#WeekendCoffeeShare (May 18, 2024)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. How are you doing? I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare again. It’s nearly 9PM Saturday, so I’ve long had my last cup of coffee for the day. If you’d like, I can offer you a cup of green tea, a glass of soda or some water though. 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 quite good with daytime temps most days around 22°C, sometimes higher. On Thursday, we did get a thunderstorm, which scares me.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that, as a result, I had no trouble meeting my movement goal on my Apple Watch each day. I went for walks each day. On Thursday, before the thunderstorm, I also actually rode the side-by-side bike for a little in the morning and then we cycled to Colmschate, a neighborhood of Deventer, the nearest city, in the afternoon. In total, I did 25km of cycling according to my Apple Watch. I reached double my movement goal that day.

If we were having coffee, next I’d say that, generally, Thursday was my best day of the week. I finally worked on a polymer clay project once again. The new student staff was being introduced to me so I decided to show her how I make a unicorn. I got distracted by the thunderstorm a lot, so the unicorn didn’t turn out as great as I’d hoped, but oh well.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that the rest of the week was a bit challenging. I’ve been struggling with attachment issues lately. I keep clinging to my “favorites” among the staff. I’ve decided I will discuss this with the behavior specialist when I’m having en appt with her and my mother-in-law on Tuesday, as it really needs to stop for my and the staff’s sake. I mean, I’m allowed to have preferences re staff I get along with, but my anxiety around them abandoning me and the resulting distress isn’t healthy and besides, it might just lead to that exact thing if they feel I’m too clingy.

If we were having coffee, finally I’d share that my spouse and I were trying to figure out ways for seeing each other over the weekend, since due to Pentecost all shops and lunchrooms are closed on Sunday and Monday. I finally came up with the idea of traveling to our house by ParaTransit on Monday. I haven’t been there since Christmas. It should really be cool.

I Am Myself (For Real This Time!)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I haven’t blogged in over a week and it’s not for lack of wanting to, but for lack of feeling like I belong anywhere within the blogosphere. I have myself to blame, having tried to fit in simultaneously with the traditional lifestyle blogger crowd, most of who are Christian, and the more open-minded if not secular community that is mostly on WordPress. I have always had to sacrifice part of myself in order to belong with the lifestyle crowd. That’s, of course, the essence of the Christian faith and one big reason I now seriously proclaim I’m no longer pretending to be a Christian. I’m not. I am spiritual, but I choose my own path.

I mean, I could of course quote Bobby Schuller, who is big on belonging before you “behave”. However, at the end of the day, he too condemns everyone who doesn’t ultimately “behave”. And I never “behaved”. For one thing, my first crush was a girl. For another, I didn’t live with my spouse for the first six years of our marriage and not ever since 2019 either. For yet another, we don’t have kids and that’s 100% by choice. In short, I refuse to be bound by the rigid standards of sexual and gender roles that traditional “family values” impose on me. I honestly don’t care about being a “good” woman in God’s eyes. I’m done with sacrificing part of me just so I belong. Maybe along the way I’ll discover who I “myself” even am.

Vignettes About Unicorns

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Today I’m joining Writer’s Workshop. One of the prompts is to share at least five moments of your life (not events, but merely vignettes) that are somehow related. I, for some reason, was immediately drawn to the theme of unicorns. Let’s see what I can come up with.

1. I remember having a unicorn My Little Pony figurine as a child. In fact, that’s a lie, as I think it was my sister’s, but I loved her anyway. In my memory, she was light purple, but I could’ve misremembered that, since my favorite color is lilac.

2. Last October (I think), I got a unicorn soft toy from my spouse as a thank-you gift for my support throughout our relationship and particularly over the past several months.

3. The other two unicorn soft toys on my bed, I bought at the fall fair here on institution grounds last October too.

4. Which reminds me, I have a lonely unicorn soft toy sitting in the soft toy cabinet. I got that one for Christmas at the last day center I attended while living with my spouse.

5. Oh wait, no, I have another unicorn soft toy in the cabinet. I got that one when leaving the care facility in Raalte for the intensive support home. Oh, how I miss being in Raalte still.

6. Now enough with the soft toys. The first unicorn I created, in July of 2021, I did entirely from a YouTube tutorial. I gave it to my spouse, who probably still has it.

