Just act normal, then you're already acting crazy enough

For most of my life, I have lived in the city and I am as happy as a child about it. I was also born there, but not raised. That raising happened in Twente, in Holten to be precise, where I lived from my third to my sixteenth year. It went like this: I had parents. I had a mother who was at home and a father who worked in the hospital, as a doctor. That was in Deventer. And there my father met the night nurse. And then he went with her. So far, so doctor novel. My mother then moved with me and my little brother to Holten, because a house with a garden where the kids could play freely outside without having to make an excursion right away, which is sometimes the case in the city. Hup, back door open and let loose in that cage of green.

So I also went to school in that idyllic Holten, where I quickly got acquainted with the mentality in such a rural village. ‘Just act normal, then you're already acting crazy enough,’ is the motto there, which immediately put me at a one-nil disadvantage, because I was ‘that imported child of that divorced woman’, which was not considered so normal back then – not the imported part, and even less the divorced woman part. Moreover, I wore clothes that positioned me as ‘that odd one’. Clothes that didn't exactly stand out in apartheid: brightly colored clothes from the brand Olly, which later became Oilily and once was very hip in ’t Gooi. I could also learn quite well, which often made me the teacher's pet; unsolicited, damn it, again that exceptional position. That I could learn well was nice, but not in Holten and surroundings: ‘Don't imagine yourself too much,’ was added to me more than once. And not just to me, everyone who stuck their head above the ground level, even if it was just a millimeter, even if it was unintentional, had to especially not imagine anything. Be big by staying small.

God, how happy was I when I moved to a city at the age of sixteen. It seemed to me that the whole mentality of going back to your place had a lot less importance in the city – and that was also true. In the city, I could fly more, it wasn't so remarkable if you read a nice piece in class or (by now) wore strange black punk/new wave clothes and teased your hair into a mushroom. What a relief. And yet: it has also brought me something, that rural mentality. I am not easily impressed by people and by what they all boast about on their account. I often find boasting a bit pathetic – knowing that you are doing well or excelling in what you want to excel in is enough, right? Generally, I suspect that the loudest shout-outs perform the least and especially believe hard in their own hype. ‘Don't imagine yourself too much,’ I think then. Because the people who didn't do that in my youth were actually quite a lot.

Written by: Kalinka Hahlen