Uhm… Hi? Whello there? Anyway, Yeah, hi, I’m Jelle. Some of you might already know me a little… I’m a Dutch guy doing gymnasium (for non-Dutch people: that basically is a school level Nerd++). I spend most of my time playing minecraft, piano and learning stuff I am interested in: I am slowly starting to fill a digital bookshelf with books about architecture, philosophy, psychology, maths and quantum mechanics. I am spending too much time playing minecraft to get any further than the basics of those things though… (apart from maths, due to me having it six hours a week (For the Dutch: Maths B and D) at school too) That’s all I had told up until now. I, of course, also have a social life, I thought I’d tell some parts about that too. I’ll warn you though: the word “suicide” comes up more often as any word related to joy. A few things happened to me, -not only the death of my mother. When I was ten years old I was bullied at school: Tom (vanWijnen) was my only friend. They caused me quite some physical pain, but I could have that. They ignored me, but I didn’t want to be with them anyway. The main thing was: They made me think I was stupid. My primary school teacher believed them in a weird way, he anyway didn’t see I was smart (later on I would do an official IQ test which showed my IQ was considerably closer to double than to lower his, HA!). You see: I am quite seriously dyslectic, I wasn’t able to really read, not for my age anyway, spelling was terrible, of course, and I was not able to talk that well, as I didn’t seem to be able to get word order right. So it wasn’t his fault. Everyone on school basically was saying I would have to work with my hands as a career, which, as you can imagine, isn’t really what I wanted. so I started wondering why I would continue living, if all of life would be doing stuff I didn’t like. Just after my tenth birthday, I came home from school, I did remember my mother had an appointment with a doctor that day, jet, she hadn’t told me why. When I came home I saw my grandmother was there too, my uncle, who I believed lived in the other part of the country, was sitting next to her. “Is there a party?” I guessed, then I saw my mother was crying “I am going to die” she said. It turned out she had pancreatic cancer - a tumor of 12 centimeters, odds were low she would live more than three months. I decided I wanted to continue living. “just for my mother” I said to myself. “just for my mother”. I started taking cycling as a sport more seriously. I already used to go on cycling trips with my dad: he’s always loved sports, especially cycling. He thought I had fallen in love with it too, but that was not the case: By going really fast for a long time I could pain myself, and forget what was happening to me. One and a half a year later, my mother was still alive, due to her having a very specific type of tumor (an N.E.T.) Not that much had changed. I did notice my little sister was getting more and more silent. I was going to secondary school. (The gymnasium I am still on) In the netherlands, to determine to what school you may go you have to make a certain test (you can always go lower, jet higher is not recommended). It tests basically everything over one week. You can get a grade from 0 - 50 (or from 500 - 550 with 500 bonus points) Every ~16 mistakes you make, you get one point lower (there are many, many questions). My teacher estimated me to get around about 30, I needed 49 or 50 to get to the gymnasium. I made three mistakes and gotten the best score someone on that school had ever gotten. Because of that, I was tested psychologically. Apart from the IQ thing I have told you already, which was “of the scale high” (Where I was tested, they weren’t able to test above 160) I turned out to be dyslexic, autistic and have ~10 more psychological disorders, I can’t list them all. I don’t even know all of them: I decided I didn’t have to read how and why I was different to accept I was. Going to that gymnasium made my life a lot easier, I still didn’t really have friends, but people accepted me the way I was: Jazz-loving; perfectionistic; nonsocial; in a weird way hyperactive and way too smart for even that highest school (got the highest grades without even opening a book at home, apart from the six langues). Honestly, people accepting me was more as I could dream of at that time. I even slowly started to make friends-ish. (people I talked to once a week) Even better: there was a new therapy for the type of cancer my mother had, it seemed to work, and she was likely to live five to ten more years. She died two months later. Optimistic became me didn’t see it coming. I started to talk less and be even less interested in other people, as a result, I got bullied again. My dad did some serious effort to make it stop, talking with teachers and all that. My sister was incredibly silent. A few months later everything seemed alright again with me, but at that time we found out my little sister was suicidal. Luckily, we didn’t find that out the hard way. She got to therapy, which she’s still in today, but now “just” for having a few anxieties (mainly social anxiety). At around about that time I made my first real friend next to Tom. A social guy who would help me become accepted? No, A girl how had been in a closed device for almost a year because of her having done multiple suicide attempts. This is the part where I’m just going to say “EMC-inappropriate stuff happened.” She was the one who learned me the full potential of the knife of a pencil sharpener. This is around about where I am now. A few years have passed, but not too much has changed. The girl I talked about has been in a closed device again lately, I was the first one she saw when she was allowed to see people again., as she doesn’t want to see her mother again. She’s got herself a boyfriend (who is almost two years older as she is - he’s 20) It’s a good guy, a little bit dark, but a good guy. (Dark: personality). I’m still on my streak of saying “no”. I’m at 5 currently, but that might change in the near future. (A girl who lost both her parents in a car accident - typical me). I also now finally have some more normal friends. We play Dungeons & Dragons and Magic the Gathering every now and then. I love role-playing, It lets be not be myself; It lets me not have my story.
