The Netherlands has an epidemic of attacks with explosives, possibly the Dutch counterpart to gun violence in the US.
Ordinary people whose home is attacked, damaged and declared unsafe to live in end up on the streets without support.
Victims are being punished for other people’s crimes.
Continue readingPrevious 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.
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.
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!
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.)
Continue readingThe country has always had the sayings “Doe maar gewoon, dan doe je al gek genoeg” en “wie met zijn kop boven het maaiveld uitsteekt, wordt genadeloos afgehakt”.
In the Netherlands wanting to excel was not done. There’s so much joy in excelling in something. In order to fit in in the Netherlands, you had to be average and strive to be only average, however. You had to do exactly what everyone else did and at the same age/time.
Just like many others, I never fitted in here. I and many others, we found America to be the country where we were allowed to thrive and lead joyful lives.
So the Dutch police have a communication system that sucks. But you’re not allowed to say that, are you? You’re supposed to put up with the mediocrity that is now definitely sliding into the abyss. It’s endangering lives.
(Confusingly, the system bears the name of a supermarket chain, but I don’t think that these supermarkets still exist: C2000.)
Is it a symptom or an isolated occurrence? I fear that it’s the former.
I wasn’t supposed to say out loud that many of the country’s civil servants currently communicate as follows “I want to suck my thumb. Because I like sucking my thumb.” Citizens who receive these communications are not surprisingly often baffled. I later read a Dutch newspaper article from which I gather that this how Gen Z communicates. But why does this only appear to be the case in the Netherlands? Because it’s cool to be mediocre here and because wanting to excel and wanting to make things better are increasingly frowned upon, apparently.
“Shut up, or else.” I’m not putting up with it.
The Dutch civil servant apparatus is huge. And very expensive because it’s so dysfunctional. Something similar goes for the medical/care apparatus in the Netherlands.
If medical care in the UK is free (albeit in a bit of a pickle because of the Tories’ underfunding) and taxes are much lower, then how come medical care in the Netherlands requires a system of obligatory health insurance premiums that are as high as premiums for private insurance in the UK and the medical and care systems in the Netherlands reportedly are on the verge of collapse? In addition, the Dutch care system is reportedly riddled with crime. According to the Dutch police, this includes organised crime, not just petty theft.
I too am now caught up in the Dutch bonkers tax credits system. I now owe the Dutch state and it hasn’t explained to me how it came up with the amount. Toeslagen. Just like many others in this country, I want nothing further to do with them. This is not because I don’t know how to go online and apply for them. It’s because these toeslagen have a habit of turning around and biting your behind. It appears to be much better to be able to support yourself and not rely on any of the state’s tax credits no matter what. You can really get mangled in this system because you tend to become so dependent on those tax credits once you apply for them and start receiving them. If you get them, put them in a savings account. Do not touch them. Do not use them. But can you afford to do that? (Yes, I am exaggerating a little now. Because I am really angry with the kind of crap that I have been getting. It’s a long story.)
My passport and driving licence were missing…
But…
When you visit the city of Amsterdam’s department for the homeless, you are not allowed to take anything with you other than paperwork. Everything goes into a locker and if you lucky, you’re also asked to go through the metal detector. I was during my second visit.
My passport and driving licence were with my paperwork for the City of Amsterdam, of course. I was pretty devastated when I left and didn’t return my 🆔 to its usual spot. Besides, they want you to leave the office asap. Previously, I went into a KFC to do the things that I needed to do, but this time I was even more deflated – or, powerless, rather – than after the second visit.
Phew. All’s well that ends well. 😊
I find it pretty despicable that only the homeless are treated like criminals in Amsterdam, but none of the other citizens. That is an expression of povertyism.
How ridiculous this is? You CAN get free hot drinks on the other side, so it’s not actually security-related at all. 🙄
The government is the toughest creditor in the Netherlands. It’s also the biggest.
Today, as I was leaving the building where I am currently staying, I found myself walking down the stairs behind another resident who came from a different floor.
A little bit later, she turns around and asks “Do you live in this building?”
I’m unwell and have lost my voice.
So I voice “I have lost voice”.
“Oh, you are deaf”.
I whisper “No, I have lost my voice”.
