Thoughts and Feelings after My Discussion with My Tutor and Yesterday’s Classes

Yesterday, we had our first communication skills class and I had my 10-minute discussion with Dannie, our tutor. Both got me thinking about what actually I’m doing in this programme. I like it and I find it really interesting, but what in the world does a person who appears to have about the worst communication skills to be imagined – at least, in the discussion with Dannie, cause I got completely “locked up inside” at some question about them -, do in this programme, even if she enrolled into it mostly out of interest in the subject matter and cause she doesn’t know what she wants to major in yet – so that a one-year programme was the most convenient? Maybe I’m really naive, thinking I could do this cause it interests me. Maybe I’m just immature. I like to think that my stupidity is relative compared to the other part-time students, all of whom are in their thirties, and that I would be relatively less stupid amongst other recent high school graduates in the full-time programme. I always hope this is the case, but I do know that, whether or not my difficulties are significant and whether or not they’re permanent, I still do have some communicative deficits.

I’m unwilling to conclude, after only four weeks, that I should quit right away and not even bother about completing this year, but in some ways I feel it’s my duty to cause I only bother my fellow students and I’ve by now made a fool of myself in front of the tutor twice. I feel I cannot stay in the programme and say: “Hey, I like this so I’m going to stay enrolled.” I feel I’m too much of a burden to think like that, and that’s why I keep hoping that this was only one experience and I’m not doing that badly after all. That’s the only thought that can keep those “You have to quit cause you are a burden to the other students and the tutor” and “You have to quit cause you aren’t fit for this anyway” voices (two different perspectives, for clarity’s sake) from getting their way. This may sound like some “You have to hold on” thing, and, in a way, it is – cause failing this education would likely lead to the irrational belief that no college education is appropriate for me (even though applied psychology is not the only education and Saxcion is not the only college/university) -, but in some ways, it’s really different, in that this isn’t a must (I hate the statement, made by Arda in early July, that an education was a must in order to progress at training home) but something I like, including communication skills and the other quite practical classes, like problem-cenbtred education / job field orientation (a class in which cases relevant to the fields graduates who started with this programme generally work in are discussed and dealt with). So there is the component of having to pass this cause it’s not even university and I should actually be too good for this and the whole thing, and there’s this part of having to pass it simply cause I enjoy it. And there are the people who tell me this is too low-level for me and the people who tell me I am not going to work in this field anyway, and the people who can’t stop making analogies of my education with my personal situation which really are stupid arguments (in fact, the fact that I’m a client of people who studied something you can study after this year, is actually a reason not to study this), and those people who actually don’t state their opinions besides that I should do what I want or something like that cause they either don’t really know me yet or they don’t want to judge me. And there are these classes like communication skills and job field orientation in which at least I don’t do much worse than the other students (I’m still probably “unconsciously incompetent”, as Dannie calls it) and a lot of situations in which I have quite nice discussions with people no matter what – an example about which I’m not sure it was even appropriate was my chatting with strangers at the line five bus stop after my first day of school (but I assume it was appropriate as they chatted back and themselves thought it was approriate to ask me all sorts of questions cause I’m blind) -, and these situations in which I get completely “locked up inside”, of which I’ve had two while at school now, both in front of Dannie and one in front of my whole group. And there is, obviously, psychology class – the only solely theoretical class we got this quarter -, which I just plain like and seem to get along with quite well. So what do I do? Just plain go back to school next Monday, I guess, and do a nice little interview with someone about their job for communication skills class and do a good interview with an elementary school teacher (I already made the appointment) about problem behaviour in the classroom for job field orientation and study chapter six of my psychology book and get my communication skills book and get it scanned cause we’ll indeed need it, even though I seemed to have heard we wouldn’t need to. And hope people don’t think all the things about me I think they do think about me.

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Long Thoughts on Hiring Independent Living Assistance and My Current and Future Situation

Why is it that I in one respect want to be, and think I can be, a perfectly normal, intelligent college student who is perfectly capable of taking responsibility for her own life and doesn’t need anyone to help her any more than any other intelligent college student would, and yet at the same time I feel the above identity is something forced by others and I’m actually nothing more than a not-too-intelligent, behaviourally disturbed, disabled girl who will be needing assistance for all of her life? And yet I am intelligent, blind and have some form of more or less significant behaviour trouble that is more or less temporary. Is it about this behaviour stuff again, or is it about something else?

