Reflections on Being a Thrown Away Golden Child

Posted on by Astrid

I’ve been struggling with memories lately, as well as with the role I played in my family. I was for the most part the golden child. For those not aware of what this means, this is the child in a family in which one or both parents are narcissists or otherwise emotionally immature, who ends up being the parents’ favorite.

My parents often half-jokingly (though it wasn’t funny) said that my younger sister was oh so nicely average. More like invisible, I’d say.

I, on the other hand, was exceptional in both positive and negative ways. I was a genius when doing calendar calculation, which for your information is a common savant skill in people with developmental disabilities. By contrast, I was threatened with being thrown away into institutional care and called all kinds of insults for people with mental illness when I was acting less than excellent. I at one point thought of printing out the table of contents for the DSM so that my parents at least knew the correct terms for what they were calling me.

Then, when I was admitted to the psychiatric hospital in 2007, my parents more or less actually threw me away. No, that’s not even entirely true: they threatened to abandon me when I announced that I was taking a second gap year in order to work on independence skills in 2006 and only came back into my life after the independence training home promised to prepare me for university and independent living. Which they couldn’t.

I struggle with both the fact that I was thrown away and the fact that I was my parents’ favorite before that. After all, it adds an extra layer of shame to my life: the layer of “if only…”. If only I hadn’t taken that second gap year… If only I hadn’t consented to being admitted to the psychiatric hospital… If only I hadn’t applied for long-term care… would I still be the hero… in my parents’ fantasy tale? In other words, isn’t it my choice to have fallen off my parents’ pedestal?

I don’t know how I feel about the idea that it might’ve somehow been my choice to be thrown away. On the one hand, I feel it makes me responsible for not having a “normal” relationship with my parents. On the other hand though, I know how many golden children turn out and that’s not pretty. Many end up repeating their parents’ toxic patterns with partners or children.

I’m forever grateful for being childfree for this reason (and others), as just today I had a memory of shoving my and my wife’s then cat Barry out of the bed. I feel forever guilty about this and the very thought of doing this to a child, makes me sick.

Remembering this and other things makes me realize I’m glad I didn’t stay in the golden child role. If I had, I might as well have ended up in prison… or should have.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (December 6, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Yesterday, I had tons of ideas on my mind on what to blog about but no motivation to actually write. Today, it’s the opposite. I’m joining in with #WeekendCoffeeShare even though I think I don’t have a lot to share today. I, as usual, had my last cup of coffee for the day about half an hour ago and am going to take a break from writing this post to have my soft drink and chips. Let’s have a drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, first I’d talk about the weather. For most of the week, it was chilly but not rainy with daytime temps around 7°C. Today, the daytime high was 10°C but it’s been raining all day.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that I was pretty active for most of the week, both by walking and one time by cycling to the next town just to have a purpose for cycling. I didn’t need any groceries and we only ended up having a snack, but at least we weren’t aimlessly cycling around.

Today though, I spent the entire day indoors and still need to dance or whatever to reach my movement goal on my Apple Watch. My streak for whatever reason is still stuck on 33 days even though I’m moving each day and it’s been stuck on 33 days for a month or so.

If we were having coffee, then I’d tell you that I had many plans over the past week but haven’t accomplished a lot. On Monday and Tuesday, I did create some Christmas decorations out of polymer clay. Yesterday, I attempted to bake cookies. They turned out okay but not great and the process was frustrating. Nonetheless, it was better than lying in bed or staring into space, which is what I’ve been doing a lot lately.

If we were having coffee, I’d cheat a little with the coffee share being about the past week, since there was none last week. I’d share about the meeting I had with the behavior specialist early last week. It went well. First of all, like I said, the “one chance” rule about orienting new staff got ditched. My assigned staff, who is in training to become my side of the home’s support coordinator now too, E-mailed me the new orienting plan yesterday and it looks pretty good.

