Real life: “I stood at the Museumplein on Sunday and now I feel really ashamed”

Sacha (24) lives in Amsterdam with her two housemates. Like almost all of the Netherlands, she works from home and her social life has taken a big hit. To express her dissatisfaction about this, she decided to go to the demonstration at Museumplein. But now she deeply regrets that.

“I can get so angry about all the measures and the lockdown. I want to see my friends again, hug them again. I want to go to the pub. I want to date. As a single person, I sometimes get really bored, and even though it's nice with my housemates, it often feels quite lonely. When I started working from home in March, I was quite obedient: I followed all the measures and strangely enough, I didn't complain much about it. But I also had complete confidence that it wouldn't be that much of a deal; before I knew it, everything would be back to how it was.

Well, that turned out to be completely different. And now we are almost a year later. I'm so done with it. Sitting in front of the TV every time to watch the press conference. Yes to a face mask, no to a face mask, then yes again and now a face mask mandate. Yes to a curfew, no to a curfew, and yes: now inside from nine o'clock. I find it ridiculous how much the government is flipping. Of course, I know that more people feel this way, but I wanted to do something with my frustration. If we were enough, the government must listen to us, right? So I went to Museumplein with one of my housemates. I wanted to make my voice heard and didn't think it would get out of hand. In hindsight, maybe a foolish assessment, but I genuinely thought it would be a calm, peaceful demonstration.

Yes, the demonstration was not approved. And yes, there were a lot of people present who were there with the wrong intentions. They came purely to riot. But the stupid thing is that I completely got swept up in all the energy there. Everyone was just hyping each other up and it quickly turned grim. Before I knew it, everything changed completely. Water cannons around me, people were fighting each other and shouting at the police. And I was just standing there. But when I saw the footage later, I was so ashamed. Thank God I wasn't filmed, but I really wonder what got into me. I wanted to make my voice heard and I still stand by that because I just don't agree with the measures. But I don't understand how I let myself get swept away like that.

My housemate doesn't share my feelings and is just still angry. I think she will just be there again next time at Museumplein or somewhere else in Amsterdam. I did cautiously tell her that I really don't feel good about it, but she now thinks that's hypocritical. There was nothing to indicate that when we were standing there together. Fortunately, I haven't told many people that it really went that far or better said: that I was there too.”

In this unusual time, we asked people for their honest story. To avoid hurting others, the name of Sacha has been changed.