I’ve become increasingly unwell in the course of the past three weeks and am currently having what are probably very bad asthma attacks. I’ve totally reached the end of my tether, in all possible manners.
I wish that I had never moved into that utterly dreadful and disastrous penal colony in Purmerend. That horrid place should come with a health warning. It’s a really nasty horrible place that requires an active death wish to make it tolerable because you’re expected to shut up and die there and don’t you forget it. (Actually, it should be closed down. It should be demolished.)
Thinking back to that horrible place tends to bring on anxiety
house on fire = lack of cash
burn on arm = homelessness
Step 6 is optional and has several variations but is not unheard of. Sometimes, people are not even eligible for purchasing a bandaid, even if they have the money.
Need advice? Education? Guidance?
Ask one of the following:
I strongly urge you to talk with each of us because we all contribute our own specific experiences and professional expertise.
If anyone has a pre-2008 Opel Agila or Vauxhall Agila in good condition, with valid MOT or APK that isn’t due to expire soon, and is willing to donate it, or lend it to me for a year, then please get in touch. A small actual van might be great too. Below is why.
Having something like this would enable me to stop renting storage space and would make me much more flexible than I currently am. (The only other thing that I would still need/like is a small power station.)
I had found one Opel Agila, but it needed work. Not necessarily a lot of work. Just a cleaning and fluid change and new brake components might have done the trick. I wasn’t in a position to accomplish that myself, unfortunately. It might have served me fine. It was old and very obviously used but that’s fine.
I obviously won’t and can’t stay in the Netherlands.
Life’s simply too short, folks. I don’t believe in fatalism or masochism. I believe in freedom. I believe in living. 😁😀 ☺️
My big problem is that I don’t have any money. I have not been able to support myself from the year I moved to Portsmouth. It’s a long story that no longer matters as I can’t change a thing about it, but it taught me a lot.
I’m going to teach myself a new programming language to get around that. That seems to be the easiest and quickest way to break out of this awful impasse. I’ve enough experience to know that I can do this. Big plus: It won’t matter what I look like as long as I can do the job well. (What I do not know yet is the degree to which I would like it, but I can compensate, for example by playing a musical instrument and going to woods and beaches and long walks in my spare time.) Before I enrolled in earth sciences at university, I actively explored enrolling in computer science and I have some experience with several languages.
… Earth doesn’t even shrug once and continues to be not flat.
Yet scores of people call the earth flat…
Be like the earth. It doesn’t really matter what people call you.
Entertaining. A good reminder that when the world changes in a way we don’t like, we all have the power to counter it and go against the flow.
Big loud bang two minutes ago. Sounded like an explosion. Over 1100 explosions in the country this year. Revenge, intimidation, often personal, sometimes related to crime.
A little Boxing Day update: All is well. I decided to do a little cleaning up and reorganization while he was out because he wasn’t happy with something. (Yes, he said so.) I didn’t do anything too drastically and made sure not to involve, for example the iMac, but I did move a few things around. When he got back, I was trying to introduce him gently to what I had done. Guess what? He didn’t even notice that anything was different. (I think that is because it didn’t involve any of his stuff.) So I did a good job. I had the idea while I was doing some vacuuming. I couldn’t just do nothing; it felt like I was being lazy. It didn’t require a major effort.
I think he also needs to build a daily relaxation routine into his life. He has no hobbies (left; he used to play the piano and he used to skate on natural ice). (His life looks pretty burdened but empty to me. Little nourishment. But that’s just me, and I know it. I’d be going to lots of cultural events and attend meetings and go on walks and so on.)
After the incident in which he threw me to the floor, his breathing was actually normal for a while, so he’d gotten rid of some tension. It didn’t last very long. (It’s notably his breathing that indicates to me under how much pressure he is. It’s undoubtedly affecting his heart rate and that in turn may make him feel uncomfortable too.)
I find it hard to separate the stories he makes up from reality when he’s making up stories. He often says things about others that are actually a way of communicating his own wishes. (That way, he can hide or avoid vulnerability or discussions.) To me, he said last year that I had a pioneering business that didn’t make it. (That’s hogwash, if only already because I wasn’t really doing anything out of the ordinary.) To others he said that I had lost my income in 2022. That’s not true either. Instead, I suddenly actually had a source of income the origin of which I wasn’t sure of as I was receiving text messages about DWP home visits that were actually about lock-picking intrusions. I decided to try to make use of that income to get out of there. I’d already tried to get away four times before the pandemic. (He’s aware of that, but he didn’t like the reason why I had to leave, so he tried to turn it into a more palatable “reality” several times. That said, others weren’t willing to accept what was happening either; it was much too crazy.)
