What I Wanted to Be When I’d Grow Up #Blogtober20

Posted on by Astrid

Today’s prompt for #Blogtober20 is “Wannabe”. I originally had no idea what to write for it, until I saw Mandi’s own post mentioned writing about what she wanted to become when growing up. Mandi chose against this theme, but I’m going with it. I can’t remember whether I ever covered this topic on this blog – I’m pretty sure I did on one of my older blogs, but it might have been here too. Even if I did cover the topic here, I have a lot of new’ish readers, so it may still be interesting.

I remember in Kindergaten we had some type of celebration that included a “fortune-teller” with a crystal ball – of course, it was another grade’s teacher. I remember she asked us all what we wanted to be when we’d grow up. Most girls wanted to be a princess, of course. I can’t remember what I said I wanted to be.

When I learned to write, however, I knew pretty soon that I wanted to be a writer. My parents, realistic as they were, told me up front that writing wouldn’t earn me a living unless I was a real good one. So for money I usually wanted to be a teacher.

I originally wanted to teach small children, of course, because I myself was still young. When I got to the later elementary grades, I made up my mind and wanted to become a high school teacher. Or a professor even. I remember proudly telling people when I was twelve that later I wanted to be a Dutch-language linguist. Later, I wanted to become a mathematician.

This was, at least, what I told others when my parents or teachers were present. Secretly, I made plans to become a psychologist. I wanted to help children or adults with my kind of problems, which I was well aware of by that age.

When I was in my later years of high school, the thought of becoming a psychologist remained at the back of my mind. Openly though, I chose to go the “safe” path and applied to become an English major. Then I made up my mind at the last moment and chose to take a gap year to go to the rehabilitation center for the blind.

I got the opportunity to study psychology, albeit not at university, in 2006. I jumped at the opportunity and did eventually earn my foundation (first-year diploma) in applied psychology. I passed communication skills only if I promised that I wouldn’t continue in this field though. I know, psychology isn’t the best major for an autistic. But I didn’t want to do something I didn’t like, so I picked linguistics as my university major with the intent of doing my minor in speech and language pathology. As most of my readers know, it didn’t work out.

I still intend on someday taking some more psychology or pedagogy classes. I will most likely never work at any paid job though. Still, my original dream of becoming a writer, has at least partly come true.

#Blogtober20

Things I Do Just for Fun #Blogtober20

Posted on by Astrid

Yesterday I didn’t write a post for #Blogtober20. Though I wrote a blog post, I didn’t post it to the linky or Facebook group. Today I’m hopping back onto the bandwagon and writing on today’s prompt, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”. I’m going to share the things I do just for the fun of them.

1. Read chicklit. I am normally mostly into memoirs or young adult fiction about serious topics. When I just want to have fun, however, I read a romcom or other lighthearted women’s fiction. Most recently, I’ve been reading The Falling in Love Montage by Ciara Smyth.

2. Find jokes. I am subscribed to a funny E-mail list where the owner sends out daily jokes and comics. I cannot enjoy the comics, of course, but I love the jokes.

I also love to listen to my husband crack jokes. He and I both are a fan of wordplay.

I also love the kind of lists that describe what it’s like to live in a certain state or city. There at one point was one about Nijmegen, the city I went to university in. I related a lot to the things mentioned.

3. Dance. Well, walk in place to the beat of music. I love some playlists on Spotify of fast-paced dance and pop music. I cannot dance at all, but I love to move my body in the rhythm (or out of the rhythm, for that matter, as my sense of rhythm is poor) of the music.

4. Write and read funny blog posts. I particularly love memes and tags. I still need to participate in a couple of tags that I saw on other blogs and liked.

What do you do just for fun?

#Blogtober20

The Kindness of Strangers

Posted on by Astrid

Okay, it’s past 2:30AM and I just said I wasn’t going to blog right now, but CrunchityFrog’s prompt for today (well, yesterday) has me thinking. This is supposed to be a daily prompt thing, so I might join in more often. Anyway, the prompt is to write about the kindness of strangers.

I’ve probably written many times already about overbearing, intrusive strangers. Particularly when I was a teen, I didn’t realize that my autistic behavior (of which I was unaware that it was autistic) combined with my blindness often caused people concern. I am more appreciative of people’s attempts, even awkward ones, to help now. That probably changed on the evening of November 2, 2007.