In some way, intelligence combined with behavioural problems, doesn’t mean a person can’t be productive. In fact, we all know that some famous scientists and technicians are now suspected to have been autistic. But the thing is, I don’t want to sit in my study 24/7 designing new operating systems or thinking out new laws of physics, or, for that matter, thinking out my theories on ethics and metaphysics. You know, I want to have a *real* job someday. And I feel, sort of, that people who are employed or want to be employed in anything other than high-quality scientific research (or jobs created for them by their carers, like “recovery workers” in mental health centres), cannot accept any form of assistance beyond that which most people receive (cause of course most people visit a hairdresser to get a haircut even if they can see to do it themselves). Or maybe it practically doesn’t work that way – I think it does in some way, in that the people who need assistance are generally the less competent ones -, but I just can’t accept studying to become competitively employed and at the same time requiring assistance. Or maybe the constant nagging about my probably getting help with this and help with that when I’m out of training home only reminds me of that “we’re very eager to teach you independence, as long as you don’t become so independent that we can’t help you anymore” attitude that my parents warn me about and that I sense is there at least to a certain extent with some staff folks.

Of course, I must say here that there is a difference between assistance cause you’re blind and assistance cause you have behavioural problems. The former can mostly be done by people outside of the healthcare profession – like, most of my American acquaintances hire their colleagues or fellow students for these tasks and the only reason why I would need to hire a professional housekeeping assistant to do my cleaning, is cause the government would pay me to hire her. The latter, which some blind people without known additional disabilities receive too, is always provided by professionals with their education in social pedagogical work (SPW) or its higher level equivalent SPH. These are the same type of people who work here at training home (well, not the same people of course, but at least they got the same education) and their job is to help the client with some more fundamental responsibilities, like creating a support network or structuring their housekeeping. And these are the type of things I truly think are intrinsically incompatible with regular education or employment. (Yes, that does include my current education, and I do have a lot of difficulty with that paradoxical situaiton of mine.) I feel – and I don’t know whether this is correct or not -, that if you’re smart enough to go to college, you should be smart enough to manage these things on your own, or you should be going to college just cause learning is a passion of yours – cause some autistics who do require assistance on social/behavioural grounds, do go to college.

There is this “in between” thing in the blindness field. Accidentally, I found a job offer for an independent living coach (someone who goes to people’s homes to assist them in their independent living) on one of the blindness service agencies’ website: some of the person’s tasks could be done quite well by non-professionals – like reading mail and helping witt administrative tasks – and are things I’m not sure I will be able to do fully independently (some mail is very difficult to scan and some forms are quite inaccessible, for example), yet this folk was also supposed to assist with these networking/structuring/etc. tasks, would have a signalling function, and an SPW/SPH education was required. I truly hope I can keep these folks out of my house once I leave training home. I truly have to think out how I’m going to do some things, that I now have assistance with but that are clearly not a housekeeping assistant’s task (and besides, I’m not sure I want a housekeeping assistant), once I’m living on my own. Stupid, that I’ve been living here for eight months and still haven’t figured out that.

So, there is this part of mine who doesn’t want any assistance or only some assistance every once in a while to do deep cleaning – and mostly would love to hire someone not employed in the healthcare profession cause that decreases the risk of responsibilities being taken away -, because getting assistance means you’re incompetent and can’t get a job – and this part of mine is convinced she can get a job if she just gets her college degree and works hard enough. (By the way, there are actually several different perspectives within my mind that are on this issue roughly the same but differ on some other topics.) Yet there is also this part of mine, that totally incapable girl. She thinks she requires a lot of assistance cause of behavioural/social/communicative difficulties – not just disruptive behaviour. She sees evidence, in the fact that I was at first unable to buy a railroad ticket a few weeks ago (cause the situation confused me), that she can’t do these things for herself (I can buy railroad tickets perfectly well) and, in the fact that Renee left cause she didn’t know what to do, evidence for the idea that she’s truly too difficult to handle and belongs in the mental health system. This is not saying I need 24-hour care or something, but what it says is that I have fundamental impairments in social/behaviourral/communicative functioning that aren’t going to go away once I’m learning to adjust to some emotional difficulties, and that do require to be addressed after I leave training home. It’s not something I want, cause this image conflicts with my image of the perfectly normal, intelligent college student or worker and with the – other part – responsible user of services, the part who does use housekeeping assistance but keeps a very close eye on the fact that hired help isn’t going to take away her responsibility. I’m not sure which of these I truly want, cause what I want is to be realistic and I have no image of what that means, or, to be exact, it’s about the same as with having a standard place to put my keys: One? I have dozens.