We also discussed my day schedule. In the future, I’ll hopefully get more set activities. In preparation for this, my assigned staff created instruction cards for some of my activities, so that I can hopefully do more activities regardless of which staff is assigned to me. She E-mailed these to me too and I gave some feedback.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d share that I’ve been having lots of memories lately. And by “memories” I don’t mean good ones. Yesterday, for example, I remembered the team meeting for my current home I attended in the summer of 2023. One of the staff, when I told them that I can’t prepare my own lunch, replied: “But you lived independently, right?”. I immediately got defensive, because yes, I technically lived independently, but I shouldn’t have. Yesterday when I was talking about this with my wife, whom I’d first met when living on my own in 2007, she told me more about how bad it actually was. Until a few years ago, I believed that, while I couldn’t cope, this was mostly a mental thing. In other words, I was falling apart mentally but could really care for myself if I hadn’t been so scared. Well, no.

It is sad to realize that part of the reason why I need so much care is lack of training in childhood, adolescence and to a lesser degree early adulthood. I’m still struggling with my parents’ reasoning that they couldn’t have taught me because I was too strong-willed and just didn’t want to learn. It may’ve been true that I didn’t understand why I had to learn something that caused me frustration, but then isn’t it the parents’ job to guide the child through their frustration? I’m honestly still struggling with this.

IQ Tests and Final Exams and Psychological Assessments, Oh My!

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all! Today, Esther’s weekly writing prompt is “tests”. Oh my! This made me think of so many things. IQ tests: I’ve had half a dozen or more during my life. Final exams: so glad they’re over with and it’s been twenty years since I graduated high school. Psychological assessments: I still have a love-hate relationship with those. And that goes for tests in general, I guess.

After all, as a child, I didn’t mind taking IQ tests. When I was twelve, I got the infamous Wechsler IQ test, well, the verbal part of it, since I’m blind and the performance part isn’t accessible. I got a score of 154, which, according to the psychologist, indicated giftedness. I’m pretty sure there were all sorts of things wrong with that assessment though.

When I was 30, I got another IQ test, Wechsler again but the adult version and now they removed the clear distinction between verbal and performance IQ so the report just said I got “parts” of the test. My overall IQ score had dropped to 119 I believe. That’s still above-average and I’m pretty sure that’s correct. However, I wish there were a performance IQ test for blind people, because I am pretty sure that’d show where my real limits are. Not that I’m proud of being disabled, but I am and if it could be proven on a test, that’d be much better than an ever-changing psychiatric diagnosis.

Final exams. Like I said, I’m glad it’s been twenty years since I graduated high school. My final exams were quite frustrating, as not only was I horribly nervous, but my computer crashed once in the middle of the test. I graduated from what in the UK is called grammar school and honestly I have no clue how I did it. I mean, well, I know, sort of: the same way I “passed” my IQ tests, ie. being a pretty above-average memorizer. Too bad that a good memory and decent academic skills don’t get me far in life. It takes more than test-taking abilities to be successful, after all.

Flash Fiction: Of Fish and Tape (Or Horses and Receipts)

Posted on by Astrid

A fish swam in the ocean with a roll of sticky tape in its mouth. It was a copycat really, because it learned to carry something in its mouth from the stick horse a little girl once created for her teacher’s St. Nicholas surprise. The attached poem read
A wooden horse
Without a tail
Flew quickly towards the sun
With in its mouth a receipt
Of an already-eaten cake.

That poem was better in Dutch, as the girl was me, but it was still silly. At least it rhymed in its original Dutch version.

The fish didn’t know this, of course. Its picture had been drawn or otherwise created some 30 years after the girl’s original poem. And even if the fish knew, it didn’t care.

I do wonder though, isn’t a roll of sticky tape far too large for a goldfish? It will know very soon. Or not.

This piece of silliness was written for Simply 6 Minutes. It’s 148 words. My original poem was:
Een houten paard
Zonder staart
Vloog pijlsnel naar de zon
Met in zijn mond een kassabon
Van een opgegeten taart

School Reunions

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. One of this week’s Writer’s Workshop prompts is to write a post based on the word reunion. This reminded me of two reunions, one I actually attended and one I didn’t.

The reunion I did attend was for the school for the blind I had been a student at for my last three years of elementary school in the late 1990s. The reunion took place in 2008 and it was on school grounds. The reason the reunion was held, was the fact that many buildings would be reconstructed in the next couple of years, so as to give former students and staff one last chance to see school grounds in the form they’d remembered them.

The school included buildings for both elementary and secondary school, as well as homes for the residential students and a place for leisure activities where the non-residential students had lunch too. I was a non-residential student and only attended elementary school, like I said.