He gets annoyed when people talk to him when he’s cooking. I just read that even that can be pathological demand avoidance. (Someone posted that about themselves.) I see it as feeling overwhelmed – or as sensory overload, sometimes, too – or as having a very narrow focus or preferring a very narrow focus (as seen from the outside). (There’s a lot going on inside that doesn’t surface.)
I have known another mildly autistic person for slightly longer. I think that her autism is quite a bit stronger. The way she deals with sensory overload is shut out all other signals. She literally won’t hear you. That’s her version of demand avoidance, I suppose. She’d also make appointments and then forget about them. (She was diagnosed by her daughter, btw, when the daughter was studying to be a psychologist, which she is now. One day she said “Mom, do you know that you’re autistic?”. So is her sister and so was their dad, who I’ve met.) So when I realised that she’s autistic, I read up on what I should do and I let her know what I thought. She confirmed.
My big problem is that I sometimes Iose patience when I am dealing with an autistic person by email (particularly when I am under a lot of stress myself). I need to remember that. (My now different cultural background is hard enough on people, also allistic ones. I can see that. I’ve really become pretty English. In England, I increasingly started using email because it was often the only way to get straight answers out of people.) I like having people around me with super-fast allistic minds – like HvP, may she rest in peace – because they challenge me to but other people challenge me in different ways and I’ve also sometimes been told that I have an amazing level of patience (also by a teacher). It’s just or mostly email in which I seem to fail. I’ve never liked email (etc), because there’s so much you miss. There are no facial expressions, for example, to go along with the words, on either side.
I get the impression that it helps autistic people to offer them a spacious and supportive/empowering soft cocoon, so to speak, not a restrictive and imposing steel corset. I don’t know how else to put it. Something that let’s them be, and allows them to feel expansive when they want to but doesn’t try to force them into anything. They also prefer short and clear, unambiguous communications.
Autistic people can be really peaceful to be around, I’ve found, thinking back to the hours I used to spend with my female friend. They can be like gently babbling brooks. That’s probably if you focus on them and just let them be. (It takes the focus off yourself, also because they miss things about you that others might focus on instead and want to talk about.) Just like a gentle flowing brook?
They can also be a little controlling, I think, and for example visit your home and change things while you are away, do something about things that annoy them, such as ticking clocks, or grab documents off your desk when they visit, right in front of you, without considering that it might be a highly confidential client communication. (I don’t know about you, but this isn’t something that I would do.) They won’t ask for permission. (Am I generalising?)
One of the things that I have learned in the past twenty years is that people rarely help others to help them.
The woman at the supermarket who quickly hands you or the cashier a fiver when you are short, she’s genuine. When someone in a similar situation (or who has been there) helps you, that too is usually genuine. Most others aren’t.
This seems so appropriate right here and now. Someone thought that I was just like him, I suspect, thinking back to a few conversations. I’m not.
Leah Harris
February 7, 201
Go It Alone
Lyrics Written by Leah Harris
https://www.leahharrismusic.com/stories/goitalone
I will sort out the text below later.
Remember when you said to me”It’s time to wake up and take your life more seriously,Things they change once you’re full-grownIt’s time to wake up f you don’t settle down, you’re going to spend your whole life alone”But we’re not the sameAnd I don’t see it that wayAnd I don’t want to changeAll I can say is that I’m sorry that I am not just like youThat I won’t let you to tell me what I’m meant to doI ain’t trying to burn no bridges, noBut I ain’t afraid to go it aloneRemember when you cried that daySaid your life had no meaning, but the clock kept ticking awayHow you wish you could go backAnd make a few changes so that your life wasn’t so empty like that Well remember thisThink of where you’ve beenFor the rest of the advice that you giveAll I can say is that I’m sorry that I am not just like youThat I won’t let you to tell me what I’m meant to doI ain’t trying to burn no bridges, noBut I ain’t afraid to go it aloneAll I can say is that I’m sorry that I am not just like youThat I won’t let you to tell me what I’m meant to doAnd I’m no fool, I know that I’ll be in it aloneA life of passion, it can be a lonely roadI got to do the things that feel good to meI ain’t trying to burn no bridges, no
But I ain’t afraid to go it alone
3 Jan: No, I was not imagining things. The pheromones were really oozing off him that evening.
He also had told me that I could sleep in his wife’s bed – I’d hate that if I were her – and that I could sleep in his bed during the day, but this may be the (nonjudgmental) autism speaking.
