What was I thinking?!

It's almost been a year since my first post on this blog. Waw, time flies! And not only in this respect. So I think I can officially declare myself an addicted blogger now. Or maybe rather a dedicated blogger. I try to post once a week, and unless I'm somewhere in France, where the Internet in the bungalow park is ridiculously expensive, I somehow manage to post something every once in a while. Still, there is much I still have to learn about blogging. I'm not only referring to polishing my English and my writing style, but I'm especially and more specifically referring to a fact I hadn't really taken into account until now, which is that the entire world can read what I write. Obviously I was somehow aware of that fact, because when I look at my Visitor Globe and when I spy on the whereabouts of people on Feedjit - which I recently renamed "I am watching you!" - I should have known better. However, recently something has happened that has opened my eyes, and I realise I should be more careful, not only with what I write, but especially with how I express myself.

You know, I see this blog as a place in which I can find some relief when I'm having a hard time. It helps me to cope with the problems in my life. Somehow, I share this with the entire world, I do realise that, but it's especially a confrontation with myself and my own world of thoughts. This blog has practically replaced my old-fashioned diaries. Since September 1st 2000, I've been writing regularly in a diary. It's a notebook in A5 format - called Atoma - and you can hardly find them here in the Netherlands, but the majority was bought in Belgium. I'm halfway number 21, so I've written a lot already. That's the least that can be said about it. At the beginning, I wrote in it on a daily basis. Sometimes in Dutch, sometimes in English or Spanish. Some therapists have read parts of the entire "thing", and some even recommended me to publish parts of it, but no thanks, that is just too personal. And maybe that is the mistake I've made on this blog. Maybe I crossed that boundary between "personal" and "too personal". 

Yes, I'm referring to a recent post, namely this one, and then especially to the part in which I wrote I was so angry that I could kill someone. And yes, I also wrote about my fantasies in which I shoot a handful of people. But people, please do realise that that is in my FANTASY world, and that there is a boundary between reality and fantasy, and that, if I stick to my meds, which I've been doing for a very long time, nothing of that will ever happen. I'm sorry if I scared some of you off, that was not at all my intention. So I think I should apologise for that. You know, I've been having these fantasies for 13 years now... 13 years, that is! And nothing whatsoever has happened. I'm not planning to change that. 

I'm a free person however, and I thought I could freely write about my - once again with emphasis - FANTASY world, but apparently it doesn't work like that. People get worried, even scared. That changes a whole lot of things, I can guarantee you. I've had four conversations today about the same topic, with four different points of view, and it's difficult to grasp the general message out of it, but I decided to follow my first thought, which was writing something like I'm writing right now. No way that I would buy a gun and go and shoot some people. People who really care about me should know that. So maybe, dear reader, you should get to know me better. Then you'll see there's no way that I would do such thing. Yes, I am a borderliner, and yes, I've been - and still am - quite unstable at the moment, and yes, you probably never know with people having psychiatric problems. Still... If you'd know how much love I have in my heart... for God, for my family, my friends, and especially my little birdie Chico, who seems to be on the verge of dying and leaving me forever... I'm not kidding, he's 7 and a half, which is fairly old for a common parakeet... I don't want to lose him, but he's getting worse every day. I'm so afraid to find him dead one day when I wake up. Every morning brings its own sorrows, but this is a particularly heavy one, and - as much as I dislike it - an unavoidable one...

My little Chico, how he is today, just enjoying his old age...

Anyway, I'll be more careful with what I write from now on and with how I formulate some things. I probably shouldn't write when I'm angry. However, I still consider myself a free writer, with freedom of speech. But if you as a reader of this blog thinks I'm going too far, no matter the topic, just write me an e-mail or post an anonymous comment on my blog. I'll appreciate it. Please don't react directly on my Facebook-link for the post in question. Then everybody will know about it, including my mom, and that is not good, not at all. For now I hope that I've reassured all those who had some doubts on that specific post. I'll make sure that I take my meds, in order to impede that reality and fantasy blend and that it becomes unclear what is reality and what is fantasy. Deal?

Which of the three will it be?

As today is Easter and the weather here in the Netherlands is letting us down once again - I don't know if it's on purpose, but the chances of having a white Easter were this year bigger than those of having a white Christmas - I'm planning my holidays. That is, virtually speaking, as I'm suffering from a chronical lack of money on my much-loved bank account. I'm saying "much-loved" now I have downloaded this app on my smartphone which helps me to check on it every single minute of the day, I repeat, every single minute. Unfortunately, all the checking doesn't help to grow a money tree.

