FBRK Works, an ode to love.
From the beginning of Fabryk, it was our desire to be able to do something for someone else. That our personal experience drives this is something that perhaps not everyone knows.
Nor is it meant to win souls, attract attention or elicit any other form of pity. It’s why we do things the way we do them. And this event in our lives underlies this. I still find it far from easy to write about it, and I thought long and hard about whether to share it or not. Weighed all ifs and buts, thought about possible reactions and the reactions behind my back. It’s been so long, why is she bringing it up again? I have been scraping and rewriting it again, erasing it completely and starting over after months.
Why? Because it was a life-changing event that I no longer face every day but am still regularly thrown back to, in my dreams at night, during a middle-of-the-day waking moment, and every year as the date creeps ever closer. And it seems like the older I get and the more the years go by the more I deal with it because I’m afraid of forgetting. That I attended therapy to be able to give it a place because the feelings it evoked in me were so contradictory that I thought I was slowly going crazy. Where does this anger come from, the separation anxiety, why can’t I cry anymore because all my tears ran out 14 years ago.
Because since the move I have been thinking about it more and more, because a piece of our life history has been left behind in the village where we lived for so long. The safe nest we had built for ourselves in which nothing more could go wrong. Where our children were born because I wanted for that a piece of you would always live on through me. So that if anything ever happened I would always have a piece of you with me.
Because suddenly life changed for us that one day, that beautiful day in April. I, as a young woman of 21 suddenly was no longer carefree in life. But had to deal with a fear you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy, living between hope and fear, living between life and death, between joy at a slight improvement and fear at the rise in your body temperature.
Endless car rides
Because I’ve never been the carefree, carefree, thrillseeker since then. Because I had to protect what was left, to rebuild the 1,000 piece puzzle. Had to reinvent ourselves in a changed relationship that was still so fledgling that it might as well have fallen apart into 1,000 pieces.
Because I had only been a part of your life for three months, and had barely met your family when we were plunged into an abyss together and sat at your bedside for days, staring at the monitors and getting a cramp in our hearts at every squeak, creak and sigh.
The car rides between Groningen and Bakkeveen that I normally covered in 30 minutes but now seemed endless, and I looked in amazement and perplexity at drivers to my left and right who laughed, sang and happily whizzed by. For how could they not feel my pain, the pain I could share during the day but came so grimly close at night. Kept me from sleeping, hiding under my bed like a monster.
That I cursed you as you lay there helpless, with your life hanging by a thread, in this case a sticker on your battered chest with a blue and a red wire leading to a monitor and an intubation tube in your swollen throat with a pump that rhythmically blew life energy into you.
Because I was so goddamn scared and angry at the same time, I didn’t know where to look for it. That I couldn’t find it at home but also felt so useless in the hospital where the minutes slowly became hours and I was finally sent home by the nurse I begged just before if she could tell me anything about your state of mind.
How I caressed your fingers and face for weeks, thick with moisture and clammy with fever as you lay clattering on a cooling mattress. How can you explain this feeling to someone who has never experienced it?
The reason for FBRK-Works!
All we can do is provide a safe place for others who have experienced something similar. Where they can be who they are, with and without their disabilities. Where you’re just good enough the way you are.
That’s why we created FBRK-Werkt, to help people who have gone through a life-changing situation and therefore need to change course with their lives. Or to temporarily regain a grip on working life. At FBRK-Werkt, we are patient, and look at what does work. In small steps forward and when it is time to leave the safe nest give you the wind under your wings to fly out.
Point of Light
So this week the lamp takes center stage, not only as a beautiful eye-catcher in the interior but also symbolically as a point of light!
Want to know more about FBRK-Works? If so, I definitely recommend that you visit the website or contact us with no obligation at all. Together we can then explore what we can do for each other!