Okay, I’ve shared the story of my mental crisis probably more often than anyone cares to know. Today I’d like to focus on the kindness of the people who helped me stay alive and safe.

As regular readers of my blog will know, I was in a suicidal crisis that evening. I had left the training home I was a former resident of and had hoped to find safety in, because I was told the staff had no responsibility for me and I was to leave.

I took the bus to the city’s train station, talking into my former care coordinator’s voicemail. I told her I was going to take my life that night. I was completely unaware that people could hear me until a woman across the aisle from me started to talk to me. She told me that the bus driver had heard me, which initially only caused greater panic. She kept saying over and over again that he was getting help for me. (“Help”, of course, came in the form of the police, as is customary here in the Netherlands if someone’s safety is in question.) I was in utter shock, constantly crying and very overwhelmed. I am forever grateful for this woman’s kindness. And of course for the bus driver’s. It most likely, after all, wasn’t within his duty to report his concerns to the police.

Looking back, I realize I rightfully worried random people on the streets many times before and they were kind enough to help. Even if “help” meant to call the police. My parents often felt that people were just stupid, assuming that a blind person shouldn’t be traveling independently. Some were, indeed, but in some cases my parents were stupid, assuming that I was just blind.

Millennium: Growing Up Blind in 2000 #Blogtober20

Posted on by Astrid

I’m a bit late to publish my #Blogtober20 post today. Well, not as late as yesterday, but then I already had a post up in the afternoon. Today’s prompt is “Millennium”.

Let’s see… we’re now 20 years into the new millennium, which I realize isn’t even the “new” millennium to some adults right now, as they were born in 2000 or later. I always find it surprising that there are people who will be legally old enough to vote in next year’s national election who weren’t even born when politician Pim Fortuyn was murdered on May 6, 2002. Yeah, I’m getting old!

In 2000, I turned fourteen. I was in my first year at a mainstream grammar school. I had already decided I hated it, but my parents and teachers had decided that, if I failed, I’d fail within the first three months and those were up. Woohoo, my mainstream education was a success! Okay, it was, since I did graduate with pretty good grades in 2005, but yeah.

In January of 2000, I suffered a bad case of the flu. I rarely got the flu back then and still get it only once every five years or so, so I remember. In fact, I’m not 100% sure of this but I think it was my only time being off school sick in my entire grammar school career.

In February, my outreach teacher for the visually impaired came to talk to my classmates. They had already decided they didn’t like me one bit. In fact, when the teacher asked casually what having me, a blind student, in their class evoked in them, they didn’t think of a single positive. They started saying that I was being favored by the teachers. They also resented the need to help me get around. This instilled in me the feeling that I had to make up for my blindness in some way by being extra, well, anything.

I had read a book called Het instituut (which translates to The Institution) by blind comedian Vincent Bijlo in 1998. This book is about a boy who goes to a boarding school for the blind and his teachers constantly instill in him the idea that the “sighted school” is really hard and that he’ll need to compensate for his sight loss. For all I knew, my parents and teachers at the grammar school agreed: I was an inherent burden due to my blindness unless I showed my classmates I was more independent, nicer, more hard-working and in any way better than them. Then when I tried to work hard and got good grades, my classmates decided I must be favored by the teachers.

My idea about myself as an inherent burden on the world around me due to my blindness didn’t change till I went to an international computer camp for the blind in 2002 and discovered the English-language Internet in that same summer. It never completely disappeared though.

Later in the year 2000, my classmates started openly bullying me. Again, my parents and teachers blamed me. I was too dependent, too unsociable, too much of a burden in general. I had ruined the only friendship I had developed (which in hindsight was based on pity mostly) by getting my “friends” an only average grade in a music performance in October. Though these girls didn’t actively bully me, they mostly ignored me.

I realize, looking back, that the attitude towards people with disabilities was generally very hostile back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when I was growing up. I mean, I bullied a girl with a visual and intellectual impairment on the special needs bus to the school for the blind in the late 1990s. Though my parents disapproved of it, both they and my teachers didn’t do much to stop me. When this girl was dying of a brain tumor, my parents even openly criticized her religious parents’ hope that the girl would miraculously survive.