So last week, when I posted this, my Blue friend commented that I could go to Bora Bora to get rid of my paranoia. "Bora Bora?" I hear you thinking... Exactly the same happened to me too when I read this post, because, honestly, Bora Bora?? I thought it was just one of those imaginary places on this planet Earth, made up by my Blue friend. However, he told me that it really exists, so I decided today that it was time for some research. And indeed, it exists. Let me show you this picture, just to give you a tiny impression:

 
Not too bad, is it? But then I thought, maybe there are other pulchritudinous islands on our planet, so I wanted to check them out. I don't know why, but I'd like to visit an island once in my life - and then of course preferably far, far away, therefore the Wadden Islands don't count! - so I'd better find out something about the hundreds - what do I say, thousands - of islands we know about, only to find out that the choice is just way too big. So I decided to limit myself to islands beginning with a B - no real preference, just because Bora Bora has two B's, I guess - and as far as size is concerned, I wanted to limit it to a hundred square kilometres max. Bora Bora's size is a mere 30 square kilometres. Then I thought about Bermuda. You know, the well-known island forming part of the cursed Bermuda Triangle. So I decided this could also be a fabulous holiday destination, as it's an island starting with a B, having a surface of about 53 square kilometres. Now check this picture out:

Well, I wouldn't be too bad-tempered were somebody to send me there, even though you have this thing with the Bermuda Triangle. However, then I was a little bit left without further inspiration, so I googled "islands beginning with B", and I found a whole bunch of them. Try it out for yourself if you think I'm fooling you. And how could I choose only one more to make the list complete? (You know I have something with the number 3, don't you? That's why there have to be exactly 3!) So I took my antique but still reliable secondary school atlas and had a look at page 112-113, where you can find a map of the world. Bad thing about this atlas is that it doesn't even know Bora Bora, can you imagine?! Good thing is it does show Bermuda. As Bora Bora has to be somewhere at the margin of the right-hand page and Bermuda is almost at the margin of the left-hand page, I decided I should look somewhere between these two to find another island, preferably meeting my requirements of course. And believe it or not, but the map showed a small island, of which I'd never heard before - neither have you, I assume - apparently belonging to Norway, called Bouvet. As I don't believe in coincidence, I knew immediately that this was the island I'd been looking for. So Mr. Google served me well once again, and this is what I discovered:

- It does meet the requirements: it starts with a B and its size is only 49 square kilometres. 
- It's an uninhabited, volcanic island, located in the South Antarctic Ocean. 
- It must be very cold out there, and there must be lots and lots of snow.
- Would there somehow be an airport? Or would I have to go by boat?
- I think I'd better not go there... especially in comparison with the two islands I mentioned before...

This is what it looks like:

However, I've always been fascinated by snow and ice, and I love to take a stroll when it's snowing, although I also have to admit that snow on the day before Easter - as was the case in Holland yesterday - is a bit over the top. Still, it's worth considering going there, because "uninhabited" sounds great to me! No people nagging on about my thesis, no people scaring me when they drop the words "job" or "future", no people hurting my feelings, no people whatsoever. Just me and my island... No thesis, no problems, but also, no Internet, so no blogging... Well, I could give it a go if only I installed electricity and Internet on the island. I don't really mind the cold. I mean, I can deal with it better than with the heat I'd find on the two B-islands I mentioned before. By the way, why does Mr. Google only show me pictures of alluring beaches and deep-blue oceans when I search for "uninhabited"? Surely there are other uninhabited places on earth, without the paradisiacal look?! 

However, I have come to my senses. No way there is enough money on my bank account to go to Bermuda or Bora Bora, let alone to go to Bouvet and install electricity and Internet over there! Still, nothing is impossible. I know for sure my Blue friend and his beautiful wife will one day visit Bora Bora and send me loads and loads of pictures. I mean, he can have it. Maybe he doesn't have the money (yet), but it will come. He already has a gorgeous tan, so that can only get better. And his Bollywood wife will be most pleased to lie there on the beach, go for a swim every once in a while - but watch out, for there are sharks over there! - and have a good time with her (by then) de-grumped husband. 


Therefore, France it will be, 2 weeks in the Provence once again. It's already way too expensive for my poor piggy bank, but sometimes you just have to think about other people too, and if they wish for you to join them, who am I to say no? Especially when there are people involved that you really love... Anyway, I'm already having this discussion with myself over which books I should take, for I have lots and lots of choice, because of the so-called hole in my hand... 

Cursed art thou!

As a Christian, you soon learn that the devil follows your every move, and that he is willing to intervene in your life whenever he sees a possibility, whenever there is an open door. He and his demons that serve him slavishly might be responsable for some of the curses on people's lives. Well, people, it seems that my thesis is cursed. By whom exactly, I don't know, but every time I'm in a good writing mood and I'm working hard at a new chapter or at the correction of some previous chapter, something terrible happens unexpectedly and it hits me real hard. Don't believe it? Then read on and I'll tell ya all...

You know, back in the year dot, I started studying Languages and Cultures of Latin America. I got my BA degree Cum Laude, and then I started a Research Master in Linguistics, but that didn't turn out to be the best choice I'd ever made. So I went back to my roots, and decided to return to the department of Latin American Studies. All went well, until I had to start writing that bloody thesis. It's not that me and my thesis don't get on very well, it's just that, since I started working on it, many unfortunate situations have intervened my working on it, and I've had my "episodes", if you know what I mean. 

