The life of editor and writer Inger Boxsem is brutally shaken by a burnout and a long-term depression. During her illness she takes piles of notes. About the demanding television world in which she worked for years, her good-humoured but chaotic family, her admission to a clinic and her struggle with antidepressants. Inger talks candidly about her burnout. Does her environment see how sick she is? Read her story here.
The day I went to the clinic, winter set in. Just a week before that, I was raking up the fallen leaves in a t-shirt. I got warm in the low sun.
This morning, the Tuesday morning of my departure, the children shivered when I got up and it remained cool in the house, even after half an hour of running the heating. The sounds of cars driving away and mothers' cries to their children were muffled, a thick fog made the street invisible.
That fog didn't disappear en route to the south of the country, the promised sun did not materialize, and the drizzle turned into something - damn if it wasn't true - looked like snow during our journey. We didn't say much.
"What a crappy weather."
"The kids were tough, weren't they?"
“Hannah said she was sick of not seeing me for so long.” At the very tip of South Limburg, we stopped at a barrier. The clinic driveway was visible, the entrance was not. No hills, no copper-coloured beech hedges, no grazing sheep in sight. Wherever I looked, I saw fog.
'No man's land,' said Gijs.
The strongest memory of my arrival at the clinic is not the unreal feeling of watching a movie about someone else. Not my squinting at clearly confused people, estimating whether my fellow patients had excessive coke use or depression. It's the smell I remember. As soon as a nurse, who emphatically didn't look like that, pointed us down the corridor where my temporary room was located, an unmistakable hospital smell penetrated my nostrils. We passed a counter with a shutter for medicines and a nurse's station. It was not until the next day that it became clear to me that I actually had to take my medicines there, under the watchful eye of the just but strict nurses. We were held up by a patient who was moving from one room to another. A look at her room showed me a hospital bed. One on wheels and adjustable in height. Patient, I thought, patient.
How the hell did I end up here?
From:Bad circumstances (2021), Inger Boxsem
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