Wow...Im actually glad your in a better place than before, with all the bullying. I am also really happy your sister got help before it was too late as i know how hard it could be. Although, i am truly sorry for what happened to your mother.
Seems like there will be some personal stuff in there... I hope nothing EMC-inappropriate. I will read this tomorrow!
Was going to go to bed, but (<-- part of my story of my life ) saw this and decided that this was more important. Keeping it quick though, phone is at 5%. I am both surprised at how much and how little I know of this. I'm really happy some missing gaps have been filled now. My phone's battery now only has 3% left - you have more life left than that, and you seem to know it. Please, and I beg you, please do NOT hesitate to contact me should this change negatively in any way at all for you, but also for the others close to you, as I don't want any more of what's yours to be lost. Or contact me when things are going well! You know where to find me. My phone is sipping these last electrons, so I've got one (two ) last thing to say: Thanks for the "introduction" (update more for me ), and I advise you to try to seek more and more fun in everything! I've also sometimes had doubts in things (saying it lightly), but trying to find the fun in as many things as possible really helps (and this is something I myself also still need to apply more...). You are a great person, and you deserve more happiness and other greats. I hereby demand this more to come to you. (sometimes weird things I wish come true. I feel like this is one of them.) That wasn't "one" last thing to say, I just realised. I actually wonder were all of this post went, that's both an advantage and a disadvantage of typing on your phone, you only see the last 7 lines. Anyways, as I said already multiple times privately, now publicly and meant more sincerely than ever: have fun on holidays, and everything else that will come after. Your friend, Tom
Jelle, I am glad you are here too. You wrote "the word “suicide” comes up more often as any word related to joy" and I think you are way too young to have dealt with stuff. PM me, (I'd PM you but I don't know how because I'm new here" and I'll share a few tears and laughs anytime. By the way, I'm an old lady (retired YOUNG!) so I have time to listen.
I don't know how this thread has managed to fly under my radar for so long. I just want to say that I've grappled with depression in the past as well, still continue to do so on occasion and certainly have self-destructive tendencies that I'm pretty sure stem from it; two out of my three siblings, two of my best friends, and my 'girlfriend' struggle with it, so I've never really been able to escape it. Hell, even one of my three subjects in college was psychology and, despite quite likely failing the course as a whole, I found the topic of depression to be enlightening and very useful for future employ. None of my own experiences and none of the people I know's experiences quite scale to your own, but I know very well how hard it is. And I also know that getting past it makes you a much, much stronger person. Congratulations to you and your sister for getting through the brunt of it and getting this far. I can only hope you go, much, much, much, further. I'm sorry for all that you've gone through, for what it's worth. I'm glad that you've made it through it and have evolved into such a driven, kind person who is a benefit to this community and, not to be hyperbolic, the world. Also, hell yeah, someone else with a learning disorder/dyslexia! Soon we'll take over the entire universe! Muahahaha
