Antwoord - Joost Klein

1.

The same white walls I had looked at for almost 7 months straight were coming to an end. I felt attached to the place I had called home against my will. I knew it was for the best, but I never wanted this for myself in the first place.

I said goodbye to my doctors and therapists that had helped me throughout the months. I gave every one of them a smile that was strong enough to convince them to let me out. The most important thing I had learnt while being inside of the white walls was that all you really had to do in life was tell people what they wanted to hear.

Life became so much easier when I accepted that fact here. I was struggling and fighting to express how I truly felt but it never made me make any progress. When I started giving into the words they wanted to hear, I somehow got better. Maybe it was because I knew I couldn't get out without any process being made so by faking it until you believed it yourself was what I had to do, then I did it.

I took the first step outside in freedom after months. I make it sound like I was locked up in jail, but it felt like it. I was locked up with my own feelings on the outside for a doctor to determine if I was healthy enough. I was looked after at every hour of the day to make sure I would do "anything stupid".

It wasn't stupid it was strategically smart to cheat the system by puking everything up after they had watched you eat but apparently, they had a different view on it...

Being almost 27 years old yet not able to decide when you must eat is hitting rock bottom. I had a schedule like I made it to the granny jail - also known as a retirement home.

But I was finally done with it. I made it to my weight goal by smiling while eating, not vomiting, forcing my unhealthy thoughts deep down, and managed to become friends with all the staff members. I had officially succeeded by beating anorexia or at least for now.

I searched the parking lot outside of the hospital. I was searching for the man who forced me in there in the first place. I would have never gone there alone asking a stranger to help me eat daily. After a lot of convincing and threats about firing me, I gave in.

I couldn't even imagine what I would do without a job. I didn't have a job for 7 months, which was the main reason why I pulled myself together to get out of there. But I never stopped working, I couldn't.

If I couldn't work properly as a manager, I did side projects. It wasn't in my DNA to stop working, I always had to occupy myself with something productive or creative. I got it from my parents.

My father used to not be that bad but when we made the move to Rotterdam after he lost his job in Lisse during the financial crisis, it kicked off again but went to extreme levels. He never wanted to have that feeling of not being able to support his family even though when he lost his job, he still had his ass full of money. My father, Steven, has always worked hard but as soon as I was born, he focused on me and helped start my mother's company since she wasn't able to continue being a model after being pregnant.

My mother, Chantal, was a well-known model from her late teens until she had me in her late 20's. I ruined her model-skinny body, so she could never return to modeling. She started her own agency where she scouted out upcoming models and helped them transform into being runway ready. She was an agent for a lot of models and had pretty much dominated the Dutch model industry over the years. She was also part of why I worked so hard.

I was raised to always work hard so with everything I did, I went 120%. I went 120% when I went to finish my bachelor's in music business. I went 120% when I became Ski Aggu's manager. I went 120% when it came to starving myself to get skinny enough for my mother's approval.