7. I remember crafting my first unicorn at the intensive support home with my assigned staff. It didn’t turn out as good as I’d liked, but it was okay.

8. I gifted her my best unicorn I created while there when I left. Too bad she ignores me now…

9. When I left the intensive support home, I gifted each of my fellow residents a small cutter-created polymer clay unicorn.

10. I used for it a cutter I’d gotten for my birthday last year from my parents. My spouse had also gifted me unicorn-themed cutters at some point, which I originally intended to use.

11. I read my first unicorn-themed book a few years ago. That is, I probably read some in childhood too but not sure since they weren’t as popular as they are now. The book was a short picture book called First Day of Unicorn School.

12. My current unicorn-related read is the second book in the Unicorn Academy series by Julie Sykes. Oh wait, that’s not exactly a memory I’m sharing…

13. I can’t remember when I started calling my spouse “head unicorn catcher”. The reason is the fact that my spouse’s truck route is named after a city which has the unicorn as its symbol. Oh wait, that wasn’t really a memory either.

But I got to thirteen. So I’m allowed to share this post with Thursday Thirteen too. So if my post doesn’t meet the criteria for Writer’s Workshop, at least it meets the criteria for that.

Opportunities for Peer Support

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Recently I was talking to my spouse about ways to enrich my life and my spouse mentioned trying to connect to more people through peer support. I have some negative experiences with peer support, for example being kicked out of the Dutch DID peer support group for allegedly being a faker. However, once I’ve found the right tribe, peer support could certainly enrich my life.

Last Tuesday, I attended an online meeting for my regional branch of CP Netherlands, the Dutch cerebral palsy alliance. Even though I’m not 100% sure I have CP, I was welcomed with open arms. Originally, the organizers were thinking we may need to end the meeting early, as there were only five of us in attendance including them. However, we ultimately chatted the entire 90 minutes of the meeting. I even showed the other participants the polymer clay dinosaur my spouse and I had created.

One of the other participants is also visually impaired in addition to having CP. He told me there’s a “young people’s” (ages 25-45) meeting of the Eye Association (for blind and visually impaired people) in Zwolle. Zwolle is about 50km from where I live, so not too far away but not quite in my local area. This means I can travel there at a heavily discounted price using my national ParaTransit taxi card.

I also found out, when looking at the Eye Association website, that there are general meetings in Apeldoorn, Deventer and Zutphen, the three cities nearest to where I live. These meetings, since not catering to “young people” specifically, will most likely be mostly attended by people over age 50, but I don’t mind. I don’t yet have a local ParaTransit taxi card though, so can’t go there yet. My male assigned staff is going to apply for one for me though.

On Saturday, I attended the annual nationwide conference of CP Netherlands. It was less informative than the last few times I attended, since I knew most things the workshop leaders talked about already. However, it was much better with respect to peer support, in that I got to meet several people I’d either spoken with at the online meeting the previous Tuesday or met at nationwide conferences before. I also felt validated once again. And, yet again, I came away with the idea to finally ask my GP for a referral for rehabilitation medicine. Given that most likely my childhood medical records are all gone somehow, I’m pessimistic about getting any answers as to whether I actually do have CP or not. I’m trying to reason that this might be beside the point, but honestly my gut instinct is that it’s not.

I’m linking up with #WWWhimsy again.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (April 13, 2024)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. How have you been? I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare today. I’m writing this post in the afternoon on Saturday, but might not finish it until the evening as I’ll try to fully enjoy my one-on-one support time while there’s staff I get along with well in the home today. It’s a little warm for coffee, so if you’d like a cup of that, fine by me, but I could also offer you orange and tangerine-flavored Dubbelfrisss. I also should still have a couple Mars ice cream bars in the freezer. Let’s have a drink or ice cream and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee (as I always say), first, I’d talk about the weather. It’s been on the warm side for April here. Last week Saturday, the daytime temperature even rose to 25°C. Yesterday and today, we got daytime highs of 21 and 22°C respectively. The rest of this week, the temps have been lower and we did get some rain. Next week, we’re supposed to get daytime temps barely above 10°C, which I don’t like. However, that’s probably closer to normal.