I can only hope that, with more children with significant disabilities being mainstreamed nowadays, that attitudes have changed.

#Blogtober20

If I Could Turn Back Time… #Blogtober20

Posted on by Astrid

Today’s prompt for #Blogtober20 is “If I Could Turn Back Time”. I think we all would do some things in our past differently if we could. I certainly would.

I mean, when I was in the psych hospital from 2007-2017, I regretted almost every step I took or didn’t take. My last psychologist was right in a way that so many places to live had passed that I’d turned down. I had turned down a shelted living place for the mentally ill, a workhome for autistics, a training home for autistics, etc. They were not suitable places for me and I completely understand I decided not to take the step. However, I particularly completely regret the step I did take to move to that last psych ward in 2013. Most of the places I’d turned down, seemed more suitable in hindsight than that last unit.

Still, now that I’m in a suitable place, I can see why the things happened the way they did and I made the choices I made. None of the places offered to me back in those early years in the psych hospital were as suitable as my current care facility is.

For the most part, this boils down to them being psychiatric living and/or treatment facilities rather than those serving people with developmental disability. You see, here in the Netherlands, autism is seen as a psychiatric condition if you have an IQ above 85. And in case it isn’t clear, the care approaches of psychiatry and developmental disability differ significantly. In particular, all psychiatric facilities are aimed at people developing their independence, or as they call it “rehabilitation”. I find this particularly unsuitable an approach to me.

Looking back, I maybe should have accepted the very first placement offered to me: a treatment unit and independence training home for autistics. Maybe the staff would’ve recognized my needs there. Or maybe not. Maybe I should’ve gone to the workhome. At the workhome for autistics, the staff did understand I needed more support than they could offer. They tried to help me and my staff find another place for me but came up with a facility for people with intellectual disability. The staff at the psych unit at the time were very understanding of my needs, but they still felt an intellectual disability place wouldn’t be suitable. You all know that I beg to differ.

To make a long story short, I’ve had quite a few regrets, but in the end, my life is good the way it is now. And that’s what counts!

#Blogtober20

#IWSG: I’m a Hobbyist Writer

Posted on by Astrid

IWSG

Welcome to another meeting day of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group (#IWSG). I wish I could share that I’ve been doing well in the writing department. Well, in some ways I have, but I still haven’t written the story I intended to write for Chicken Soup for the Soul. I’m not even sure I will, as somehow it seems so insignificant right now that we’re not in lockdown anymore and I can see my husband again. When I had the COVID scare a little over two weeks ago, I did want to write, but couldn’t find the motivation really.

That being said, in other ways I did pretty well writing-wise. I decided to join #Blogtober20 at the last moment. Of course, I couldn’t join earlier, as I didn’t know about the challenge until last week. So far, I’m doing well, writing a post each day. I’m not always sticking to the prompts, but that isn’t required.

On to the monthly optional question. The question is whether you consider yourself a working writer and, if so, what it means. Or if you consider yourself a hobbyist or aspiring writer, what that means to you.

I obviously am a hobbyist writer. I cannot even say that I’m an aspiring writer, because I haven’t submitted a piece in years. In fact, the only piece I ever submitted was the one accepted into the anthology on typed communication by autistics in 2015.

I did at one point list my blog as my place of employment on Facebook. Now I don’t, because I don’t want my family to read it. Not that they most likely will, and of course they can still find me if they truly want to.

Being a hobbyist writer doesn’t mean I don’t have goals. I mean, I participate in #Blogtober20 and the goal for that challenge is to write a blog post each day of the month. I also during the rest of the year have somewhat of a rule that I need to post at least twice each week. I don’t have set days to publish a post, but if I haven’t written anything for a few days, it tends to feel awkward.

Being a hobbyist writer also doesn’t mean I don’t care how my writing is doing. I got really excited when, last week, I got lots of comments on a few posts. I also feel disappointed when I get only one or two comments on a post. I love seeing my stats go well. I don’t use Google Analytics anymore, because I was struggling with it and didn’t want to pay the money for having it on my WordPress.com blog. However, my WordPress stats do mean something to me.

