Ten years after the fall

Dear Bloggers,

In 2003 we just moved into this house, I slipped and fell down the stairs. The doctor was called and as it looked bad as they thought i had broken my neck or spine, the ambulance service was called. The light was out in my head and things past around me in a far distance. The paramedics were rushing in, to treat a man who’d had made a crash landing from the stairs, when they spotted me lying in the middle of the hall next to the staircase.

I was conscious, alive and talking with a double tongue- but my blood pressure and pulse were normal, Only my head and left hand hurt. I can't remember much of that night. The next morning when i was woken up by the nurse. The doctor said that i should consider myself lucky.

It was 11am and I said i wanted to go home: but the medics persuaded her to stay at the hospital.'If you get a second chance in life, you ask yourself what you are going to do with it,' 

My head soon hurt so much that I was sent for a CT scan.
The scan showed I was suffering a contusion but there were no hematomas on the scan but there was a lot of activity across the brain.‘I’ll never know what happened. Last thing i remember that i was on top of the stairs. 

I was transferred to the head trauma centre at the local hospital in Heerenveen, and by the time my wife arrived from our home 15 minutes later, They gave her a status update that there might be a chance on brain damage and only time could tell.
Thankfully the paramedics did everything to save me, but my life nonetheless changed for ever that night.Before her accident, this fit and fiercely independent young man, who became friends with everyone became a lot more distant even to the ones the closest to me. Emotional there was no such thing as that one guy that I vaguely recognized from the past. The body was me but I was trapped in my own brain. And somehow I am still searching for the old me. 
 

  
I was now facing an arduous recovery. The injury left me with a blurred vision in the left eye, extreme exhaustion and what I would describe as a ‘constant heaviness’ in the head.
Now, ten years on, I need 8 hours sleep a night any less and I suffer from‘cracking headaches’ that can last for several days. And I am yawning all the way when i am behind the wheel. I also have occasional memory lapses. I am still hopeful things will keep improving, but there are no guarantees.'I could have kept a diary so I can remind myself I am getting better,' but no I didn't and it is hard to remember after all those years.
Every year, 21,000 people are admitted to hospital in the Netherlands with a brain injury. 

It’s likely that I've hit the wall with my head when I fell down the stairs or was knocked out by the hard floor. But the causes of brain injuries can range from falling down the stairs, to a stroke or heart attack that interrupts the brain’s oxygen supply.
‘I made a really good recovery they say, but often patients don’t do so well.
'It depends on the kind of injury, as well as the support they get,’ said my Neurologist.
When the brain is injured, it swells like any other body part, he explained.
‘But the skull is fixed — there’s nowhere for the brain to go, so it gets squashed. That’s why rapid diagnosis is needed.

‘The regions of the brain that control the basic functions that support life can get squashed out of the tiny hole at the bottom of the skull where the brain meets the spinal cord. That’s often what kills patients.’ More and more people are surviving brain injury and stroke, but the long-term consequences can be devastating. In my case my character changed.
The area of the brain that controls emotions may be damaged, as a result of which a patient’s personality can change. Rates of depression and anxiety are high, often leading to relationship breakdown. And that is something that still scares me.

Cognitive and memory problems are common, too, which can make your job impossible.
The brain moves when it is injured, which may cause the axons — fibres that send signals between brain cells — to tear, so signals travel more slowly.Tiredness is also a problem, as the brain must work harder in everyday tasks. The area controlling sleep can be damaged, too.

After leaving hospital, I spent at least four months at home, sleeping for much of the day and taking short walks. In the beginning I was falling over and I lied to my wife that nothing happened.
Gradually, the energy began to return. And before long, I hit upon a desire to take a long walk.Secretly, I made plans to get back to the point were i was before the accident. So with a lot of help from good friends. I learned most things back although calculating from the head is still not back, furthermore my character has still not changed back. I am more grumpy and I am missing the soft side of me. It is somewhere out there but I have not found it yet. I am afraid that somethings are not changing back.