If we were having coffee, next I’d tell you all that I’m still going strong keeping up with my physical activity by walking everyday. So far, I’ve closed all three of my activity rings on my Apple Watch each day since the beginning of the month (and possibly a few days at the end of March too. I’m aiming for a perfect month with respect to my movement ring at least, which I haven’t had since last September.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that I finally got the long-awaited orthopedic shoes. They fit well, but the brace that’s in them doesn’t effectively help my really bad drop foot and as a result, the left shoe got noticeably damaged after only two fifteen-minute walks.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that, last Sunday, my spouse and I together worked on a polymer clay project. I’d proposed we create a unicorn, but my spouse came up with the idea of crafting a triceratops (“unicorn dino” with three horns) instead. It was fun, but definitely an exercise in letting go of my need for control.

Polymer Clay Triceratops

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that the rest of the week was quite hard. I’ve been struggling with feeling quite depressed lately. I have been feeling like my world is becoming smaller and smaller with all the things I cannot do. It’s been more so on my mind lately given that many of my fellow residents are going on the home’s yearly week-long sleepaway camp at the end of the month and it’s not even been asked to me directly whether I wanted to go too. Rather, I overheard the staff talking about the camp a few months back and mumbled about it not appealing to me and that’s the end of it. I’m supposed to stick to my day schedule, which currently consists mostly of walking around institution grounds and playing dice games. Some staff say I might be able to be in the communal room more, but to be honest I don’t care about being in the communal room just sitting around.

Yesterday, I tried making a cheesecake with my assigned staff in the communal room but got overloaded by one of the other clients (who will stay here during the camp as well). It led me to spiral into a massive emotional outburst. After all, now everyone tells me I’ll never have a better life anywhere anyway so I’d better accept the life I have now. Why didn’t anyone tell me this two years ago? The answer is simple: at least some of the people at the care facility in Raalte secretly wanted to get rid of me. This is intensely saddening to me.

If we were having coffee, I would end on a positive note though by saying that one of the staff who told me to accept my life yesterday, offered to take me on a short car trip to Deventer this afternoon. We had a cup of coffee (I decided to buy both of ours) and walked around the marketplace, where the staff bought me a stroopwafel and I bought a small serving of garlic-filled olives.

Gratitude: Big Things I Am Grateful For Right Now #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone and welcome to my letter G post in the #AtoZChallenge. Today, I want to share what I’m grateful for. Specifically, I want to share the bigger, more important things in life I’m grateful for right now. Here goes.

First is my relative health. I am at a healthy weight, am able to walk about 5km at a time on good days and generally sleep about eight hours a night. I haven’t felt truly well physically in, well, forever, but I do feel okay.

Next up is food. I don’t have to go hungry. In fact, even though the meal delivery service meals are yucky most of the time, my breakfasts and lunches are good. And the meal delivery service meals are okay in terms of nutritional requirements. Moreover, when I really can’t stand the food we get here, I can afford to buy myself something else.

Finances are up next. When answering some questions for a parody voting guide back in the fall, one of them was whether you have a good income. Even though I’m on benefits, I answered “Yes”. I don’t have to worry about money generally.

Next is the fact that I have a roof over my head. Two, in fact, if counting my and my spouse’s house in Lobith.

Then, of course, I need to mention my spouse. Our relationship has survived many hurdles, so I’m pretty sure we’ll always be soulmates.

With my spouse come my in-laws. I am so lucky to have them! My mother-in-law is my informal representative and my family contact for the care home.

These are just a few of the things I’m grateful for. I could go on to mention the fact that I have a nice bed to sleep in, technology that allows me to communicate with the world and spend my leisure time, and so on and so forth. But instead, I’ll leave you with just this: right now, I’m grateful to be alive.

Friendship: What It Means to Be a Friend #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. For my letter F post in the #AtoZChallenge, I had a lot of choices and yet this actually overwhelmed me. I am once again doing a post on a topic I think I covered in 2019 too, ie. friendship. What does it mean to be a friend?

My spouse and I are best friends. Since we aren’t in a traditional relationship due to for example not living together, we need to find other ways to make our relationship work. However, we were friends before we were a couple.

As someone who didn’t have any friends beyond elementary school until I met my now spouse, I am not the best possible judge of what makes a friendship tick. I mean, I can look at what psychologists say about the development of friendships from early childhood into adulthood.

