"I wanted to feel that I was alive too."I walked onto the fairground and saw everyone laughing. I was depressed, I had stopped eating, and I was sick of only feeling pain. I wanted to feel alive again. And then I met him. We talked for a bit, and there was an instant connection. He said, "You can come sit next to me." That's how I ended up in that ticket booth of his fairground ride.
I sat there with him for nights in that booth. Every night I hesitated about going, but I enjoyed it too much; just being in another world and laughing. At first, I thought we were just good friends. He started tickling me a bit and pulling me towards him. Everything happened naturally, until one night a completely different tension filled the air. I felt inexperienced; while others had years of relationship experience and knew all about kissing, I didn't. I was that dreamy writer who always sat in books. I sat talking and turning my head away out of nervousness, searching for words to fill the silence.
"He came closer, looked me straight in the eyes, and said: 'Are you going to sit still now? Are you done talking?' And then he kissed me. Normally I push everyone away immediately—I'm the 'Yuck, saliva!' type—but now I allowed it. It felt like Cinderella, like a fairy tale where I finally woke up. That kiss gave me my feelings back; for the first time, I felt in the here and now. It was a blessing."
It was only later that I told him about Rotterdam, about the TV show that had approached me via LinkedIn. I told him I actually planned to jump from the Euromast live on television because the pain was simply unbearable. I think he thought it was a joke. When he left for another part of the country, I went to the filming. I stood there at the tower with two kind men interviewing me, but I wasn't there mentally. I answered their questions and then immediately asked: 'When can I go up the tower now?' When they said it wasn't allowed because of tourists, my plan collapsed. My adrenaline was at a lethal level.
I drove to Schiphol Airport, my second home from my time at KLM, and sat there for hours crying. Once home, I called the editors: 'Don't air it, I don't want to live anymore.' The pain was unbearable. But the memory of the fair pulled me back. The fair didn't open immediately at its new location, so I decided to find him. We had a few days to enjoy each other's company. Despite not having driven for years after my first coma, adrenaline defeated the fear. I enjoyed every second with this 'stranger' and wondered: 'Yvonne, where are you?' I knew nothing about him, not even if he brushed his teeth, but the connection was too absurd and beautiful to ignore.
At the end, he said: 'Stay in the Netherlands, then we can still see each other.' But I had already planned my trip to Spain. I am someone who attaches quickly, especially after a kiss like that, but I decided it was time to go. I drove home, showered, and cried hard. After a nasty encounter at another house, where the coldness of people and a collision caused by nerves almost took my breath away, I fled home crying.
A neighbor saw me crying and tried to stop me. 'You're not going to Spain now,' he said. He was a kind man, an angel who suddenly appeared in my scene. I slept on a mattress on the floor, everything already in the car. Early in the morning, I left anyway. The neighbor drove after me and forced me to stop at a fast-food chain for coffee, begging me to stay. But I didn't listen. I drove on, crying and crying, until I crossed the border. I could still drive!
In the dark, I got tired and panicked because the GPS sent me down narrow tourist roads. The neighbor kept calling me, the only one wondering where I was. In the middle of the night, I started laughing; I saw images of angels and Jesus at the many churches I passed. At a gas station, I asked if I could sleep safely in the car. The next morning, my tears turned into pride at the three-country point. I had made it.
Eventually, after a week in Spain, the GPS sent me down a dead-end mountain path. My body and the car went into shock. I lay unconscious for twelve hours in the flipped car. They saved my body, but my money and phone were gone. Contact with the man from the fair was lost; he doesn't know my last name and might think I've forgotten him. But I will never forget that laugh. I am Yvonne, and I am now writing my own script in the light."