‘If you get a second chance in life, you ask yourself what you are going to do with it,’
‘I wanted to get away from everything to think.’ In July, five months after the accident, I set off and got back to my working place again. Language was the main problem as English is the language used among an international crew. My wife had to do the talking as I could not find the words. Very irritating when you know what to say but simply cannot speak the language anymore. I was totally frustrated and went off like a mad man on my wife. Who had done the best way of English she could but there was no appreciation from my side only anger.

The doctors thought it would provide a goal, and a good rehabilitation process.
‘I think I was still slightly not with it. Lots of people have said to my wife, “I can’t believe that you don't let him go” but she said he is 35 and I still love him. I guess that she is longing for the guy she dell in love with. I was so focused on my own recovery that I forgot to work on my soft side. They couldn’t really stop me even if they’d tried. I’ve gone deep but believe me, I never been a quitter.’

It was a journey that would have tested even the most hardened. It has been hell week for more than a year in a row. Most people I met were doing just a section of the epic stretch. They were astounded that this young man was attempting to do the whole thing alone.
I practised from dawn till dusk on languages for six months, with only a few stops. I had to get back in the saddle and feed my family again.

I endured moments of ‘desperate’ loneliness and such a sore head that ‘if someone had offered to cut it off, I’d have said yes’. 
 

Some things, though, have changed for the better.
‘I don't think I’ve become a nicer person. Everyone in my family says they preferred the old me. 'It’s as if I’ve had an edge knocked off, I don’t have the energy to bulldoze through life anymore. ‘I’m less patient, and more openly emotional. I’ve got a calmness that I’ve never had before.’ Before I would fight with everyone and take up the discussion.
I prefer not to dwell on what happened that night it sometimes makes me curious, but I’m not sure I want to open that door again.

The doctors warned me that my brain injury can lead to depression, but I think it’s had the reverse effect on me. ‘From the moment I woke up that morning in hospital, I felt like I was drunk and really happy. ‘I’ve experienced depression, and it’s only when you nearly lose your life that you feel guilty that you ever had those dark thoughts that you wanted to end it.

‘You think: “Woah, hang on a minute! I actually want to stay alive.”



The Old Sailor,

When the thrill has left your marriage

Dear Bloggers,

Let me make one thing clear straight away. I am in a relationship for 20 years with the same women. Although the love is still there it is not that sparkling anymore as in the beginning. A lot of couples around me experience the same thing and in several cases this has ended into a divorce. Or what I think is even worse that some of them will start a double life by having a girl- or boyfriend next to their spouse and kids.

I have been wondering about this issue as I don’t understand why these people are doing this, is it pure lust or is it because their love turned into something like hate? Why does this happen? Does it solve your problems or do you get into even more trouble if you try to find back the old spark? If I should believe what they are writing in articles about this. You will not find any men’s magazines about this issue. 

Generally speaking, magazine articles about how to improve your sex life, especially in marriage or a long-term relationship contain the same advice: candles, hot baths and soft music are often invoked. The question is why your partner loses interest in having sex with you.
That may be because these “better sex” stories are a pile of women’s magazines. I don’t know about you, but candles always make me think of church, baths are something my mother made me take, and soft music reminds me of going to the dentist. Definite all of them are turn-offs.

But how do you regain the passion in your relationship when you feel it's slipping away? Is it possible? Or when that train has left the station, is it too late to bring it back?
“A lot of people get to that point and have to decide what to do about it,” at least that is what I think. “Novelty is sexually interesting to most people -- not always to the point that they will act on it, but the idea has a little bit of a thrill to it, for men or women.”

In dealing with  my own marriage and we have been together for a while,more than twenty years. “Sometimes with a long-term partner, a person feels like they know every freckle on that other person’s body.”  The solution may lie in exploring the unfamiliar part though not necessarily.

“For some people, predictability is very exciting,” for example having sex on a Wednesday night for others this does not work at all. “You have to figure out if you’re a ‘surprise’ or ‘predictability’ person. If you’re a surprise person, asking your partner to surprise you is a good first step. If you’re a predictability person, and there is something predictably bad or neutral about your sexual experience, getting some changes in there can be a positive thing.”