There is a real difference between having no image and having multiple. A few weeks ago, I realized that I had no idea, as in a defined image, of what I could or would or should or hoped or feared to be in a few years; in fact, the only “future” image I have is one of being 21 that can’t come true (in this image, I would be a sophomore at university). So I tried to think out what this image would be like, and the first thing I came up with, was someone, “Undefined”. But “Undefined” would have to be defined to have any usefulness, either theoretical or practical (this was, obviously, all theoretical). If I design a “me”, but give her no qualities or wishes or feelings or thoughts, what can this “me” do? My first thought was that I had to “fill in the blanks” for this undefined me-image, but how am I going to fill in blanks when I have nothing to fill them with? It’s the same situation which I’ve encountered very often, when trying to send all the inside parts to the other end of the universe: these images make up who I am, so what would remain if I threw them all away? So, instead of being nothing, my could-be-self-image would be a blur of qualities and abilities and activities and difficulties and beliefs like my current self-image is a blur of qualities and abilities and activities and difficulties and beliefs. So, as much as I can’t be realistic about my current situation without saying I’m a college student and a training home client and a Socialist Party member and a pro-life activist and self-reliant and dependent and have a sense of humour and have been throwing a lot of tantrums lately, I cannot be realistic about what my future situation might be like without using the perceived qualities and abilities and activities and difficulties and beliefs that are attached to the concept of me in so many years. If I didn’t have any idea of what I might be like in a few years, why would I care? I don’t have an intrinsic need to defy every attemtp at defining what I might become, just like I don’t have an intrinsic need to defy any attempt at defining my current situation; the reason I do defy each and every attemtp at defining me, is cause I feel that none of them are “realistic”. But what *is* realistic, if nothing is? The thing is I want others, and myself, to stop pretending that their specific paradigm is the only correct one, cause I don’t buy into the “we see you act this way” argument, used by Arda in defining my abilities in early July, anymore – and I can’t even do this when my future is concerned, cause no-one can see what I will be like. I do have many images, like I do have my parents’ opinions on my current situation that oppose Renee’s and are more severe than Arda’s, and I have to be able, somehow, to pick the elements of each that are, in my opinion, correct – or I should decide who is going to do this for me, ie. to whose paradigm I’m going to conform.

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School Musings

School was quite interesting yesterday. Psychology was given by another instructor than our usual one (cause he was ill), which was a great thing since this one is a lot better. The other prof usually drifts off topic quite easily so that it is interesting (I like his examples), but not quite understandable. This one gave nice examples, too, but was still understandable. Did mean that you didn’t really have to pay attention if you’d read the book chapters his lecture was about – which I had -, but it wasn’t boring either.

We also got this subject called either “job field orientzation” or “problem-centred education”, which is some class where you learn to solve job-onriented cases using a specific method. The topics are interesting, but the method sucks and our instructor seems not to understand the thing, either. On top of this, I missed class last week, so I hope it’s still getting somewhere. Our first task is related to a teacher with his unmanageable fifth grade class including six children with ADHD traits, and none of us really know what our job is in this task (someone said we are like an exernal agency consulted by the teacher or something). I hope the next task will be better, and I think it will cause I already found out that in this case, we are supposed to be psychodiagnostic workers (people who administer psychological tests) who have to create a plan to evaluate a problem child. At least I think that’s something I know a lot about. And task three is very boring cause it’s related to the labour and human resources job fields, which don’t interest me the slightest bit.

