We chose each other once. Now we search for who we were.
Love surviving in a life we never chose.

Our relationship started out carefully, but with conviction. Not because we knew what we wanted, but because for the first time in our lives we felt something that actually made sense. Now, more than eleven years later, we’re tired, disconnected, and shaped by all that has been taken from us. But I refuse to believe that this is all there is. In this blog, I share how it began, how it almost disappeared, and why I’m not giving up on us, even though I lost myself along the way.

I often think back to who I was before Mart came into my life. Not because I was truly alive back then, but because I thought I was. The same rhythm every day, the same people and the same beliefs. I visited my grandmother nearly every day. My little girl was still with me. I had no fear of germs, no smartphone, no idea what existed beyond this neighborhood, this house, this version of life. My relationship with my mother felt really good or so I thought. But now, looking back, I see how I idealized her. How I believed she was always right, how I normalized the way she shouted at me, said I reminded her of her ex, that I was cold and harsh. I guess that must be true then, I’d think. I didn’t question her words; I questioned myself.

I wasn’t looking for love. I just wanted to meet people who maybe thought the way I did. On a dating site that also allowed you to search for friends, I answered thousands of questions, curious to know if anyone out there resembled me. There was one woman I connected with for a few years, but our worldview clashed on something fundamental: veganism. And later, she had a child and I felt nothing for that. One day I matched with Mart. His profile photo didn’t really attract me: an expressionless, to me, unattractive guy,  but he had a dog. We didn’t match 99 percent, but 96, and that felt meaningful, because he too had answered thousands of questions. So I decided to send him a message…

From our very first conversation, it felt different. With others I would always freeze up, need my mother nearby to speak for me. But with Mart, suddenly I didn’t need her around at all. And she sensed that. She could feel it was serious  and she became jealous. Not openly, but subtly, underneath. Out of fear, probably. Because she knew she was losing me. She didn’t realize that the way she clung to me only pushed me further away.

What takes most people weeks took us years. Everything unfolded slowly, cautiously, constantly grinding against our feelings. Because deep down I already knew this was real. But I wasn’t allowed to believe that. My mother kept giving me the impression it was just temporary. That it wasn’t right, that it wasn’t allowed. That my little fur babygirl probably wouldn’t want me and my mother to no longer always be together. That she didn’t accept Mart in the house and so he’d have to travel those hundred kilometers, again and again. And we did. Sometimes here, sometimes there. Skype secretly became our second skin when we weren’t allowed to be together. And always that constant undercurrent: my mother demanding her place, my time, my presence, my attention. Breakfast, coffee, board games, watching a series after dinner; all at fixed times, with her and my brother. Even when Mart was visiting, he stayed upstairs in my room. It wasn’t just her house: it was her life and I had to keep adjusting to it.

And I’ll never forget: in early 2015, when Mart and I went to Winterberg and I broke my ankle, my mother insisted on coming to Germany, even though I had explicitly asked her not to. Not just because I knew my little girl would be alone with my brother for the first time (and he didn’t respect my wishes the way my mother usually did in that area), but also because I couldn’t handle her energy in that moment. She came anyway. With a friend. And she tried to get Mart to go back to the hotel so she could take care of me. As if she wanted to prove he was unnecessary. When she realized she had nothing to add, she left the next day. But then came another opportunity to reclaim me: the day I was transported home by ambulance. Mart had a panic attack while driving behind the ambulance and left the car behind (he would later pick it up with his father), so he could ride in the ambulance with me. When my mother heard about this, she started making threats and made sure Mart was literally pulled off the highway and picked up by his father so that I would arrive home alone, helpless, and fall right back into her arms. So she could take care of me. Just her. After everything Mart had done for me…

That moment was the final straw. We wanted to get married as soon as possible, just so my mother could never really come between us again. We did it in Denmark, because it only cost 70 euros there. We never registered it in the Netherlands, for we had no energy to deal with it, and partly out of fear… what if my mother found out?