Those same darn women’s magazines often offer intimacy as the tonic to save the foundering sex life. You’ve drifted apart, and that is where the logic goes. Take interest in his life, his work, his recreation, even if it’s watching retired athletes. Yelling at each other about which programme should be seen on TV. But there is a fine line between being cared for and being under stress.

“Sometimes too much closeness stifles desire,”  would I say.  We had less trouble in the days when I was sailing: “Separateness is a precondition for connection. When intimacy collapses into fusion, it is not a lack of closeness but too much closeness that impedes desire." Don’t call each other ten times a day and don’t ask each other about every little thing. “These questions turn intimacy into surveillance.” And this is defenitly a killer for your relation.

Sometimes a man’s lack of desire is really about something else. “In those situations there is often something going on that is unexpressed or unknown. Most often, it comes down that lack of attraction stems from anger. Perhaps your anger is misplaced; perhaps you are angry at her because you are not attracted to her. You can get to the source of your anger and beyond in therapy. But getting down to getting down is the relationship equivalent of advanced physics.

“You have to be able to experience conflicting feelings, or difficult feelings,” I would call it  the rapprochement process. “If you are holding yourself back all the time, you don’t have to face what you might be feeling. But if you get close to her in bed and if you get aroused, there might be a lot of conflicting stuff that comes up in your head. You want to be with her, you want to make her happy......but on the other side you are angry with her.” To get past the anger, and on to the fun part, you have to be willing to let down your guard, and let love in.

There’s nothing wrong with candles and baths -- or, for that matter, lingerie and scented oils. Those are all stand-ins for the little signals most couples have. Most couples signals are subtler: being in bed and awake at the same time, reaching out to one another on a weekend morning, making some gesture.

You may pine for the days of spontaneity that you enjoyed when your relationship was young  making love at odd hours, in the least likely places, just because you felt like it. But if you have small children, and both having a career, and the usual laundry list of responsibilities, the chances of you spontaneously hooking up without some planning are about like the chance of your playing in the national soccer team, when you’re over 40. And white. It takes a little doing to have a passion in marriage.

There is nothing wrong with planning to have sex, is there? Thinking about it ahead of time might just get you in the mood, just as thinking about what you’re going to eat before you go to a good restaurant only whets the appetite. And don’t be so sure that you know that woman that you’re with. In her work there might be someone more atractive that is how it goes with long married couples, I have found out that I don’t always know what creates sexual arousal in my long-term partner.

I try and lay out my own idiosyncrasies -- what 'does it' for me or what did it for her when we were younger and at our first dates,” What I try to say is: “There is often a moment of revelation: ‘I always thought you liked that!’ Or, ‘I always thought you hated that!’ And it’s often based on something the other person said 20 years ago when you tried something once. So you closed off one portion of sexual experimentation or behavior because of one errant comment.”

A lot can happen in those intervening years. Isn’t it time you found out what’s going on beneath the surface? 
I did not find all the answers yet.

The Old Sailor,

Men and wanting only one thing

Dear Bloggers,

Sex researchers are peculiar beasts. Armed with their tape measures, clipboards, surveys, and hidden cameras, they seek to provide a peephole from which to scrutinize that most private of spheres, human sexuality.

The idea that men think about sex every seven seconds, like the claim that we only use 10 percent of our brains, is often repeated but rarely sourced. The number doesn't bear up against scrutiny. According to the Kinsey Report, 54% of men think about sex every day or several times a day, 43 percent a few times a week or a few times a month, and 4 percent less than once a month. Even though the Kinsey Report relies on men to self-report on how often they think about sex, it's still eye opening to find that just under half of men aren't even thinking about sex once a day. Clearly, the seven-second rule may be a tad hyperbolic.

“Not Tonight, Honey” is a well known phrase for most man and this might lead to sexual frustration. As man are not all that good at being turned down.

The stereotype about the sex-starved man and the disinterested woman may be more than just a cliche. As it turns out, the instant a woman enters a secure relationship, her sex drive begins to plummet. Four years in, a German study found, fewer than half of women wanted regular sex. And after 20 years, only 20 percent did.

