History - Part 8

I think the Ruyterstee (ya, that was the name of the psychiatric hospital for kiddies I got send to) actually in a way saved me from going bad. Hum, that's not really coming out the way I want to. When I left my parents house I didn't care about most things anymore. I wasn't reckless, suicidal or destructive on purpose by that time. I just couldn't care less what would happen to me or anything around me. Which looking back is for me about the most dangerous state of mind I can be in.
I can recall one of the tests before I got send away where there were different carton boxes representing people around you and a stack of little cards with all kinds of activities and stuff and you had to put them in the different boxes. Like with who do you cuddle most and stuff. And it was hard. All those things mentioned were so far from my life that I gave up thinking and shoved most in the don't know box, which couldn't hold them all even. I felt mostly stupid because I thought I was failing a test, even though I didn't know what test and how to make it right.
Which might just be the story of my life. It's all a big test and nobody tells me the rules or how to pass it. And always I feel stupid. Being rational about it never seems to change that feeling. I know I'm not stupid. Except that I am.
People at the Ruyterstee had issues. Visible issues. It was easy to blend in, in a way, since there was no need to pretend to be normal. Whatever normal is. I was sure I had issues, although I was sure it was me. It was a relief to just be able to be nuts. Since clearly I had to be nuts else they wouldn't have send me there no? That I wasn't cutting myself open each day or behaved in other unusual ways didn't say anything about being normal. Since I was a bad kid. And sick.
'You can come home again when you're better.' I had no clue what better was, but if it would make me get back to my parents I pretty sure didn't want to become better.
At one point I visited my parents house again (after a loooong period of not wanting that) and they had thrown away all my things that I hadn't taken with me. Maybe at that point I realized that I was never going to live there again. And that there actually was no place anywhere I belonged. A stranger in a strange land.
It was good for me to notice that people in a way cared about me. Although there was always that background noise that claimed they only did because it was their job. Which was also true. But in a way it was enough (or well, is it) to get me out of the indifference.