Because of love and because of a car, my world grew so much bigger. We could travel, escape and discover new places. But that also meant: leaving my little girl with my mother more often (who kept telling me she wouldn’t be happy if she didn’t see HER often). And I regret that every single day: the time I didn’t spend with her. That regret only grew when travel became too expensive, and we had to take the train to save money, which cost us even more time, more overstimulation, and still no peace. Mart lost his home in a small green village shortly after, due to mounting financial problems. He had no choice but to move in with us full time; something my mother reluctantly accepted, though she preferred that over me moving in with him somewhere else (which she continued to fight for years with manipulation and even suicide threats).

We eventually bought our first extremely cheap home on wheels, thanks to a small inheritance from someone in Mart’s family. Not because we had romantic dreams of vanlife, but because we had to. It was our only chance at some kind of freedom. Some kind of togetherness. We planned to live in it.

In 2020, just as we thought we’d found our place on the Utrechtse Heuvelrug, the housing corporation changed its mind: “You’re autistic and apparently unable to take care of yourselves if you still live at home,” they said. Not long after, the government took our camper away, because it had been seen parked too often in the neighborhood, either due to my mother’s needs or mechanical issues. Our only home was taken, even though we’d barely used it: in part because my mother would constantly have something “come up” whenever we planned to leave. That loss took not only our freedom, but also our only alternative to this suffocating life.

In 2021, something happened that I don’t want to talk about here. A trauma unrelated to all this. Because of it, we spent a year and a half living in my mother’s tiled backyard (we didn’t want to be inside her house anymore after the trauma). We lived in a small tent, surrounded by noise from the apartment building behind us, the neighborhood children, nearby highways and the constant chemical smells. Eventually, even surviving downstairs where my mother often was, too, surrounded by the smell of dog feces, became too much. So we moved back into my childhood bedroom. Still under her roof. Still with no real privacy. Still at the mercy of her moods and rules. We cook on a desk without a kitchen (also for my mother, because otherwise she barely eats, which adds constant pressure). We live mostly on our bed and wait for her to leave the house before we get water or prepare food, because we simply can’t be around her negative energy.

The overstimulation is now total. Our mental health suffers. Our creativity dries up. Everything we try takes so much energy. Every attempt at recovery is crushed by our surroundings. And still, we only want one thing: quiet, simplicity, nature. A place to live where we’re not constantly having to explain, prove or endure.

Sometimes I wonder where we’d be now if we had just listened to our own feelings. If we had moved in together sooner. If we’d been given a chance without my mother’s presence and control. Without that suffocating loyalty. Without the guilt. But I also know this: it’s because of Mart that I began to question everything I once thought was normal. That I began to feel that another life was possible. Without him, I might never have realized that love shouldn’t feel like duty. That freedom isn’t selfish. That being yourself is not the same as being ungrateful. Without him, I might still believe that life is something you endure instead of something you can choose. And however slow our beginning was, however blocked, delayed, and sabotaged: we’re still here. Still together.

But we’re not who we used to be. The people who found each other, who felt and trusted, are still here, but buried, for years now, beneath layers of fatigue, frustration, and helplessness. We argue more often. We say things -especially he does, that really hurt. We shut down instead of staying open. Sometimes it feels like we’ve lost ourselves, and each other too. And yes, I wonder: are we still in time? Is there enough left to rebuild?

But then I remember who we were. How carefully and yet wholeheartedly we chose each other. How long we held on, despite everything. How often we still found our way back to one another, even when the distance between us felt greater than that first hundred kilometers. And then I know: I don’t want to give up. Not because it’s easy now. Not because I know it’ll ever be like before. But because I believe it wasn’t our love that changed: it was everything around us that distorted it. And I believe we owe it to the people we once were to keep searching. For a place, a rhythm, a life where we can truly see each other again. Not as survival partners, but as the people who once fell in love. The people who chose. And maybe, if the world finally falls silent… we can choose again.