There were two reasons why I wanted to attend the reunion. One was to meet former fellow students and staff. That was a success. I met my best friend from school, with whom I hadn’t been in contact since leaving this school in 1998. I also briefly talked to my fourth grade teacher. That was awkward, as I didn’t feel comfortable disclosing to him that I resided in a psychiatric hospital at the time.

The other reason I wanted to attend the reunion, was to see the school in the form I remembered. That, unfortunately, wasn’t a success, because part of the elementary school, including the classrooms, had been destroyed in a fire in 2006. Part of the building was still standing, but it was no longer useable.

I was on grounds a few more times attending smartphone use training in 2017. On May 24, I believe, there’s going to be another reunion for this school, but it isn’t on grounds and I know no-one who will be attending, so I won’t either.

This brings me to my other reunion story. IN 2013, my high school celebrated 100 years of existence. I for a while considered attending, but was still in the psych hospital at the time and besides, my entire high school experience had been quite bad. So I didn’t go.

A few years later, I got an E-mail from a former teacher there. She had been my Dutch teacher and tutor for the first year and part of the second year of my attending this school, until she went on sick leave and finally found another job. She had been at the reunion and had wondered about me. Having read part of my website, she now understood why I hadn’t been at the reunion.

This, as it turned out, would also have been my last chance of meeting the teacher who’d become my tutor after the Dutch teacher left. He got cancer about a year after I’d graduated high school in 2005 and died in 2016. I am pretty sure it was for the better that he didn’t know that I was still in the psych hospital then.

Neurospicy Burnout

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. A few days ago, I listened to a podcast episode on autistic burnout. It’s the most recent episode of Beyond Chronic Burnout, a podcast for autistic women (and other marginalized genders, I hope) and their helping professionals. It discussed the Spicy Pepper burnout questionnaire, which apparently is a questionnaire to determine your level of burnout. I got overloaded trying to find the actual questionnaire amid all the ads etc. and it looks like the website it was published on, isn’t particularly screen reader friendly, so I wasn’t able to take the test. However, from the descriptions discussed on the podcast, I believe I’m in quite a significant burnout and have been for, well, years.

What is autistic burnout, you might ask? Autistic burnout is like regular burnout from being overworked, but it is really more like being overworked living life in a world not designed for autistics. As I have said for many, many years, just living in a neurotypical world is hard work for me.

I want to clarify that autistic burnout is often amplified by co-occuring conditions such as ADHD. In fact, writing this just reminds me of something I read several years ago that said that having fibromyalgia, which is often agravated by stress, is often correlated to ADHD. This is why I refer to neurospicy burnout.

The podcaster claimed that the first signs of burnout in autistics usually appear between the ages of four and six and many autistics experience their first actual burnout between the ages of six and ten. This was hugely validating. I, at age five, fell ill with what my parents claim was the flu, but it did lead them to get me into special ed quicker than originally intended. Age seven is always when my parents claim I changed from a cheerful, happy child to angry and depressed. This correlates with my having to start learning Braille, so according to my parents I then became aware of my declining vision. This is probably correct, but it doesn’t mean that my difficulty accepting my blindness was the only or main problem.

The first warning sign of autistic burnout, the podcaster says, is suicidal ideation. Oh my, can I relate! I honestly always thought that the first sign of burnout, whether neurospicy or work-related, was exhaustion. That with the fact that I react to overload with overactivity and irritability, always made me believe I’ve never had “real” burnout symptoms. Now I realize that I may not have fully collapsed (yet), but I do certainly experience burnout. And have for, well, my entire life since I was seven, I guess.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (March 29, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone on this last Saturday of March. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare today. It’s nearly 8PM as I write this, so no more coffee for me. However, a fellow client’s parents brought us cheese, sausage and maybe other little snacks to go with our soft drinks this evening. I’ll have apple and peach-flavored Dubbelfrisss as usual. Let’s have a drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, first as usual I’d talk about the weather. It’s been mild most days with daytime temperatures around 15°C, though night-time temps have been around freezing. We had a little rain on Sunday I believe, but I think that was before I woke up. Honestly, I’m pretty sure nature could use some showers.

If we were having coffee, then I’d talk about my physical fitness routine. I am still going strong with my goal of a perfect month on my Apple Watch and, on Thursday, got in over 20K steps again.