For instance, three-year-olds say someone is their friend because they play with them on the see-saw and “doesn’t want to be their friend anymore” as soon as the other child isn’t any longer interested in the same activity. I have this kind of relationship with some of my fellow residents.

As a child gets older, they develop more perspective about the fact that other children aren’t just momentary playmates, but their viewpoint is still very one-sided. For example, a six-year-old might consider someone their friend because they save them a seat at the bus or give them treats. They don’t yet fully comprehend mutual give-and-take though.

This follows at the next stage, which starts at around age six and continues throughout elementary school age. At this point, children are very fairness-conscious and usually have rigid rules for give-and-take.

At my very best, I am stuck at this stage. Usually though, I am at the second stage, hard as I find it to admit this. I, after all, usually only think of giving something in return for the things (material or immaterial) my spouse gives me when I’m in a very healthy place mentally.

At the next stage, which starts at around age eleven, children develop intimate friendships in which they mutually support each other. They help each other solve problems and confide feelings in each other that they don’t share with anyone else. Like I said, I never had friends beyond elementary school before meeting my spouse. Though I did and do confide in my spouse, I am pretty bad at offering my spouse any emotional support in return.

Finally, adolescents and adults have mature friendships in which they emphasize emotional closeness over anything else. They can accept, sometimes even appreciate their friends being significantly different from them. People at this stage emphasize trust, knowing their friendship will be long-lasting even through temporary separations and differences.

Bulimia (Or Something Like It): My Relationship With Food and My Body (Revisited) #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all and welcome to my letter B post in the #AtoZChallenge. Today, I’d like to share a more personal piece and describe my history of disordered eating and body image issues. After publishing this post, I saw I did a post on this topic in 2019 too.

I first started struggling with a negative body image when I was about thirteen. I remember writing stupidly specific worries in my diary about food and my weight, such as whether the nails I’d bitten off would cause me to gain weight. All the while, I didn’t realize that I was, in fact, pretty close to overweight if not overweight already from consuming enormous quantities of candy on weekends and daily sausage rolls at the school cafeteria.

I was lucky that I never became significantly overweight until around age 25. By that time, I had developed something at least bordering on bulimia: I ate a full 500g bag of candy, sometimes more, in one ten-minute sitting at least three times a week. I also purged, although I did that after regular meals as much as after bingeing.

In the six years that followed, I gained over 20kg in weight and, by the time I was kicked out of the psych hospital to live with my spouse in 2017, I weighed 80kg. At my height of 1.53m, this is quite far in the obese range.

Yet my body image wasn’t as much of a concern to me at the time. Yes, I hated the way I looked, but at the same time I was too careless and unmotivated to change my habits. I had stopped purging for the most part by the time I moved in with my spouse, although I still occasionally did it as a form of emotion regulation.

Now, I’ve been at a healthy weight for about a year. Don’t ask me how I got here, as honestly I don’t really know. I mean, yes, I’ve been supported by a dietitian since early 2022, but honestly I can’t quite say I follow her advice. I mean, okay, I no longer binge due to my food being locked away, but I do snack on “bad” foods all the time.

My body image, honestly, is still as screwed as it always was. I still swing between underestimating and overestimating my size, between hating my body and not caring about it. I still purge occasionally, though not really out of a wish to lose weight, but more out of a need to self-regulate.

Looking back, I don’t think I ever had a genuine eating disorder. I mean, I might’ve at one point met the criteria for binge eating disorder, but I’m not so sure about that. I think my disordered eating is really more a symptom of my emotion regulation difficulties.

My First Airplane Trip

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. A lot is still on my mind, but today, I’d like to write a lighthearted post. Thanks to John Holton, who provides the Writer’s Workshop prompts, I now have several ideas. One is to write about my first airplane trip. Let me share.

My first airplane trip was also my first trip abroad and my first vacation without my parents. It was a trip from Schiphol (Amsterdam) airport to Moscow on August 4, 2000. I was flying Aeroflot, a relatively okay Russian airline. Still, everyone clapped when the airplane landed successfully, something I recently found out stopped in the 1970s with Western airlines.