21 December 2024, noon: He just apologised for having hurt me. He’s also kicking me out, though. For two weeks now, he has been going on about a place that I can go to. Keeps going on about it. Insisted it was local. Turns out to be in Utrecht! (Not free. I can’t afford it but he was willing to lend me money for it.) He’s undoubtedly been telling people that I have been refusing to go to it. Yes, but that’s because it doesn’t actually exist!
Afterthought a day later: What I find really shocking is how convincingly he pretends that nothing happened and hasn’t even asked whether he hurt me. (I think I get that, actually.) It’s not that easy for me. My tailbone is hurting so I’m constantly reminded of how hard he threw me to the floor, and only over someone else having moved his iMac a few inches… While think I get what this is about, I am also a little shocked.
It’s an eye opener. About how mild autism works. I had underestimated how complicated this is. I saw it too much as mere diversity. It’s a lot more complicated than that. Now I understand that letter that a woman with a husband with Asperger’s addressed to autism experts that popped up on my screen in England one day. (Yes, I think that I was dealing with an autistic person there too. He shares interests with me. It may make a big difference.)
I’m learning that you don’t help mildly autistic people by trying to confront them with their challenges. Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible not to start criticizing and accusing them if you are around them, but it makes things a lot worse. You can support them relatively unobtrusively by accepting their idiosyncrasies and also accepting that what is paramount for them one day can change the next.
I’m also starting to suspect that particularly if mildly autistic people are living on their own, they may need someone to help them manage their household. They aren’t necessarily highly organised (even if they may appear to). It just so happens that I stopped by at the home of another mildly autistic and highly educated person the other day. (I didn’t dare mention the autism to others. Thing is, this person has an entire house and rarely seems to spend time at it. I had to see if I might be able to stay.) Both the garden and the house were a mess. Bottles of water in two open packages behind the front door, boxes with junk and other junk on all the chairs and seating in the front part of the living room, not as if she was moving out, but as if she couldn’t care less. I remember having helped her clean up, clear out and organise a cupboard decades ago. She couldn’t bring herself to do it. I decided to help. Just having someone else there who quietly/gently takes the lead apparently can help a lot.)
After civil servants and a few others essentially bullied me out of my not very pleasant but in some ways certainly tolerable temporary home in the Netherlands, which also cut me off from income (but I’d figured I’d have income or a job soon enough and in fact, had recently already worked a shift) and I was also still due 400 to 500 more euros in benefits than I eventually received, someone has been letting me sleep on his couch off and on, and now for a few weeks already.
But without income, I’m probably even more trapped and more isolated and more powerless there than on the streets, aren’t I. I currently can’t even wash my hair and I’ve been wearing the same clothes for two weeks. I do have plenty of socks and underwear with me, thankfully.
Yesterday, he threw me to the floor. He grabbed my arm and pulled hard. I fell hard.
I’m pretty sure that he wanted to start kicking me then. But he didn’t. He just walked away.
My right arm hurt for a while and my tailbone is probably going to be hurting for quite a while. He’d grabbed my left upper arm and left a bruise (as I discovered the following morning) and my right wrist and yanked hard. (The right arm later also developed bruises.) I’m not sure how exactly I fell backward, whether he pushed me or let go or whatever.
But that was a lot of anger and it’s scary.
He’s mildly autistic. He’s a former colleague. I’ve known him for forty years but in a professional capacity, until about 18 months ago. That’s when I learned that he’s autistic. He masks incredibly well, comes across as very convincing and as far more together than I.
He is in the middle of a divorce, but he’s probably – mostly to himself? – woven an intricate web of lies around that marriage, to a woman who’s about forty years younger. Hard to tell.