Among men, libido held steady no matter how long they'd been in the relationship. Researchers provide an evolutionary explanation—women's sex drive is initially high to facilitate pair bonding. Meanwhile, desire for tenderness showed the opposite trend. Ninety percent of women craved tenderness, but of men who'd been in relationships for ten years, only 25 percent said they hoped for the same from their partner.

In Three Minutes Flat

Judging from the average porn flick, romance novel, or locker room conversation, a Martian landing on Earth would probably assume that intercourse would last somewhere in the vicinity of 40 minutes. But if that Martian were to actually enter into a relationship, he might be in for a big disappointment. Such marathon sessions are the exception to the rule; surveys find that the average sex session lasts from three to ten minutes. Not that any of this should be so surprising as the average hotel porn viewer watches for just 12 minutes.

I was in a conversation the other day (the only thing I do if there are not that many people on the bus and every subject is welcome as the average run is approx 30 minutes) and the passenger has a less boring ride as well.

This particular young lady who is studying social science introduced me to a new level and we got onto the subject of dating. A lot has changed a total new generation has entered don’t ask, you know how women can talk in circles and the woman expressed discouragement because the men she met were only interested in One Thing. According to her this was not what she was looking for in a relationship, she was more looking for a guy that could take care of himself and sex would not be a main thing. For a moment I was puzzled and thought what has happened to this young lady. Has she had some bad experiences with guys.

 

I said “So what?”  It is a fact that half of the populatian of the human male species are only interested in One Thing.  But I think you should not be to careful when dating as men are all hunters it is in there brain from day one. Only this time I added, “Maybe I am only interested in One Thing, too, but is that a problem to have a conversation with me?”  My poor passenger, whom I thought nothing could shock, blanched. And she said: “No of course there is no problem in conversating but you are so open minded that it shocked me.” She smiled and said: “Maybe you are right about the guys there might be some nice personality behind the hunter.” She got off the bus and waved goodbye to me and smiled.

 

The thing is that men aren’t really interested in only One Thing.  But they certainly need to get that One Thing out of the way.  And, the truth is so do women.  At least, once we reach a certain age. If we aren’t looking for a mother or father for our children, or, necessarily a good provider, if we’re looking for a lover, a companion, and a great man or woman to hang with for some measure of the duration, then we need to be honest with ourselves:  doesn’t The Thing count for something? Don’t we want a man or woman who makes our stomach jump, our heart flop, our mouth long for the kiss?  Aren’t we looking for romance and isn’t romance that tingly feeling we can’t explain? Not in all cases it fades away. But my question is: “Isn’t that the reason women get sex and love so mixed up with each other?”  To love someone you have to want them to touch you and this should not all come from one side.

 

I mean, let’s get real.  We’re dating for a reason. We can go to the movies with a friend.  We’ve got our kids to love, our parents to take care of.  We are all grown up now.  We want someone to take our pants off.

 

A good friend of mine said once: “If a man isn’t thinking about pussy all the time he’s just not paying attention.”  It should be a qoute from a golfer he said, no I didn’t look the quote up because it seemed so preposterous, but I did do an informal survey once when I was still sailing but these guys are all a bit special at least that is what i think. All the men agreed that they thought about it all the time. So I am not only a horndog I am also an intellectual and I would further like to explain:

 

“It’s contextual. We think about a thousand things a day, but pussy is always in the mix. Say we’re thinking about the curve of something, even something mathematical. Well, that leads us back to a woman’s curves. It’s like the shape of a Ferrari or a beautiful lined ship. Everything is designed that it gives the feeling of arousal.  It all leads back my dear. And that is how men think about sex every eight seconds.” Great designers are just horny bastards.

 

I would never hesitate to stereotype my own sex.  Recently when yet another old boyfriend got in touch with my wife through Facebook, I sighed. “Is this one divorced, too?  Every time a man gets divorced, he contacts you. I know what they want.”

 

Yeh, the One Thing. But the truth is that over the years some old girlfriends have found me on Facebook and none of them have wanted that. They just wanted to reconnect, see how I was. This may be because none of my relationships, except one, have ended badly and even the one that ended badly did not involve knives or guns or stalking. A lot of Facebook friends probably hope that they did things better than you.

