The Joys of Group Life

The Joys of Group Life

Group life is not for the faint of heart
The depressed-demonized
The PTSD-pricks
The anxiety-addicts
The Tourette-twists
The stutter-sufferers

Since I am all that, group life is not for me.
They say I am having 'social anxiety'. I say that's just another label, throw it in my basket.

I do not have social anxiety, I love interaction, am quite outgoing, only not in the way people want me to. What they DO want is mingling in daily life, seeing real people you can touch and all. Well, surprise, that is not my view.

For me meeting real people is a challenge. They want to touch me, which often sends me straight into a flashback and gives me enormous anxiety. It always leaves it up to me to explain why touching is literally such a sensitive subject. People, I do NOT want to be touched!! If I want you to touch me, you need to allow me to get to know you first, and leave the touching to me. And then, only then you are allowed to touch me.

Is this social anxiety? I do not think so. It is a combination of a horrible childhood and youth, (c)PTSD, anxiety, clinical depression, stuttering and Tourette and it is hard to live with.

Furthermore talking is a big obstacle for me. I perform well in the company of those who know and love me, but I am left completely speechless when I face people I don't know, or am forced to talk about subjects that are hard to talk about. And having to face faces with pity, or having to hear sentences finished that I didn't even intend? That's another challenge.

Having to see people react to my ticcing? Yet another one, and then the wheelchair!

It's a bit much to face, you see? You all know me in text and poetry, and you've slowly learned to know the inside of me, the person I am beyond the strange outside. Isn't that wonderful? The best side of the Internet? Something many so called experts fail to see and understand?

So, no, no social anxiety, just having to live with this me that is hindered in many ways, but fine in many other ways :)

It does however hinder therapy. I often stay in a mental hospital for young people like myself, with problems like mine. In here I am supposed to do group therapy. And the word 'challenge' is too friendly. Having to face those mocking faces every session makes me cringe inside. And yet I am not allowed to skip the sessions.

Oh, the boys here like me, don't get me wrong. They do not bully me, they see me as a big brother, but then a SILENT big brother who keeps his mouth shut and nods and agrees with every rascally thing they like to do.

I'd rather go to a regular mental facility, or do they do group therapy there as well?

Yours truly,
Darren ;)

Marḥaban 2

Marḥaban 2

Marḥaban! مرحبا Hello!

Kayfa ḥālak? كيف حالك How are you?

Egypt is also the source of my nightmares. Not the country itself, but the one person from Egypt causing them: my grandfather. He spoke to me in Egyptian Arabic, or English, never in Dutch. He used to be a scholar, played the violin and piano and owned a library that hardly fitted his large house..... And he owned me....

Without going into to much gruesome detail (hopefully), he lured me away from home by doing unspeakable things to me that made me a terrible infant at home. And my parents didn't understand why. I drove them up the walls apparently. But I was so small, and he had threatened me, if I said one word about what he did, ONE WORD. So I didn't.

He then told my parents that I could come and live with him, that he would sort me out, and so it happened. It was the start of a gruesome journey, travelling all over Europe and ending about 12 years later, when I was 15, in The Netherlands.

I would like to visit Egypt, but I fear hearing Egyptian Arabic, because the language triggers me, it gives me flashbacks and nightmares. And still I am  studying Arabic Poetry, I must be completely insane, right?

- to be continued -