If we were having coffee, then however I’d moan about my tremors. I’ve mentioned a couple of times that my right leg trembles horribly sometimes and, usually when it’s been happening, the rest of my body follows suit and starts twitching. Yesterday, it was really bad. My intellectual disability physician usually says it’s most likely influenced by stress, though both of us know that my medication (particularly my antipsychotic) could be causing it too.

With respect to my meds, I’ve often been reacting out of fear of becoming unmanageable and for this reason asking for a very slow taper. My physician has been constantly asking whether my life will become more difficult soon due to for instance more temp workers, because apparently that’d be a reason not to taper further for a while. Now I’ve decided that being manageable is not a reason to put my body through the effects of strong meds. Besides, yesterday I had an aggressive meltdown precisely because I couldn’t cope with the tremors anymore. Now thankfully on Monday my staff will contact the intellectual disability physician, my GP or both.

If we were having coffee, I’d also moan about my shoes. I’d worn one pair of orthopedic shoes for only a week last Thursday and they were already badly damaged. The physical therapist took a look at them and said she thought the orthopedic shoemaker might not have done the last repair properly. I’m not sure that’s the reason they get damaged so quickly. On Friday though, the physical therapist came by and took a video of my walking, which she is going to compare to a video she took about half a year ago. I’ll see her again next Friday and hope she’ll have some ideas.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that I’ve been having bad memories of my time in the mental hospital. Like I said above, the intellectual disability physician here constantly talks about the possibility of more temp workers as an excuse not to taper my medication. This was precisely why I was prescribed medication in the first place: I’d become severely irritable because of the large number of temp workers at the time and my psychologist was threatening me with seclusion if I continued to have meltdowns. Similarly, when on the locked ward, I was literally told I’d be locked up in the “quiet room” if I needed more care than they could provide. I realize rationally that this is institutional abuse, but I’ve internalized a lot of all the bullcrap institutions feed me.

If we were having coffee, I’d end on a somewhat positive note by sharing that the behavior specialist finally filled out the forms to get the Center for Consultation and Expertise involved on my case.

Today’s Small Joys (March 16, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m struggling a bit but don’t want to share why. Instead, I’m sharing some small joys from the day again today. I’m participating in Sunny Sunday. Here goes.

1. Sunshine. It’s chilly (about 9°C in the afternoon) but sunny. With this being the case, my partner and I were even able to sit outside for our lunch.

2. Good coffee. The lunch we had was a bit disappointing to me especially considering how much it cost, but the coffee was good.

3. Being able to wear a nice, handmade necklace and being complimented on it by my spouse. I bought glass beads and wire a few days ago and I created my first necklace with them yesterday. I wore it today, which made me feel good.

4. Finding a couple more necklaces, most handmade by me many years ago, in the bag my spouse brought me after clearing out the house.

5. Unicorn soft toys. I was clearing out my box of stuffies this evening, because my spouse had also brought me some stuffed animals and my box was already quite full. I didn’t seriously know how many unicorn soft toys I have. Those, I all kept.

6. Looking forward to the sensory room the staff are creating on the other side of the home. I actually plan to donate some of my unwanted soft toys to that project.

7. Finding one of my first polymer clay creations in the bag too. It’s a baby. It’s extremely ugly, so I threw it away. However, remembering my making it, as well as realizing how far I’ve come along on my creative journey, made me smile.

Honestly, many of these things are more nostalgia-inducing than purely joyful. Remembering the good times is a positive thing though, so I’ll still focus on that.

March Memories

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all! Can you believe we’re already halfway through March? I honestly feel that time flies. Today, I want to share some random memories from Marches (is that a word?) gone by.

First, a year ago, I had just recovered from second-degree burns that I sustained in a crisis. Looking back, my life is much better now than it was a year ago, when we were in the midst of a weird idea from the staff that said I had to compensate for every minute I needed support outside of my designated one-on-one hours because of distress. I sort of understand the reasoning, because, at the end of February, I had shared with my behavior specialist and some therapists that, in an ideal world, I’d be able to rely on staff all the time. What I didn’t realize at the time, thanks to all the words about “unsupported time” in my day schedule, is that this is basically already the situation in 24-hour care. Of course, I can’t always expect a staff to show up in no time when I need one, but it isn’t like I’m ever truly supposed to be self-reliant. That’s until that crazy idea about compensating came to be, because, as one of my staff said it, my “unsupported time” was supposedly my structure. Let’s just say I disagree and am so happy that, after a month, the system was abandoned at the end of March again. Now, it’s actually in my day schedule that I can rely on the staff for support when in distress during my times of doing my activities by myself.