He has a first ex. I’ve noticed that he speaks with a slightly different, more posh accent, when he talks with her over the phone.
He recently told me that his current wife had taken his iMac without his consent and shipped it off as a donation to a developing country. She often finds stuff on the streets and she had found another iMac in the streets that she had taken home. (She takes home a lot of things, granted. But an iMac?) Could I help him set it up?
“Oh, look, there’s all sorts of stuff on it.” Files. Folders. It was his own iMac, of course. I said nothing.
That was so unhinged. I became really worried. If he says shit like that about his wife, then what’s he saying about me? I now find myself doubting other things he’s said about her. According to him, she is pretty paranoid. Is she really?
About me, one of the stories he made up was that I had a pioneering business that failed. That’s hogwash. I wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary. Did he only say that to try to flatter me or has he also been saying that to others? I have no idea.
He’d recently suddenly given me what looked like a pretty trashy novel to read and on the same day, he’d plopped down next to me suddenly much too eagerly and much too close on one occasion. That told me that I probably had to be careful.
He has been really tense. He vocalises just about nonstop, also through his breathing sounds, and his breathing was pretty crazy. He sounded so so so tense. Like a bull that is about to charge, scraping its leg across the ground impatiently, steam emanating from its mouth.
So I’ve been pretty tense, too. He had thought that I wouldn’t just be sleeping on his couch (which he denies of course, but I am absolutely right about this), and ever since that became crystal clear, I’ve been on edge. He began to sulk, basically like a big child and also trying to get my attention. Years ago, he said something like that he liked the tension of chasing a woman (figuratively speaking), I remembered. I don’t. I didn’t consider it reassuring even though I can’t be sure what he meant by it.
I suspect that he had told himself that my shitty situation was just a ploy to get into his life and home, but I can’t know for sure. I suspect that he was expecting another fairytale, like a woman forty years younger falling for him. One evening, he really scared the crap out of me. Nobody else was in the house. Nothing happened but his behaviour initially was so weird that it really worried me. When I decided to ignore it, then he became deliberately intrusive. (I think he mistook my lack of response as encouragement.) Sitting closer to me on the sofa, leaning forward toward me. I got up. He also pretended not to hear me and deliberately stood much too close to me to be able to hear me. I kept backing off but I also got scared. He did seem to notice that.
I felt so betrayed.
He’d also referred to me using his bed during the day or his wife’s bed instead of the couch. I didn’t think that either would be a good idea.
He can be really controlling, I’ve noticed. Not good. He also has memory problems but they are partly an expression of pathological demand avoidance, I suspect.
He’s often ignoring me when I speak, he’s ignoring emails and when he asked me to use WhatsApp, he apparently blocked me after he mentioned The French Lieutenant’s Woman, a film that I don’t know but doesn’t sound like my kind of thing. I emailed him that WhatsApp did not seem to be working well on my phone and that I had uninstalled it, to avoid a discussion. (He’d been doing other things in the run-up to this, btw, and it now looks like it was about, I don’t know, domination? Control? Hard to tell.)
Part of the childish behaviour is also that he sometimes seems to be doing things to try to annoy me to voice his displeasure. Splashing my clothes, for example.
I kept my mouth shut for days, trying to say as little as possible, trying to avoid what would largely nonsensical discussions or even an explosion. But I am in a shitty situation and I am not well. My right lung was clogging up again (another reason why I really want out of the Netherlands as its weather is not good for me). I’ve upped my dosage of N-acetyl cysteine and the junk seems to be really coming out now.
(He’ll say things like it’s just a nervous cough. He likes twisting my truths into stories he makes up all by himself, I’ve noticed. Stories that are more palatable to him, but it may also be stories that paint me a certain way at the same time.)
Yesterday, I brought it up. The iMac. I was at the end of my tether, couldn’t keep it in any longer. He got furious and stormed at me.
(He takes a lot of effort masking like crazy. What’s behind it is supposed to be a secret.)
He did admit that the iMac thing was just because his wife had moved it a little on the table. Later I thought that it may just be because you now get to see that the keyboard is broken. He doesn’t use the iMac but it looks impressive, of course. I suspect that that’s why it’s on the table. He’s into what things look like, I’ve noticed, at least to a degree. Appearances.
