I am writing a book that is not yet a book. It is a collection of scenes, loose fragments, moments that have never let go of me. Sometimes I write a paragraph as if it were a short story, sometimes a loose shred of a memory that will only find its place later.
At the Writers Academy in Amsterdam, my teacher Tanja Heimans, herself the author of among other things De Huurmoeder, discovered something I did not dare believe myself: that I had talent. Especially the pieces in which I wrote about my childhood moved her. She said: "This is your voice. This is where your strength lies." Without her encouragement I might never have taken this project seriously.
The result is a book still in progress. Not a finished work, but a process that is allowed to be visible. A book in the making.
What I write about
About my childhood. About a mother who bent reality to her will, and about a child who learned to see through it. About institutions that looked the wrong way, about small moments that turned out to be big, and about the absurdity that arises when nothing is what it seems.
That sounds heavy, and sometimes it is. But many scenes are above all absurd. So absurd that all you can do is laugh. That dark humour isn't a trick. It's how I survived it, and how I can tell it now.
How I write
I write in scenes, not chapters. A smell, a sentence someone said, an object on the kitchen table: that's where it starts. From that one image I write out the moment, as precisely as I can, without explaining what it means. The reader gets to feel it.
Not every fragment comes at once. Some are done in fifteen minutes, others I leave for a long time before I dare to finish them. I cut a lot. What remains has to be right: not one word too many, and no emotion forced on the reader.
The form of 365 fragments gives me something to hold on to. I don't have to tell a whole life in one go. One moment a day. Together they form the story, even when they're not in order.
365 times starting over
Some mothers bake apple pies. Mine baked accusations. She did not only cut vegetables in the kitchen, but also my reputation at institutions.
What do you do with a childhood full of bizarre scenes that resemble an absurd film more than a family history? You write them down. One for each day. 365 times.
In this book you find fragments that are sometimes bitter, sometimes dark humour, and always incredibly real. From nail clippings to the moment my mother reported me to child services as a child abuser.
It is not an ode to her, but an inventory of the absurdity. A year of starting over, not because I wanted to, but because it was the only way to survive.
Maybe this book will become a novel, maybe a bundle of fragments. Maybe it will stay something in between. But what I know for certain: this time I will keep writing. Not to look back, but to move forward. 365 times.