Two years ago, I finally had a meeting to discuss my leaving the intensive support home. I’m so very happy I insisted. I remember the intensive support home’s behavior specialist was a bit critical, because, well, I apparently hadn’t left the care facility in Raalte in 2022 completely voluntarily. As it turned out, some staff had been more happy that I’d finally gone than they had admitted. This is somewhat understandable, given that all other clients there had severe to profound intellectual disability and no or minimal challenging behavior.

I can’t believe I’ve been at my current home for eighteen months already. As I share these two snippets, one from 2024 and the other from 2023, I am intensely grateful. I am still struggling at times, but then again I was even at the best of times in Raalte.

Sharing this post with RDP, for which the prompt today is “March”.

Abandonment Wounds: What Will Happen If I Can No Longer Mask?

Posted on by Astrid

I’ve been struggling with attachment issues a lot lately. Not related to a specific person this time. I mean, yes, like I said on Wednesday, four of my “favorites” among the staff are either on leave or will be leaving (be it temporarily or permanetly) soon. That’s not the problem, since I’ve learned the hard way to expand my list of “favorites” when necessary. It’s in my best interest too to avoid a situation like the one with my assigned staff in Raalte, who was leaving and left me with just two other trusted staff.

The issue I’ve been dealing with lately, is much more existential: the knowledge that, if I’m truly myself, I’m unacceptable. Not because I’m some kind of criminal. I’m not. Rather, I’m an outcast. And while I won’t be in the prison system for that, being shoved around care home after care home while not having family to advocate for me, will be equally horrid.

I have been struggling with memories of the circumstances surrounding that assigned staff leaving. A few months before she left, I sent her a rather dramatic E-mail about how no-one will be in my life forever. Well, my spouse says we’ll always be in each other’s life, but truthfully we can’t know that. Besides, when we lived together, there were just a little too many situations in which my spouse (understandably) was disappointed in me that are however things I couldn’t help. For clarity’s sake: I don’t blame my spouse, but maybe with my being multiply-disabled, I’m not suited for “traditional” long-term relationships. Ha, now I’m reminded that my spouse often reminds me that I said when we were choosing to be a couple, that I didn’t want a traditional relationship.

Of course, the reason I’m undesirable by society’s standards isn’t my fault. Like, I can’t help being disabled. But just because it isn’t something I choose, doesn’t make it any less real or hurtful. In fact, it hurts more because I can’t choose not to be me.

I mean, I’ve masked more or less successfully for many years. Mostly less successfully, but my parents prevented me from landing in the care system at a much earlier age than I did by claiming the police and other people who thought I was disturbed, were just stupid. They were masters at manipulating the system. I am not.

Back to my assigned staff in Raalte. She was the first to take my wish to leave seriously. I assume she genuinely felt that the intensive support home could better serve me than the care facility, but I also assume she had a team and a manager to deal with and it remains a fact that some of her coworkers couldn’t cope with my behavior. Which was, for the record, much less challenging than it is now.

It genuinely scares me to think of what will happen if (when?) I can no longer mask at all. There was this news feature sometime in 1997 or 1998 about a girl, aged about sixteen, who was too intelligent for intellectual disability services but who still couldn’t cope in adolescent mental health services and was, as a result, restrained long-term. After her family sought media attention, she was transferred to a treatment center for youth with mild intellectual disability and severe challenging behavior. I don’t know what became of her.

Last week, when I had several severe outbursts related to my most recent frustration, I begged my support coordinator to ask the behavior specialist to involve the Center for Consultation and Expertise (CCE) again. I really want to get the ball rolling on getting them involved before it’s too late and I’m being kicked out again, like the last time they were involved in 2018. In this sense, a consultation might help more this time, because at this point, as far as I know, staff aren’t yet so much at their wit’s end that they see the situation as unresolvable. But I’m scared of what will happen if they do get to this point, like apparently some staff in Raalte were.