After the incident, his breathing was changed markedly. Normal. But he tried to get my attention again, the way he’d been doing for days, and when that didn’t work, he grew tense again. I feel like I’m around a ticking time bomb.
He’s said nothing.
I need to get the hell out of here. I do not feel safe here. There are others around, but this situation is not helping me in any way, isn’t moving my life forward.
To help defuse the situation, I decided to thank him for the cucumbers, tomatoes and tofu he bought for me, but the fact that he’s willing to purchase a package of coffee for me but not a small bottle of olive oil which costs less than the coffee and is adamant, forceful, that he will not buy olive oil was worrisome. My digestion was seized up for days. Coffee helps. Olive oil helps too and it protects the heart. He now uses sunflower oil for everything. He shops at the most expensive supermarket. Appearances. At least I have gotten him to install the app so that he can activate their weekly special offers. They offer a choice of 10. You can pick 5.
I also texted him that I know that this is the autism speaking. Maybe I should not have. Maybe it sounded too much like condonence. (He turns out not to have read it, may have blocked me on his phone too. Who knows.)
I need to get out of here.
I know he can’t help it, but I can’t have this on my plate in my current situation, can I.
(For a while, since the incident, he has been muttering under his breath off and on. I don’t know what he was and is saying to himself.)
I have known someone else who’s highly educated and mildly autistic for about two years longer. Since 1982 or thereabouts. Some months ago, when I called her, she instantly started shouting at me angrily. She said that me and my sweet little voice shouldn’t be pretending that I didn’t know what this was about, why she was angry. I had no idea. Next, I discovered that only five days earlier, she had sent me an email in which nothing sounded amiss. She’d sent it to a new email address that I was only accessing at a public library. I set it up to circumvent the stupid hacking. (The hacking alone is enough to be dealing with.)
Continue readingThis formerly oh so egalitarian country has become heavily polarised and it’s increasing homelessness in the Netherlands at a rapid pace. One or two homeless families in Amsterdam in 2023 asked for help in one month. Now it’s 32 parents and 54 kids.
Bijvoorbeeld: in 2023 klopten maandelijks één of twee dakloze gezinnen bij de gemeente Amsterdam aan. In 2024 waren dat in één maand al 32 ouders met 54 kinderen. (Source: Linda article by Marissa Klaver.)
In 1996, when I returned from the United States after our research funding had collapsed which created an immensely stressful situation for me, getting basic benefits in the Netherlands was a piece of cake. It enabled me to get back on my feet, though it took me 18 months to find a home, in spite of having continued to pay my housing association dues.
It’s different now. Getting basic benefits is a nightmare that takes months. Most people can no longer borrow a friend’s car either, for example, to move some stuff into or out of storage or leave their things in a family member’s garage or basement.
If you’re poor, you are no longer seen as human. People want you to go away. They feel free to abuse you. They feel that you have no rights.
It’s not just polarization that causes this, specifically povertyism. The country has always been overregulated, but is now completely being strangled by a myriad of regulations that cause gridlocks, for example because they can be in contradiction. It’s one big mess of seized-up gears.
It’s no longer the case that if you lose your job, the government will step up and support you if you ask.
It appears that going to court is often the only way to break out of these strangleholds.
There’s one person who is very aware of it all. Her name is Michelle van Tongerloo. She’s a GP. She’s written a book about the patient called the Netherlands and two days ago, Dutch magazine Linda published an article about her and about the book.
Vengeful civil servants are a reality in the Netherlands. They have the power to make or break people and unlike in the past, no longer rigidly apply the rules. They actually actively torment people they are supposed to serve.
This is more or less what John Tasioulas referred to in a recent tweet, I realise now. On 8 December, he wrote ”One of the most poisonous developments in recent years has been the open contempt shown for democratic citizens without higher education” (while commenting on Tuck’s book “Active and Passive Citizens”).
