Welcome to Beginner at Life

Who I am and what these letters are all about

Hello, I’m Philippine and to be honest, I feel like a beginner at life – I am forever trying to make sense of it. You can find my attempts at this, plus reflections, musings and experiences right here, in my newsletter. Subscribing is free! For everyone who feels like a beginner at life, and wants to connect in some way.

There’s so much I want to tell you. I want to tell you about my burnout, my long Covid, the hell it’s been and the ways in which I’ve grown. I want to tell you about my autism and the new chapter of my life I’m entering, of rediscovering myself and rediscovering life. I’ve been wanting to tell you for a long time, but I thought it wasn’t the right time yet. I wanted to make everything in order so I could fully focus on it. And in a way, that would be wonderful, but I don’t think I’m able to wait.

Before, it felt okay to wait, I had other things I wanted to do first (decluttering and organising my whole life, fully regaining my energy, you name it) and I trusted myself, I trusted that I would do it when I was ready, and I knew that that wasn’t an excuse. I still don’t think it was, but right now trying to do those other things first, whilst postponing sharing my story, would feel like swimming upstream; whilst not starting to tell you everything would feel like standing on the side of the river, not being a part of my own life, of my own flow. So those other things will have to wait. And I’m actually very excited for this new little adventure.

A big part of my autism is being thorough – and hardly being able to do things any differently, I mean hello brushing my teeth for up to twenty minutes every night, no I don’t do that for fun – so I won’t be able to tell you everything in this one letter. Instead I’ll try to zoom out and tell you a few things now, the rest will follow.

At the start of the 2019 summer my life was pretty great. I was living in London, which felt very cool, as I’m not from there (I’m from Amsterdam, The Netherlands), I was finishing my master’s by devising and directing my own play, and I started dating a wonderful man. I remember that my friend, who was also acting in my play, said that this was going to be a good summer, and she was right.

And she was wrong, because whilst I was basking in all the good stuff, the carpet was being pulled from underneath me ever so slowly; my energy tank was deflating until there was absolutely nothing left. But I didn’t know it yet, so by the time that 2020 rolled around I thought that taking a break would avoid burnout. However, after two months off work and not feeling much better, I realised that the break had come too late and I was already severely burnt out.

This was around the time the pandemic hit, and my boyfriend and I moved in with my parents in Amsterdam. I was at an all time low, now that I had realised how badly I was doing and I was finally able to truly give into it. Sometimes we were all cosily laying pieces for a big puzzle at the dinner table, but a lot of the time I retreated to my bedroom, watching Friends for the umpteenth time, because I wasn’t able to watch much else, or, more likely, trying to figure out what to do next, as almost everything was too much (including Friends), and on the rare occasion that it wasn’t, it was plainly too boring. I went for daily walks, and every now and again I attempted something fun like going to a bookshop, but I’d always come home way beyond exhausted.

Then I got a teeny tiny bit better and when I managed to get the kitchen to myself, I was able to bake and cook really simple things, like a banana bread or a one pot meal that didn’t require any multitasking or specific timing. It was a precarious undertaking, as only the smallest thing had to go wrong – a little spillage, someone else wanting to make some toast – and I’d spiral right into overstimulation and meltdown. But it became my lifeline in many ways. I finally had something I could do, and I liked it and I was excited for it – I love food more than I’ve ever seen anyone else like it.

And then, when I was doing that tiny bit better, in December 2020 I got Corona. And so did my boyfriend and parents. In the beginning I felt very anxious. What if we’d have to go to hospital, what if we’d die, and so forth. Nevertheless, there was something warm about it; we were all in it together. We all cycled to get tested for the virus together, we managed to get the food on the table (or in bed more likely) that neighbours and family had brought to our door, we sniffled and shuffled through the house and on Christmas morning we even had a makeshift little breakfast at the table before we snuggled back into bed. It took us about three weeks, but we got better.

I started to go for walks and bake cakes again. But it wasn’t long until it all started to feel like too much. In those first few months of 2021, almost every night or day I felt an enormous wave of despair coming over me. How could I live like this, when it felt like I should be in bed all day, when it felt like everything else was too exhausting. It was only slowly and gradually that it dawned on me, and on us, because we were in pretty much the same boat, that this wasn’t just ‘it takes the body a little longer to fully recover because it’s not a normal flu’; it was long Covid.

In the years since then I’ve often felt incredibly scared because I didn’t know if I’d ever recover, and incredibly angry that this had happened to me. However, I’ve also learnt things. I learnt to rest and I learnt to be much more intentional with everything. And with many big and small ups and downs, and with helpful (and less helpful) help, I have gotten a lot better, most significantly over the last year or so. I’ve regained belief and I’ve regained energy.

And even though all of this has been truly horrible, it’s also taught me a lot and made me have important realisations. The most significant perhaps being that I found out I’m autistic. This had never really crossed my mind before as all I knew about it came from the stereotypes portrayed in the media, which, I know now, give you a very limited idea of what autism might look like. When I started to read more and more about it, I recognised myself in it increasingly, and last summer I got an official diagnosis.

This realisation came as a relief, since everything suddenly made sense, my whole life and how I’d often felt. For example, I never understood why I couldn’t do as many things as other people seemed to, like studying full time, plus exercising, seeing friends on top of that, and more. I didn’t know why I never really fitted in. And a thousand more little and big things. Now I finally understood, I wasn’t a crappy human, I was just not a neurotypical one; I was and am, however, a wonderful neurodivergent human being.

Right now I’m rediscovering myself and life, now that I know that I’m autistic and now that I’m coming out the other side of these rough years, whilst still recovering further and sensing where my normal lies. To give you an idea, although it varies per week and per day, I’m probably at around 70% or 80% recovered now. I still live with my parents (they have  improved quite a lot too, though aren’t completely there yet either). I’m thirty years old, coming to the end of one chapter, whilst beginning the next, navigating this uncertainty, afraid and excited. And sharing this all with you, in writing these letters.

I don’t know what I’ll be writing about exactly, because I don’t know what life will bring. I do know I’ll write about life, my life and therefore about life in general too. My favourite question of all time is the one of how to live, both in my personal life and as a philosophical question, with regards to the day to day and concerning meaning or purpose. And since I’ll never truly get to the answer of this question – I’m assuming that I’ll continue to feel like a beginner at life always – I can ask it forever, exploring and experimenting. It’s what I do all the time, reading, thinking, talking, and writing, in my journal and from now on right here in these letters, from me – a fellow human who doesn’t really have a clue – to you.

I am very much looking forward to sharing this journey with you.

What journey are you on right now? I’d love to know.

Find out a little bit more about these letters right here.

Or find all of my posts here in the archive.