One thing I remember quite distinctly is the horrible pain in my ears and head in general during takeoff and landing. I haven’t flown in years, but the memories came back when my spouse reminded me about it, having had a similar experience on a recent airplane trip. Honestly, I can’t imagine people actually taking pictures while the plane is taking off or coming down.

I still did have a tiny amount of vision back in 2000, so remember looking at the clouds once the aircraft had fully risen.

I also to this day remember the film playing in the airplane. Not that I could understand any part of it, as it was in Russian, but my fellow travelers explained to me that it was called something like “I want to go to prison”. The plot revolved around a Russian character who had heard that, in Dutch prisons, inmates get their own TV etc. (something that isn’t exactly true, by the way), so he wanted to flee to the Netherlands even if it meant going to prison. I bet nowadays this film wouldn’t be considered appropriate.

Gratitude List (March 9, 2024) #TToT

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. This past week has been tough. I was going to write an update only to realize there’s no #WeekendCoffeeShare this week. I could do one on my own, but that’d just leave room for endless negativity. Instead, for this reason, I’m going to turn things around and do a gratitude post. As usual, I’m joining Ten Things of Thankful. I’m going to cheat a little and do this gratitude list for the past ten days so that I can provide a little update anyway.

1. I’m grateful for the night nurse on duty during the night of February 29/March 1. Like I said on February 29, I was intensely triggered by my intake interview for therapy. Though I tried to calm myself down, it didn’t work and I ended up self-harming after my staff had left by throwing boiling hot water over my leg. Thanks to the night staff and particularly the night nurse, who cooled the wound under the shower for over half an hour, I am left with superficial second-degree burns. The wounds still cover most of the front side of my upper leg, but I realize things could’ve been a lot worse.

2. I am grateful my wounds are healing as well as can be expected. I’m getting them dressed once a day now, which is frustrating and sometimes very painful. I looked up my kind of burn (that’s how I found out there are two kinds of second-degree burns) and it usually heals within two weeks. Yay!

3. I am grateful for French fries on Sunday. As I couldn’t walk on Sunday (or most of this week, for that matter) because the band-aid that was on my leg would fall off if I did, I decided that my spouse shouldn’t come by for a visit. Instead, my staff took me to the institution cafeteria in a wheelchair to have fries and some snacks. They were delicious!

4. I am grateful for nice weather last week Sunday as well as over the past couple days. Last Sunday, the daytime temperature rose to 15°C. When having the fries I mentioned above, we sat in the cafeteria yard.

5. I am grateful I am feeling slightly better mentally. I definitely hit rock bottom on February 29 and from that place, you can only go up. I will have to see how things work out in the long run, as the behavior specialist is going to try to talk to the therapist I met on Feb 29 to see whether any changes to the plan need to be made. Though I’m ready to give it a try, particularly the thought of doing the therapy without the support of my staff, feels overwhelming.

6. I am grateful that my support coordinator listened to me when discussing the outcome of the monthly team meeting with me. The team meeting was on Monday and, though I had already asked that some things would be discussed, such as my day schedule, my self-harm made things a priority. The day schedule isn’t changing, as I expected, but I honestly don’t mind as much.

Initially, in the team meeting, the staff had agreed to stick with announcing staff switches half an hour in advance. I was really disappointed. Though I understand the staff don’t want to designate a one-on-one shift, I feel it will help me immensely if I know more in advance who’s going to support me for my activity slots. I am grateful my support coordinator reluctantly agreed to this.

7. I am grateful my support coordinator reassured me that she and the behavior specialist at least aren’t planning on asking for less one-on-one for me anytime soon. Of course, they aren’t the ones making those decisions, but then again neither is the therapist I met last week.

8. I am grateful I did manage a few crafty endeavors over the past week. Not as many as I’d hoped, but I did craft yet another polymer clay unicorn, as well as finally making the crocodile I’d promised one of the male staff here. He actually helped me make it. It’s maybe a little too cute, but oh well.

Polymer Clay Crocodile

9. I am grateful my spouse came by for a visit today. We sat in my room talking, playing a card game and such, as I still didn’t feel comfortable going out.

10. I am grateful for the few short (as in, fifteen minutes tops) walks I did manage over the past few days. It’s been a pain f(sometimes literally) inding the right band-aids and other things to go over the wound. Let’s hope Dr. Google is right and my wound heals within the expected timeframe of two weeks.