 

Still, with the latest contact, I asked a male friend what he thought this newest woman might want. “I don’t know” he said.  “I’ve contacted several old girlfriends and it was never for that. But then I am sort of a weird man.”

 

You can tell he was a big help.

 

Turns out I was a very fond memory. Which was nice. 

 

My wife and I got The Thing out of the way pretty quickly and I am still married to herckly. Women are way more in control than we like to admit. Men know that. 

The Old Sailor,

For what?

Dear Bloggers,

Today I will write about so called senseless violence, it is one of the items that kept my family busy after the horrible news from Norway on 22th of July. We wandered what happens to person that can get so violent without any regrets killing a large amount of people. The attacks on the Twin Towers in New York came out of nothing and without any pre warnings. Several years ago Meindert Tjoelker was kicked to death by a group of drunk guys only because he was telling them that heir behavior was inappropriate. There might be more cases but for me these are stuck in my memories as matters of senseless violence.

One of the problems with any reflection on absurd forms of violence in society is that these thoughts can never be, from a scientific point of view, truly interesting and technical. Before we know it, moral and political considerations and emotions sneak in and objective thought will be overruled by, for example, the indignation over the nature and amount of that violence. For if you start to think about violence, you will soon feel highly involved and at the same time completely powerless. Even if we should be inclined to choose violence in certain cases, when it comes from ourselves, when it is not the raw violence of nature and looks like reasonable action, it always turns out to be bigger and stronger in its consequences and its emotional implications than the one who unleashes violence or approves of it. Merely by thinking about it it is taken out of our own hands.

No matter what we think or how passionately we want to denounce violence as vulgar, immoral or inefficient, it will still occur time after time and we are never neutral bystanders, like when observing the behavior of chickens on a lawn or dogs in the street. Our words are filled with emotions and prejudices. Therefore, I want to restrict my reflection on to a couple of words, with which we appear to try and make sense of an occurrence on which we apparently, despite all of our pretenses, have as little influence as on the weather, but which fascinates us, either annoyingly or amusingly, in a much higher degree.



The quite recent combination of words “senseless violence” mostly seems to relate to something that we, if it did not sound as cynical, could call recreational violence, eventhough it happens in small groups that will kill an innocent guy by kicking him to death as he would try to stop them from demolishing a bicycle, or a large group called supporters which appears predominately around soccer-fields, in amusement halls with violent war games and in so-called action movies, hence on the fringes of social life. But how large, how infectious and how determining of our culture is the contribution of this type of violence as a spectacle in television shows and other forms of relaxation on which we spend a large part of our free time? (My wife is a big fan of these what I call “Murder and manslaughter tv series”.) Do I have an excorsist in the house?



The combination of words “senseless violence” seems to have been specifically invented to qualify this pointless violence as a derailment or at least a singular occurrence, in order to not too suddenly and quite radically, exclude the possibility of a human violence that might be called “sensible”. That not senseless, but efficiently and prudently used violence would be in our control from beginning to end, and a predictable and positive outcome could be expected: order, security, and peace.

Seen from this perspective, the expression “senseless violence” has to create a space for the belief that another, perhaps efficient, meaningful and permissible unleashing of violence might be possible. Taking the soccer game as an example again. There are complaints that some parents being so fanatic that they scare their own children as their fanatism will end up into an escalation of violence as an exercise in power by the lower less responsible persons and that can prevent that by slogans like “soccer is war” a spiral of spectacular, but meaningless recreational violence will start.



Along with more power, the means not only have to be greater in number, but also more effective, and they have to appear less like the force of an aimless explosion, the raw violence of a hurricane or the unrestrained behavior of a rowdy crowd. A government that does not have these available, is not superior and has no more say than any random club.

The result of violence is always characterized by a hail of unintended, incalculable and destructive side-effects sensible, unless of course we read the word “goal” as something military and war-like, “hit” as the destruction of this goal and “use” as the unleashing of every random force that we do not control. In this way, the guillotine could be regarded as an effective mean for relieving headaches, or pulling all teeth as an adequate means against biting nails. (there is a dark sense of humor needed here.)