Sweet Child O’ Mine: My Inner Child Parts #Blogtober20

Posted on by Astrid

Welcome to another day! The next prompt in #Blogtober20 is “Sweet Child O’ Mine”. I don’t have children and never will. However, I do have inner child parts and am pretty childlike at times, for better or for worse.

As regular readers of my blog will know, I have some dissociative symptoms. Particularly, I experience identity confusion and identity alteration. The latter of those is more commonly known as having multiple personalities. They each have their own names and ages too.

For example, Milou is a cheerful eight-year-old. She loves to learn independence skills like cooking, where appropriate to her age, of course. She is also quite the adventurer.

Suzanne, on the other hand, is quite emotionally disturbed. She is seven-years-old and feels the burden of having to grow up too fast. She often regresses into an emotionally much younger state.

There are many young parts inside of my head. It goes too far to talk about them all here. I mean, it’d probably confuse all of you, as it does me sometimes (hence the identity confusion).

Also, of late, I’m not feeling them that much. Yes, I do feel childlike, but it’s more like I can own the feelings myself. That’s considered a sign of healing. It might be temporary though, as it often is.

Dissociative symptoms such as multiple personality are usually the result of trauma. I, indeed, endured quite a few adverse childhood experiences. I also experience a large gap between my intellectual ability and my emotional functioning. In fact, when being assessed on a scale for emotional development, I was said to function at a level similar to an eighteen-month-old child. On some subscales, I even function at a level similar to a baby. This distinction may be one reason I tend to disconnect from myself.

Of course, everyone has an inner child. Or maybe more than one. However, for me, I often cannot function like an adult would when I’m in inner child mode. For example, when a child part is prominently present in my body, I cannot usually talk like an adult would.

Right now, like I said, I am able to retain both my childlike wonder and my adult functioning for the most part. Like I said though, this may be a temporary experience. I’m not sure and only time will tell.

#Blogtober20

The One I Love: My Husband #Blogtober20

Posted on by Astrid

Welcome to day two in #Blogtober20. I realize that when I wrote about myself yesterday, I never mentioned the fact that I’m married. Thankfully, the second prompt in the series is “The One I Love”, so now is my opportunity to talk all about my husband.

I met my partner on an Internet forum in 2007. Neither of us were looking for a relationship. I wrote on the forum that I was bored and lonely living on my own in student accommodation in the city of Nijmegen, Netherlands. He went to school in Nijmegen at the time. He was also looking to expand his social circle, so he PM’d me asking if we could drink a cup of coffee or tea in Nijmegen somewhere. We met at the bus stop near the university’s dentistry department, because that was the only bus stop near the uni that my bus would stop by. We went for a coffee or tea at the uni’s cafe. I was so nervous that I tumbled off a step and dropped my coffee.

Thankfully though, my now partner didn’t mind. Though he had been nervous too and had mixed feelings about our first time meeting, he did want to meet again. I invited him to my student apartment, just because I had no clue where else to meet. That could’ve been really stupid, but thankfully it turned out well.

Six weeks after first meeting my now partner, I was hospitalized onto the psychiatric ward, which didn’t have an Internet connection for patients. I didn’t have his phone number, so asked my staff to log onto the forum and send him a message. The staff didn’t include my phone number, because I hadn’t requested it.

Several weeks later, my father called to ask whether he could give my number to my now partner. It turned out that my now spouse had found my father’s E-mail address by googling the whois info for his website. I am so grateful my father didn’t have privacy protection on, as I do with my websites.

It certainly wasn’t love at first sight (oh, that sounds stupid for a blind person) for me. On the contrary, when my now partner told me he was in love with me, I let him wait four months before reciprocating it. Similarly, when he proposed to me in June of 2010, I replied: “So do you think that’d be cool then?” He did really want to marry me and we had our wedding date on September 19, 2011, exactly four years after we’d first met.

My spouse and I don’t live together. Like I said, he fell in love with me while I was hospitalized. This hospitalization lasted 9 1/2 years, after which I was kicked out to live with my partner. I really struggled to cope living semi-independently, so eventually applied for long-term care funding.

