In the year before my exam year, Atheneum 5, we all had to write an essay about a politically current topic. This essay would then be peer reviewed by other students and then graded.
What I was trying to describe, very clumsily, was the tension between discrimination and the fear of being seen as discriminatory.
My teenage brain turned that into an essay.
Poorly.
Very poorly, even.
Even though my own brain thought:
“Yeah… this is nuanced. This is a good one.”
Looking back, I also realize my essay did not appear in a vacuum.
This was the early 1990s, when discrimination, multiculturalism and integration were heavily debated throughout Dutch society.
Hell, the entire reason I picked that topic was because those discussions were everywhere in the early 1990s.
I did not save the essay, nor do I have a backup of it.
But I still remember my honest intentions behind writing it.
I was trying to explore a nuanced question: whether authorities and society might respond differently depending on which group was involved in causing trouble.
Nothing more, nothing less.
At least in my own mind, I genuinely tried to keep the focus on that question rather than on the groups themselves, because that was never the actual point of the essay.
Looking back, I underestimated how much simply naming a group would dominate how people interpreted everything else I was trying to say.
Peer reviews
Then the peer reviews came in, and they absolutely crushed me.
I particularly remember one remark:
“This essay can be seen as racist, and you might be one.”
Yeah. That blunt.
Oh boy.
Trust me, to say that stung would be a massive understatement.
That was never the intention of the essay, and being racist is not part of my programming. Never was, never will be.
But I have to be very honest:
That essay, and the hurricane that followed afterwards, changed me.
I can still remember the lesson where I received those peer reviews.
The day.
The weather.
The looks on their faces.
And the instant gut punch I felt in my stomach.
I no longer remember what I wrote exactly. But the aftermath is here to stay forever.
That is probably also why this memory is stored on level -2 inside my WORM archives, in the very painful section.
My WORM archives are not fully described on this blog yet, but you can find a short reference here.
Basically, level -2 is deep in my basement, where very painful memories are stored in Write Once Read Many storage.
These memories are almost impossible to forget and are relived on a fairly regular basis.
This was not a single kernel panic.
It was a slow-motion kernel panic that unfolded over the course of several weeks.
Guilt
The guilt nearly crushed me.
For weeks, I went to school with what felt like a block of concrete in my stomach.
I feared Dutch language classes the most, especially the Thursday sessions where the essays were discussed.
I can still remember toying with the idea of correcting my essay, explaining my actual intentions behind it, or even rewriting the entire thing from scratch.
I also seriously considered giving a public apology in front of the class.
Yes.
A public apology.
I did not know I had autism back then, but the mere thought of doing that nearly paralyzed me.
Grade
I know I passed the assignment.
But by then, the damage had already been done.
The fallout?
More isolation.
Words do matter
Words do matter. Especially when the subject itself is already emotionally loaded.
That is something I learned the hard way over the years, and one of the main reasons why I tend to avoid certain topics altogether.
Because there is often a gap between what exists in your head and what eventually ends up on paper.
Sometimes the message lands exactly as intended.
Sometimes the exact opposite lands.
That is what happened to me while writing this essay.
Looking back, I probably should have picked a different topic.
Preferably one that was a little less loaded.
Great to know that in hindsight.
Only me?
And then there is another painful observation.
I remember this incident as if it happened yesterday.
The classroom.
The discussions.
The knot in my stomach.
Would my classmates still remember this incident after more than thirty years?
Probably not.
Would my Dutch teacher remember it?
Probably not either.
For them, it was likely just another essay. Another discussion. Another school day.
For me, it became something else entirely.
I am probably the only person who still remembers this incident in any meaningful detail.
And in a certain way, that is sad.
There is no one left that I can have an honest conversation with about it. No one with the same memories. No one with the same context. No one who was inside my head at that moment.
The people involved have moved on with their lives.
Meanwhile, a copy of that day is still sitting somewhere in my WORM archives on level -2.
Untouched.
Unchanged.
Waiting.
And sometimes I genuinely wonder why.
Why did my brain decide that this particular event deserved permanent storage?
Maybe my brain was never storing the essay. Maybe it was storing the lesson?
Am I the only one with a level -2 WORM archive?
I would genuinely love to hear your stories.
Brain, WORM memory, out.