The sun

 

It's been a strange couple of days. The sun was out yesterday on the first day of the year and I felt hopeful - and a sense of enthusiastic curiosity I haven't felt in a long time. I walked outside, into Old Town, and bought kale and spinach and fruit - and made a swiggy. I met Shelly for lunch and conversation. And then took the train to Sarah's house for dinner where I had great company and conversation for hours. This morning, I awakened to a phone call from one of my friends in the Cameroon Special Forces. He wished me a happy new year and wanted to hear my sleepy voice. What a great guy. Somehow, the grinning fool managed to get inside my heart and I really love hearing from him. He is one of the reasons I do what I do...why I MUST do what I do. I have to work. I have to publish. I have to change the way capacity building is conducted. I have to help him save his country.

 

In the past week, I finally claimed the friendships I have in the Dutch Navy and Marine Corps on linkedIn. For so long, I was afraid I was contaminated. I didn't want to taint them with whatever stink MIVD had tried to wipe on me. But enough time had passed and I thought, "what the hell? They can always say no". But every single one of them accepted my contact within hours of the invitation. God, that felt good. It felt like I was taking something back that had been stolen. And then my frogman responded to my text and gave me his kisses on Christmas. There are so many beautiful things in the world and I can feel them. For all the hell I've been mired in, I've been luckier than most in the friends I've made and the caring that people have given me.

 

In the last week, I've written one new scholarly paper to submit and amended a second for resubmission. I wrapped this second one up tonight and fixed the references.

 

I spent time with my sister and parents and my niece. There are beautiful people in the world.

 

There was a meeting at my lawyer's office this afternoon. I walked and took a taxi - and then returned home on the bus via Shirlington where I stopped for a salad and more writing on the papers. I had approached the meeting with such dread. I hate everything that the company has tried to do to me. Everything they've tried to take.

 

Perhaps a part of me felt that there could have been a different path - some option behind door #3 that could have spared me this. I've often wondered if there was some incantation I could have said to change the state of affairs as they are now. But you can't change someone's mind when they're set on it. You cannot force someone else to make a good or reasonable decision. And the company didn't make a reasoned decision based on the facts. They wanted to punish me. They wanted to put me into a box that they could understand. But I crossed the Rubicon a long time ago - if I wasn't going to get in the box when Sjors wanted me to, why the fuck would I do it for them?  

 

Today they were on the phone, misrepresenting the truth to a third party and I thought, "Aha. Even they don't feel that their actions have been defensible. You don't misrepresent the series of events if you feel that you are in the right." And then my baby-faced lawyer calmly pulled the thread on their words and their malice was uncomfortably exposed - like wearing a pair of saggy grey granny panties under a pair of tailored white Prada shorts.

 

 I may not have much. I don't have a salary. I'm whittling away my savings in huge chunks. But I have my ideas. And I have my integrity.