I started the investigation in January 2012. It took me about a month and a half to finish the research, and everything went well, I was so cheerful back then. I was travelling by train to Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague,... without any problem. People came to my place, I went to people's places by bus, by train, you name it. I saw the sun shining in the blue sky, heard the birds singing in the blossomed trees... I had a lot of things to do, but it was fun. I was finally doing some fieldwork after all those years of theoretical input. However, it seems that things were going too well, apparently. When I finished the research - I interviewed no less than 44 people, Dutch people as well as Spanish speaking people - that was the point where things started to go wrong. Just because I was feeling so well - and honestly, I'd been feeling very well for quite an extensive period of time - my psychiatrist and I decided to lower the meds, the antipsychotics to be more precise. That must have been in January, and all went well for about a month, but when we had lowered the dose by a third, I just seemed to collapse. At once. I had these extreme emotions once again, I was utterly depressed, I lost the sense of life. I wanted to die... I just didn't see the purpose of life anymore. Furthermore, I wanted to kill a whole bunch of other people too, just because. I had lost my way in life completely. So I had to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital - once again. However, as my situation didn't seem to improve, they kicked me out after a mere two weeks, and I could only spend the nights there. I felt lost and rejected. Luckily I could count on the support of my nurses and my psychiatrist, although I didn't trust that last one completely. He's still a rookie if you ask me, although I've never doubted his good intentions. I mean, I've got more years of experience with personality disorders than he has... Still, I needed them very badly, as I couldn't count on the support of the clinic anymore, nor on my family (with very few exceptions).

Somewhere in that period, when I was feeling a little bit better already, I started this blog. And then, after the worst had past and after we'd reinstalled the meds as they had been before, even with a higher dose of antidepressants, I wrote this post, in which I referred to my therapists. It was somewhere in May, not coincidentally the Borderline Awareness month. They're good people, they've proven that more than once. Even the psychiatrist with whom I still have difficulties when it comes to complete trust. 

Anyway, it took me more or less three to four months to recover completely from the setback I'd experienced. Three or four months in which I couldn't work on my thesis. Lost months. So it became quite clear to me that I wouldn't graduate in 2012, but okay, the Dutch government still gave me some credit, I could use one more year and they gently offered it to me. During the summer holidays, I didn't do a lot when it comes to my thesis, but hey, everyone deserves holidays, right? So I just enjoyed the time in France and I was more or less stable again, that for sure. Then, when I wanted to start working at the thesis again, I got torn apart by a family dispute. It wasn't that bad, but it already showed that there was no way that I would work on that bloody thesis with a certain discipline. The new semester started, and I wasn't the same person anymore. Guess I got confronted with the autumn blues I have to go through every year. I hardly worked on my thesis, although I tried, but I wasn't feeling too well. Still, the worst yet had to come. 

I started working on the perception chapter of my thesis, but then I was left broken-hearted by some family issues. And now I finally got over that crap, and also with aging, I have to admit, I eventually picked up the thread and I started working very hard again, correcting previous chapters and perfectioning the language used. And then word got to me that doctors have encountered a tumour in my grandmother's bladder. As she's had cancer before, chances exist that this tumour is malignant. Tomorrow she'll have to undergo some extra tests, and you know what, I feel so despicably angry. Another setback. How many more do I have to endure before I can finally put the last dot after the last sentence of that bloody thesis that freaks me out?! This thesis is cursed, there is no other explanation for all this sh*t. 

I'm so angry I feel I could kill someone. You know why? Just because. Ow, I've had these fantasies in which I enter the Lipsius building at Leiden University and I shoot down a handful of people. Why? Just because. That's why! I know I won't do it, so if you're a regular visitor of the Lipsius building, don't be afraid. It's just in my own fantasy world. I'm just desperate. What do I have to do to stop this curse? My pastor would surely tell me there's no such thing as a curse on a freaking thesis, but I'm so sure about it... 

I'm off now. Got some serious things to do, such as studying English vocabulary, grammar and collocations. My favourite activity for the coming 3 weeks, I suppose, because then the exam takes place. I'm not confident at all, normally I'm well prepared, but as I've had these setbacks, I haven't prepared anything at all. Not yet, and ok, there's still time, but I feel so insecure about this, especially because there's also an oral exam. This is important to me, I want to do a good job, to get a straight A once again! If only I could exchange all those excellent grades for another year of living for my loved ones... Oh, I'd certainly know what to do! Anyway, time to stop blogging and get to the more serious things in life. Meanwhile, I'd appreciate some prayers for my grandmother. She doesn't deserve to have to fight cancer! If someone has to have it, let it be me. I'm physically stronger than my granny, she's so fragile... By the way, you can see her picture here. Isn't she the loveliest granny you've ever seen? Well, I'll tell ya, she's mine :) Let's keep her another couple of years with us...