The programme designed to prepare students for jobs in human resources, vocational rehab, etc., called Personnel & Labour (in a really bad literal translation), was also the topic of a new class called orientation to Saxion’s programmes. I don’t think this programme is interesting, but the information we got was more interesting than I thought, but that was mostly cause one of the people who told about the programme, now worked as a student counsellor in secondary education and a lot of what she said is familiar to me, only having been a secondary school student last year. So not really anything about the programme, but more that this woman had an interesting story to tell. Next week I think the programme discussed will be psychodiagnostic work.

In short, school’s still interesting, and I try to be happy about that. I still have this “this should be too easy” feeling and I tend to get that sense a lot when talking with my parents – probably partly cause I remember their negative comments when I was planning this programme and I tend to interpret everything in accordance with that opinion -, but I try to be honest with myself about what I like and what I don’t. I chose this thing cause it interests me and not for any other reason, so there.

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Ramblings on Decisions, Behaviour Problems, and My Current Situation

Freaked out again today. Stupid scanning stuff again and Arda came round with the care agreement (stupid term, but it is the thing which you have to sign in order to stay here). Didn’t want to sign the thing, and still don’t. Arda dramatized saying that then it would be over by the 15th. 18th, I corrected, but I hardly care. I wanted to leave anyway. I don’t feel there is any place I belong, but there is no point in wasting taxpayers’ money by staying in an agency that can’t serve me anyway. The only reason I stay, and sort of hope for some magic inspiration to change the thing about myself that is blocking my progress, is that I have no other place to live. I’ve always dreamt and hoped that somewhere out there, there was a place I would belong as far as services or the lack thereof are concerned, but I have lost that illusion about training home. I still had it, back in February, when I wrote about the disability service field and the difficulty in being atypical, but I lost it as time went by and I got only more confused instead of less (I’d hoped I would develop that magic thing called “realism” as I went along making progress here). Maybe I should go back to the old attitude, pretending I don’t have any difficulties or impairments. After all, that’s the state in which I managed six years in the same setting. But honestly I know that it was not the uninvolvement with agencies that gave me that stability, but the consistency in people’s expectations of me and my inability to decide anything else. Now even training home folks don’t agree on some things that I find important – particularly, Renee and Arda seem to disagree considerably -, and even if they did agree, my parents and my sister wouldn’t. And besides, there’ve been moments when I truly did make my own decisions, even though I’d most likely not have gone to rehab if my father hadn’t said that he agreed. In other words, at least for the most part of my high school years, everything was quite clear and my only duty was to do what I was told to do. There were some situations when expectations were inconsistent, but most were solved by my parents – in fact, the first that wasn’t, was the Van O. issue in 2004 -, and I did rebel of course – like not doing my schoolwork in ninth grade -, but I mostly let others make the important decisons for me. I want to make the point that this is not something decided by my parents per se, but as much by me. In fact, it *is* safe to let others make my decisons. Recall the situation of late 2004 and early 2005, when I don’t even think the main problem was that I was not making the same decisons my parents wanted me to make (though they were obviously disappointed) but that I was *not* making decisions. I was resenting my parents for making important decisons for me (or so I thought), yet at the same time I was longing for them to support me in my decison-making like they’d done before. It seems something similar is happening now, both in the studying thing and in my statements that I want to leave: I know that the folks here have their opinions – they want me to do these studies and they want me to stay here to complete my training -, but they can’t make me do these things. The thing is, I know this is getting nowhere and I don’t know how to change it – obviously, I should alter my behaviour, but I try and apparently it doesn’t work out -, and yet I don’t know where I stand at all.