Seeing a proof of superiority in this seems a bit shortsighted to me: it is rather a manifestation of impotence or inability to link adequate and carefully dosed means. At best we can say that in certain circumstances in a somewhat ritual way we have reserved the authority to exert this impotence or the threat thereof and necessitated ourselves to leave out the, in this context painful, qualification senseless. But the question is wether this is more than a mere verbal and ritual exercise that does not change a thing about the situation itself.

There seem to be at least two reasons why we speak in such hidden terms about all kinds of violence, including that of the government. One is that a start of violence or a display of superiority can cause a shock that may bring people to their senses. (Just think about what happened in Oslo and on Utoya or less recent the 9-11 attacks.)



If you, for example, want to quiet a boisterous crowd, you sometimes have to quickly produce a higher volume of sound than the bothersome murmur you intend to override. This will increase the total disorder, but still the expectation can be that silence will be its effect. There are reasons to believe in temporary violence and in the logic of something like a warning shot.

A second reason not to radically rule out every form of violence as a means has to lie in the fact that to this form of active performing there seems to be but one alternative, i.e. standing by powerlessly. But that alternative has to be rejected more forcefully according the measure in which the organization that would decline from performing it is ascribed greater power or authority.

And if you are supposed to have all capabilities, you will always be guilty when you stand by powerlessly. In an activist culture, one that for the greater part is a culture of violence disguised as sport, as expression, as display of power or as spectacle rather than a culture of peaceful technique and of adequate and subtle means, standing by powerlessly or even the acceptance of powerlessness is always regarded as reprehensible. In the phraseology of that culture it is always better to do something than to do nothing at all or, in military terms less familiar to me: it is better to miss or even obliterate the goal than not to shoot at all. This will inevitably lead to absurd situations.



Even if peace would be no more than the absence of war and violence (but how will we ever know?) and even if it has to be maintained by a power that keeps itself in the background, it would still be preferable as a form of civilization to the outbursts of barbaric violence which we have to witness, happening to our shame, time and time again and on all fronts.

I wish that there would be no more victims of senseless violence but this probably an impossible dream.

The Old Sailor,

Do you believe there is a God?

Dear Bloggers,

This morning I woke up at five and had a sad kind of feeling over me. My thoughts wandered of again to my younger days. I do not have that many memories left after my accident unless the memories had a very deep impact on my live. But first of all let me do some introducion on the story. This story goes back more than 20 years. My dad had a stable with ponys and those were for rent as it was his hobby many guys and girls helped on a volunteerly base to get the stable going and keep the prices affordable for everyone. Carolien was one of them and she was a good looking young girl who lived during the holidays on a campsite with her family. She had a lot of headaches during the summer period but no one came to the conclusion that there was something wrong inside as she was a happy and cheerful girl. What a shame that she was ripped out of our lives and my God what have these parents gone through.

 My daughter is slowly climbing up to the time of adolescence and it reminds me of these days that I was struggling with hormones, emotions and all other interests in the other sex. But deep inside I was too shy to get involved with these girls. I am not a Don Juan and that was what God had forbidden. I was brought up with religion and I had to go to church during my youth. I stopped believing after one of my dearest friends was killed by a brain tumor and our dear God did nothing to save her. God killed my friend or at the very least stood by doing nothing while she died, while allowing people like surgeon’s who did not recognize this to live on with no regrets.

My friend, we’ll call her Carolien, died this past weekend at the age of 14. She was diagnosed having a severe headache problem but no one thought that it would be a brain tumor, and she could have had every type of surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy possible at that time, but no one came to the idea that she would have a brain tumor. When she collapsed at the volleybal training they rushed her into the operating theatre and tried to remove the tumor or at least to make it smaller. It was to far grown to remove it and it was not good enough to save her. She was sweet, caring, beautiful, and strong; she had recently gotten into high school and had a lifetime worth of goals and dreams ahead of her. Carolien had made plans for her future, and eventually becoming a mother. She volunteered in her community and was kind to everyone she met, regardless of whether she personally liked them. She was active in her church, sharing her many talents with anyone who asked.