My partner is 31-years-old (32 next month). He sometimes jokes about my having married a younger man, as I am 34. I am glad he isn’t significantly younger than me though, as, when I was hospitalized on the locked unit, I wasn’t to leave the ward unless with someone 18 or over. We loved going to the hospital cafeteria to have tea or hot cocoa. We also loved playing cards.

My spouse and I have the same sense of humor. We love wordplay and have our own phrases and terms for communicating certain things. For example, when we get bored of each other, we say “banana spider”. He is also really inventive with new nicknames for me. I, not so much.

I really love my spouse and want to be married for the rest of our life. Not living together has its ups and downs. Particularly in these times of corona, we’ve had to be separated more than we’d like to. Thankfully, our love has survived.

#Blogtober20

This Is Me: Beyond the Labels #Blogtober20

Posted on by Astrid

A few days ago, I discovered Blogtober, a month-long event aimed at bloggers writing a post everyday during the month. There are prompts for each day of the month. They’re based on song titles, but you can do whatever you want. You don’t even have to follow the prompts! The first prompt is “This Is Me”.

So, who am I? When introducing myself, I tend to focus heavily on my labels. I tend to say that I’m blind and autistic and that I have mild cerebral palsy. I tend to say that I live in a care facility. I tend to say that I don’t work, but do day activities at my facility. Then again, are these the things that define me?

I could also be focusing on my passions. I am a blogger. I love to read memoirs and young adult fiction. I love to make soap and other bath and body care products. I am interested in aromatherapy. I am passionate about mental health and disability rights.

These are more “me” than my disabilities, but they’re still labels. Who I am at the core is not a blind or autistic person, or a blogger even.

Still, it is hard to define myself beyond the labels. Here are, however, a few things I think make me me.


  • I am open to new experiences. For example, I love to discover new hobbies. I am also open-minded to differences in people’s identity.

  • I am passionate. When I have an idea in mind, I can truly focus on it for a while. This means I can really be enthusiastic, but it also means I tend to perseverate.

  • I am sensitive, both to emotions and to physical stimuli. This may or may not be a positive characteristic, depending on how much I can handle on a given day.

  • I am intelligent. This is often the first positive quality people mention about me and I tend to hate that. After all, my IQ was often used to show that I should be able to solve my problems in other areas. Now that I am in an environment that doesn’t judge people by their IQ – I live with people with severe to profound intellectual disability -, I tend to appreciate my intelligence somewhat more.

  • I am a go-getter. Some people would disagree, because I have very poor distress tolerance and because I haven’t achieved their goals for me. They see the fact that I’m in a care facility and not working as a sign that I’ve given up. I haven’t. I have just focused on my own true needs and desires.

What are some things that make you uniquely you?

#Blogtober20

Weird Dreams

Posted on by Astrid

It’s already Thursday here, so I’m technically a day late to join in on Fandango’s Provocative Question. I’ve never joined in on this meme before, but I really liked this week’s question. It is to share the strangest, weirdest dream you can remember.

I already shared about the dream that got me to quit putting sugar in my coffee some months ago. That wasn’t as weird a dream, considering that refined sugar is by some people considered pure poison indeed.

Another weird dream that had an impact on my later life is one I had when I was about seven-years-old. I dreamt that there was a big soccer match between Ajax and Feijenoord, the two main rivaling clubs in the Netherlands and the only ones I’d heard of at the time. I apparently was an Ajax fan and they won. So far, nothing weird, except that I knew nothing about soccer and certainly wasn’t a fan of any club. The weird bit comes now: someone gave me some pills that made me cry, so that everyone would think I was sad and hence supported the “right” club.

As a side note, I lived in Rotterdam at the time, so indeed Feijenoord would’ve been the club to support. I became a wannabe Ajax fan as soon as I learned anything about soccer at all, as my friends at the school for the blind were Ajax fans. This was probably after our move to Apeldoorn though.

Like I said, the dream had an impact on my later life. Indeed, when I went to the school for the blind at age nine, I got a phys ed teacher who looked a lot like the man who’d given me those pills in my dream. I took an instant dislike to him and even though I knew why, I couldn’t help it. He was a pretty strict teacher, so I may’ve disliked him anyway.

What was one of the weirdest dreams you can remember?