Another problem in the Netherlands is that all sorts of solutions that are open to citizens in countries like the US and the UK if they want to save money or make money aren’t allowed. You can forget about doing anything like “DoorDashing” in the Netherlands. You are also supposed to put as much money as possible into other people’s pockets in all sorts of ways, particularly through renting a home. It’s illegal to sleep in a van or any other vehicle in the Netherlands unless it’s at a campsite. Most campsites are pretty expensive.
https://www.linda.nl/lifestyle/gezondheid/straatarts-michelle-van-tongerloo-boek-dakloos-nederland/
The Dutch, once probably the coolest cucumbers on the planet, taking everything in stride, fazed by nothing, are becoming a nation of spoiled brats and fear mongerers.
How do I connect these two developments? This too, it’s got such an eerie feel of Orwellianism to it.
Sorry, England, about all my moaning about you. Things are now much crazier in the Netherlands. It was never my favourite country, but its gears are seizing up, I think. It’s always emphasized being average and mediocre over the joy of excelling and doing the best you can, the way America used to tick, but it was a nation in which down-to-earth people worked hard. That’s no longer the case, it seems. I don’t know how much of this is due to the imbalance created by social media and TV between the reality propelled by media versus what is happening in society away from media or what the size of this discrepancy is.
Driving people to prepare for emergencies does boost the economy, I suppose, if everyone stocks up. Is that the main reason why this idea that Russia might attack soon is being pushed?
I probably don’t even want to try to make sense of it all. It’s giving me a headache. 😂 The Netherlands is such a tiny country, but it always used to set good examples. It used to be so egalitarian. What went wrong here?
Did you know that using artificial intelligence can help you fight insurance companies who reject your claims? New startups in the States are moving into this area. They not only carry out analyses, they also help draw up letters.
In both lectures, Tasioulas addresses the fact that scientists and others tend to see ethics as opposed to their interests.
This is something that I have discussed a few times too, that ethics are often seen as something pesky that gets in the way of science while ethics considerations actually support science and are an integral part of it. Ethics should not be seen as an afterthought, as a box on a checklist, but as something that has the ability to enhance science and increase its value.
The actual lecture starts at 21:45.
Who bears the duties? 36:00
(This is about the distinction between legal rights and moral rights or what I call human rights versus humans’ rights. Do only states bear duties or also corporations and each and all of us?)
https://www.unepfi.org/humanrightstoolkit/framework.php
In places like Amsterdam – as opposed to for example the Sittard-Geleen area where the housing shortage is much lower or Schouwen-Duivenland where it’s negligible – it takes about TWO DECADES to find affordable housing.
Twenty years.
This housing shortage in Holland’s central area results in a great deal of homelessness, by definition. People may find alternative ways to house themselves but they still need the blasted “inschrijving” (registration) to be allowed to exist here officially. Rules have been loosened in recent years, by which I mean that municipalities can now allow you to use their office address, but in order to register without having an official residence you have to have ties.
(I have worked and lived in Amsterdam for most of my adult life in the Netherlands, with the exception of a mere few months elsewhere, but I don’t qualify. I have much stronger ties to England than to the Netherlands. I don’t quite qualify as a Dutch citizen any longer in all sorts of ways; I’m not sure how to explain, qualify or phrase it. And that’s apart from things such as that the Dutch are sometimes offended by for example my English understatements because they don’t want to know about my Englishness as I speak Dutch.)
Support for homeless people generally is not free in the Netherlands and often very limited. Just like for women who flee from domestic violence, it usually requires being registered as living locally (having local ties), which requires having a local home address.
(This latter mechanism also often pushes homeless people out of the mandatory Dutch healthcare system because it has the same address requirement. Are you surprised to learn that there’s a Dutch concept called “address fraud”?)
People are frequently forced to run all over town all day long, to several different locations to apply for access for 1 night, to be sent to a specific location for the night, to be sent to a different location in the morning, then back to the other location if they want to apply for another night and then perhaps back to the other location or to a different location if they want a meal.
Typing this is exhausting enough. Doing it is on another level.
All the while, it may be freezing cold and pouring and while these tired souls walk all over town, they get soaked and so do their belongings. Remember: They have no place where they can dry their things.
Support websites sometimes use language in which the organizations seek to distance themselves from the people they are supposed to serve. They speak of “these people” and create invisible walls between us and them.
Utterly deplorable.
It makes some people write or decide that it’s better to die under a bridge than to rest in a temporary bed. Not because they want to be miserable and die but because they want to live and be seen as human.
