I need to keep that in mind. “I’m not going to kick her out over Christmas” he’d said to others on the 23rd. Then, on Christmas Eve, I was told that the city was not going to help me after about 20 days of having been told the opposite.
Another strange thing that I still have not been able to figure out is that he asked me what I had done with the light fixtures, hoping that I had put them in storage. I haven’t the foggiest idea what that was about. I still don’t. What light fixtures? He’s never been to the place after I moved in.
I happened to have left one floor lamp behind because it was late and it was raining, so I couldn’t carry it on foot. It was from a thrift shop but I liked it. “Let go” said a zen voice in my head. You can fret about every little thing if you want to make yourself miserable. I told him that I had left one lamp behind, maybe two. He seemed really sorry about that. It’s lamps! The world is awash in lamps. It had cost maybe three bucks. Someone else is now using it, I’m sure.
Already 6 weeks ago or so, I let him know that he’d be helping me most by looking after his health. He got angry. Told me that I too would not like to be told what to do either.
I’d told him before that maybe he should get a checkup for a brain infection – after I saw an article about this – because he started to deteriorate after a certain point and it can’t be ruled out that he picked up some kind of virus or bacterial infection abroad. Sure, probably not, but worth looking into, I felt.
PS The main issue may be the domestic situation. I think he really misses his job, the daily interaction with colleagues. Brains don’t exist in a vacuum but also receive input from other people’s brains. Ask neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett. I know only too well how it affects you when people push you out of society, isolate and marginalise you. It’s agony.
Saturday he went to see someone after which he came back in remarkably good spirits. That is why I am saying this. It was an amateur geologist.
The day before he said that he was going to ask the guy for a place to live. I told him to ask him about a vehicle too. “Do you have the money for that?” Bloody hell, I don’t have the money for any of the other “solutions” that he kept sending me either! If I were even eligible for them, that is. I’m not. I’m not eligible for any of the stuff that he sent me. It’s probably much more likely that someone has an old car that they are willing to give away than that they let a “retarded drug addict or alcoholic” or “scammer” live somewhere for free in a country with such a massive housing shortage. It‘s needling, what he does. Needling. I should never have agreed to let him pick me up. (Goddamn civil servants. Are they really that dense or powerless or was it some kind of stupid game?) I could work a job while staying at a pocket hostel. I might even be able to work a job while living in a tent (but that is much easier in some places in England than in the Netherlands where you are not allowed to sleep in public areas). I can’t work a job from here, from where I am now.
(If there is one thing that doesn’t agree with me, it’s being forced to “live” as if I am already dead. Sit on a chair or sofa all day doing nothing. Why do so many people feel that you’re as good as dead once you hit 45? Possibly because that is the way many people live, without drive, aspirations or imagination.)