I’m sure that a lot of my behaviour stuff of 2004 and early 2005 was related to my difficulties at the time – not everything was, cause I have always had a low frustration tolerance, but there is certainly a huge difference between just getting frustrated easily and the situation I was in then and am in now -, and yet at the same time I saw my behaviour problems as a reason to feel that I wouldn’t function in some places, like college or even rehab. It’s the same again. Someone made this comment on Tuesday that she thought I wanted the folks to kick me out of here so that I could think negatively about myself. It’s not that way. It’s just that I’ve begun to lose faith that I am not an anti-social, behaviourally disturbed bitch. In fact, I cannot recall any specific time when I was not this way, though I know that I used to be doing better, and I find it hard to draw a line between “normal for me” (whether that is just having bad qualities or really being disordered) and “not normal for me”. In other words, I’m not sure I should hope to be able to improve, even though I still expect myself to (cause it would be unacceptable and distressing if I didn’t) and I don’t show my uncertainty in rational discussions (cause I fear people will believe me then). Yet at the same time I want to show my uncertainty, cause it’s still there and it really impacts what I call “realism”. I don’t want people to believe I’m normally fine when I’m not, just like I don’t want people to give up on me when this might (hopefully) get better. So it sometimes seems “realistic” to kick me out cause this is not the right place for me, and at times it seems “realistic” to allow me to stay here cause I’m expected to go to college and move out on my own after training here, or even not to allow me to stay here cause I’m capable of living on my own already. And I want to be realistic. And everyone has different opinions of what that means, and I defy them as a rule cause I don’t know.

Now what do I do? Part of me wants to give up and go out of here, wandering the streets till I end up in some homeless shelter (which I don’t as long as I still have this apartment, but you know what I mean), or convince the staff to give up on me and kick me back out to my parents, or see that I get on the long waiting lists in the psychiatric system cause that’s where I belong. Part of me wants to call the agency in my area that is involved with housing (don’t even know which) and see that I get a room to live in on my own cause I want all these professionals to stop caring for me or “teaching me independence” and pretending they’re superior and I’m inferior cause I’m the client and they’re the staff (not saying anyone says so) or because I have a romantic image of living on my own or because I should’ve been in Nijmegen by now. And yet another part of me wants to stay here cause the other two options are too polarized and it’s not worth the effort pursuing either now. And I am free to go if I want to. It *is* my choice to stay here, and yet I don’t want it to be cause it is not at all my choice at the same time. I’m rational enough to know that I can’t separate these parts too much, cause I simply cannot do more than one of these and there is no in-between consensus to be reached. (You could say that staying here is an in-between thing, but it is not cause therhe is no greater agreement inside my mind about thsi option than about any of the others.) I’m not sure about the whole thing. I want to pursue my college cause it interests me and I don’t want to pursue it cause it really does take more energy than I can currently handle and I’ve been told that it will get a lot busier in a few weeks, and I have to pursue college cause I have to learn to combine housekeeping and studying and because most of my classmates have jobs along with their studying and can do it as well. And I want to stay here cause I want to pursue my training and I hope I can still make progress and I don’t want to stay here cause I want to be independent now and I have to stay here cause I have no other place to live and I have to leave cause I should be too good for this and I might be too bad for this. And I want everyone to stop defining me cause I want to define myself and I want them to define me completely so that I can stop taking responsibility for my situation. Guess I’m still confused.

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Lots of Confused Ramblings Again

I’m hypocritical if I don’t leave my home, but I’m rational enough to know that there’s nowhere I can go. When I’m in a confused state and scream that it’s my duty to go away or that I want to go away, people are like: “Well, what about calling the homeless shelter?” It’s meant to reflect my over-the-top reaction, cause everyone probably knows that I wouldn’t be considered homeless if I left on my own initiative. I know that, being over eighteen, there’s no point in my just running away for the “simple” reason that I can’t cope with my situation here. Besides, it’s largely my own problem, so it wouldn’t solve anything if I just caught line five and drove to the station and well, whatever’s next.