Let me now add a disclaimer that I don’t believe in a God – there are a lot of things we don’t understand about the universe, and I don’t pretend to have any answers. But when my friend died, I couldn’t help but wonder how someone who believes in a God can justify what happened to her. It’s the classic question – “why do bad things happen to good people?” See, I understand that religious people generally believe in free will, so sometimes when bad things happen to us it’s a result of some action we took. For instance, if I drove my car to the grocery store while it was snowing and got into an accident injuring myself, it’s reasonable to assume that my choice to go for a drive while the roads were slippery played a role in my injuries. It was my choice, and I paid the consequences, despite how inherently good or bad I might be. I also understand that the definition of “good” or “bad” is going to vary between people.

However, I’m not sure of anyone that would consider an early death, like what Carolien had to endure, a good thing. And I don’t think her brain tumor had anything to do with a choice she made (in contrast to some cancers, like lung, which are often caused by an action like smoking). There was nothing she could have done or put into her body that caused that brain tumor – it was some sort of perverse accident, a deadly combination of genetics and environmental factors beyond her control. So then I ask, if you believe in God, what is your justification for this occurrence? Why did God give Carolien a brain tumor (or allow her to die of a brain tumor) while letting serial rapists live? Why did God allow a tsunami to kill over 200,000 people in 2004, while doing nothing to stop a repeat child-molester? Is it because “God works in mysterious ways”? That response always seemed like a bit of a cop-out – if you don’t know the answer, say so. Did my friend sin, and this was her punishment? I don’t buy that – she wasn’t perfect (no one is), but there are many people in this world far worse. Did God smite her just for his own amusement? Or it is possible, just maybe, that God had nothing to do with any of this – that sometimes life sucks and good people pay the consequence?

If God is loving and all-powerful, then he would have saved my friend. He wouldn’t have let her die before her parents, leaving behind a friend who is now considering with continued attention what goals he has left that didn’t involve a lifetime with her. The world is a worse place today, because Carolien is no longer here to share her love and talents with the rest of us. I wrote this blog in loving memory of my dear friend Carolien may she rest in peace for the love of all.

The Old Sailor,

One more week to Valentine's

Are you my Valentine?

Dear Bloggers,

It is nearly there, valentine’s day.
It is for men one of these days that your loved one expects something romantic from you.
Every year I am breaking my head over what should I do this year.
How will I surprise her.
My head is panicking and she acts like she doesn’t care.
Is it really all about love?
I am affraid to loose her, she might find someone else as her interrest in me has faded.
Could I ever become her prince again?
As my beauty has got it’s wrinkles, i gained a lot of weight, and being a gentleman became history as my character changed after a nasty fall.



For a while after coming home it seemed I had made a full recovery.
However, more recently I have noticed that I’ve had a change in my character.
Also my memory is having strange gaps and after all these years, I have not been able to recover these parts.
My wife somehow does not want to believe it or can’t she cope with it, as most of my functions brainwise are working again.
It is pretty tough if your partner doesn’t understand how you are still trapped in your own body and brain.



It really hurts if the one you love is taking more and more distance, because she says that you are not listening to her.
She is simply ignoring the fact that I have trouble to talk about certain things, as I feel that I cannot defend myself, I get angry and flee out of her range as I feel strangled and trapped.
Sometimes I put up my defence but I know in advance that I have no change to win this battle.
Normally I break down in tears and cry, if she asks what’s wrong, I simply lift up my shoulders.



Before the accident I was a very motivated young man, but now I have no interest in anything, my concentration is not good, and being inappropriate in my conversation and the jobs I need to do in and around the house.
I am simply not capable to fully express myself anymore by saying it, or to think out a plan for building things is not going easy.
Sometimes I feel like crying as I don’t know how to do it anymore, talking about it is no option as my surroundings wave it away.
As it is something that will change again in the future.
Luckely I can get rid of my frustrations through writing these blogs, as I am sometimes trapped in myself.



Is there any chance that I can learn all these things back, are do I have to learn to live with it.
I am not depressed or that my live is not good it is simply different and from time to time difficult.



I still can not believe that I can not find my old me back.
My face is smiling but my heart is crying.
Where do I find me?

The Old Sailor,