I know, I know. We are in the fall season, and I’m supposed to write about fall vibes. Well, I live on a tropical island, and it’s summer every freaking day, so festive pumpkin season doesn’t apply to me. As I said before, I mostly write about my random thoughts. I rarely plan in advance what  I’m going to write. Yes, that way of work has contributed to the inconsistencies in my projects.

Trust me, I know exactly where I’m lacking and what I’m supposed to do to remediate it, but still, I don’t want to (sometimes). Sometimes, I dislike parts of myself and wish I was different, better. I wish I could change or have the strength to change. It’s like they say we really are our worst critics, and I’ve always been an expert in that department. Despite my harsh inner critic (who should just ‘STFU’ once in a while), my inner child has been begging me to recognize the incredible strength and resilience I showed in the mid-spring of 2016.

Filters and blue lipstick

I know I said in an article last month that spring was my favorite season of all. Everything gets better, and my hopes for this life get higher. The spring of 2016 started like any other I’ve experienced before, but by May, that rapidly changed. When I think of spring 2016, I remember Snapchat’s flowered crown filter. I will put a picture in this story for reference. By then, I was still wearing my blue, purple, and grey lipstick, utterly unaware that my beloved Pacquiao was about to lose his balls, thanks to a neighbor (who wouldn’t mind her own business) who supposedly advised my dad to sterilize him. I know she was just looking for revenge because Pac killed her cat. 

On the right track

Nothing would have prepared me for the sadness I was going to feel just in the first week of May. Every college student knows how busy it gets when May hits. Most students are working and studying for their finals, and so was I. By the end of April, I already started working on my internship report. Usually, I do things at the last minute, but I started early then. It was my last and final internship, and I wanted to pass without problems. I was heading toward my last year of college; everything was happening quickly, and I couldn’t wait to get my degree. 

Stupid beverage dispenser

So what happened? What killed my happiness? At the beginning of 2016, I bought this cute beverage dispenser at HEMA. It had lime and lemons prints, and the lid was green, my favorite color. 

One afternoon in May of 2016, I was working on my internship report. I was pretty far, having already completed a few chapters. My boyfriend was in the tiny kitchen of our apartment. He was cooking dinner. If I remember correctly, it was roasted chicken with rice and some vegetables. He told me that dinner was ready and that I could sit at the dining table if I wanted to. He was making iced tea in the cute beverage dispenser. I left my books, notes, and laptop open on the sofa couch next to the kitchen sink. I intended to eat and then continue working.

Moments before tragedy

The sun was already taking its time to say goodbye and was giving the moon a hard time. I took a peek through the window to see the Erasmusbrug from afar, and then I sat at the table and waited. All of a sudden, I heard my boyfriend panicking and cursing. He constantly curses, so I didn’t think much of it initially. I turned to look at him to see what he was mumbling about. I swear my heart skipped a beat, and it wasn’t for the good things. It was a scene straight out of my nightmares.
The beverage dispenser was on the ground after rolling off the sofa bed. There was iced tea everywhere, especially on the sofa bed. I quickly ran to pick up the beverage dispenser. Then, I noticed that my laptop was utterly drenched in brown syrup.

Gone too soon

Forget the beverage dispenser; my computer! I grabbed it as fast as I could. Tried to get the liquid out as much as I could. My laptop, a thick MacBook Pro, was almost 4 years old. To me, that was still brand new. Immediately, I noticed that the screen was completely black. Sounds of life were still coming out of the laptop, but its vital signs weren’t responding. I felt as if I couldn’t breathe and was hyperventilating. I asked my boyfriend, “Did you just ruin my laptop?” He just stood in total shock.

Coping through the stress

Our dinner was cold half an hour later when we finally sat at the table to eat. We put the laptop upside down on a towel to drain the rest of the liquid after extensive Googling. The rest of the night was awkward. On one hand, I wanted to kill my boyfriend, but I knew that it wasn’t his fault. It was an accident, and I left the laptop on the sofa bed open. My boyfriend took me to one of those midnight mini-markets to buy junk food, and we watched Mike Flanagan’s Hush.

The next day, I was faced with the dreadful but to-be-expected truth. My laptop expired prematurely. My boyfriend opened the computer. The motherboard was fried and covered with blue corrosion (don’t come for me, science people; I only got science for a year). Nothing was left to do, and fixing it would cost too much. 

Nothing really mattered

I was completely ready to give up. The internship report that I was working on was on hold. In fact, I wasn’t even going to school the week after my laptop was murdered. I didn’t care anymore. My boyfriend offered me to use his computer and tablet, but my intrinsic motivation was nowhere to be found.

Then, for no reason whatsoever, I messaged my mom and told her I couldn’t give up. I’ve worked too hard, and this situation wasn’t stopping me from completing the third year of my bachelor’s. My boyfriend bought an external hard drive to retrieve everything he could have on my laptop. Sadly, I had no luck getting the report. I had to start from scratch. Instead of crying and trashing things, I put all my emotions and energy into finishing that internship report and other reports I had to write. I managed, barely, but I did it. It felt glorious.

And the bad luck continued

I wish that is how the story, the bad juju, ends, but no. It’s just beginning. Despite my motivational comeback, I was about to be hit in the face again with yet another unpleasant surprise. My boyfriend got hit this time as well. May is my boyfriend’s birthday month. For his birthday, I wanted to do something special, mainly because of the nightmare that we had just gone through. My boyfriend is a huge Korn fan. I saw an advertisement that they would be in Utrecht in June 2016. Stupidly, I told him I would be taking him to the concert for his birthday. I was planning to buy the tickets by the end of May. He was excited, and so was I.

B*tch better have my money

Every Caribbean student knows that we can’t make it without DUO. Even if your parents are wealthy, you’ll still probably need DUO. So around the 24 of every month, it’s like ecstasy when that money comes in (not that I ever did E, Dad, I swear). Except that in May of 2016, it didn’t come. My boyfriend and I were left wondering what the hell happened. The story’s moral is don’t make plans with money you don’t have. I sat at a bus stop near Hogeschool Rotterdam Museumpark and called DUO.

What the actual f*ck?

I was informed that according to their system, I’m not registered at the municipality, meaning I wasn’t eligible for DUO; the same goes for my boyfriend. What the actual f*ck?! In the following days, we had to do a lot of paperwork. We needed to go to the county to register our address (which was the same, by the way). Supposedly, the county sent us a letter to which we didn’t reply, and the municipality assumed that we weren’t living in the Netherlands anymore. I was scared it was my fault because I had been interning in Aruba for 5 months and hadn’t told the municipality, DUO, or anything.

Tough times, but I’m tougher

About a week later, we finally got DUO, but for 3 months, we only got part of what we usually got. Things were still “hodido”. We had to make budget cuts and ate chicken legs daily. At least we had food, I know, but still, it was hard. I didn’t manage to take my boyfriend to the Korn concert, but we went to Utrecht to walk around later that spring. We couldn’t wait to leave for home that summer. In retrospect, I’m happy that I had to go through that. My 24-year-old self showed great perseverance despite adversity. Still, I will be forever grateful that J. was by my side like always.

A lot happened that spring/ summer of 2016. The whole Kim K Taylor Swift feud was 8 years ago, and I remember it like it was yesterday. I was just so thankful for Rihanna’s This is What You Came For. Oh, and I didn’t even bother mentioning what Arubahuis told me back then, they are just good-for-nothings.