There is, however, some real rational component in my statements about needing to leave, that is that I’m still confused whether I actually belong here. Yes, after eight months, and with one more year to go if I haven’t done something so bad that they *are* going to kick me out (which I don’t hope I will). In one way, yes, I am arrogant and I do feel I don’t need the people’s “help”. People are eager to use that arrogancy as synonymous with disrespect
cause my negative ways of displaying it come across quite disrespectfully, but in one sense, I’m sick of having to play the dutiful, pitiful client who needs professional carers to determine what she needs and how she’s going to achieve it. I’m pissed off with particularly Renee’s seemingly cooperative attempts at clarifying my position. I do not want to hear those remarks again, like “I’m here to help you!” Sure you are, but maybe I didn’t want you to help me. I just had to clean my apartment, something I’ve done independently for months, and now suddenly Renee was here to help. When putting this on my schedule, she did not even define what she was going to help me with. Turned out she was going to vacuum (which I can do perfectly well myself) and sweep away the spider webs in high places I cannot reach (gonna buy some thing to stand on), by the way without informing me what she was going to do. I am not even sure whether she did the one thing I HAD asked her to do, but that might be cause we got into an argument when she was here. And on Monday, when we were at Deventer station to go to Saxion, she was making these comments about how I did not need to learn the way out of the station cause I was going to ask for travel assistance anyway (go figure, having walked the same route forty times by the end of this year but still requiring assistance) and was pulling me away from some people cause I touched them with my cane (that is exactly what that thing is for). Now that is what I think is arrogant. I am expected to behave like an adult, so then stop treating me like a child (of course it is understandable if I am acting like a child, but walking the station platform is not acting like a child). By the way, eventually Renee apologized for her overprotective behaviour and I apologized for my rudeness.

In one way, I think I am too troubled for this place. I am behaviourally disturbed and it is my duty to leave cause I am only abusing the staff. I am not sure where to go in this state, cause the regular system only expects mentally retarded people to misbehave like I do (which, of course, is stupid cause all mildly intellectually disabled clients here behave perfectly well). In another sense, I want to be out of the whole stupid disabiltiy service system. I want to go to college or get a job or whatever and I know the attitudes my friends hold that everyone who has been in the system for a long while, is doomed to a life of unproductivity. I make a point of never informing my online friends of how I am doing here, cause they will bash at me and tell me to go live on my own and become really independent. And I want to, and I want Renee to stop telling me each and every time we get to discuss it that I finally have to accept that there are people out there who get paid to help me with things. And at the same time, I want this whole thing to be over. I want to give in to the fact (well, not fact, rather idea) that I am not going to get any better anyway. I am sick of that contradictio in terminis, feeling that the only thing I hear nowadays are accusations of what all I am doing wrong behaviourally (and I do try not to behave badly, but probably no-one will believe me), so how can I not be a stupid, behaviourally disordered antisocial who is destined to a life of sheltered living and unproductivity, yet at the same time being expected to make progress. If you tell me that I will need to accept getting help anyway, then what is the point in learning skills? I made this point on Tuesday saying that, if the fact that I “will be getting assistance anyway” meant I didn’t need to learn some route, I could say this of every single route. Like, Renee eventually left me alone on Monday and I ran into a fellow student, who helped me get to school, and on my way back, I walked to the station with some classmates. It is abusing them (Renee didn’t agree and was using the argument that people doing a social type of education would likely want to help), but if that is what I need to do… I am not sure. I am confused. Always. I want to quit my studies cause people are apparently unwilling to even help me get started with the scanning thing so that I can proceed independently, cause they apparently don’t bother lookign at the central client schedule to see they were supposed to (yes, I am filling in meanings, but Renee keeps filling in negative so-called purposes of my behaviour, too) and I cannot do this anyway cause I am not communicative at all (people use really stupid arguments to justify my doing this education), and yet I want to go on cause I find it interesting and I silently hope I do have the communicative skills I did have last year but apparently lost int he process of whatever. And I want to stay here cause I want to learn more independence, particularly in planning, adn yet I want to leave cause I am supposed to be doign much better on my own and I want to go to some sheltered place cause I am not fit for independence anyway. And I want none of this cause I am confused. Is this what I used to call realism? I wanted to be realistic about my situation. That is why I delayed college again for 2006. I lost my willingness to conform to what my parents said was my sitaution, cause I wasn’t sure I agreed. At one point, I said I had to look at each attempt at defining my situation equally critically. Apparently, it means defying each attempt. And wanting someone to take care of the whole thing and stop demanding I make my own choices. And feeling I should be choosing to go away cause I should be better than this. I can’t hold on and I have to rub along and I don’t care. Go figure. I am majorly confused, but that’s become old news and totally irrelevant.

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