Fire
The eighties of the last century saw the coming of a new formulation of an old ideology. The promotion and justification of the use, abuse and exploitation of ones fellow human beings for profit led to big changes on a geo-political level. The fire started burning once again.
The neoliberalist politics of Margaret Tatcher and Ronald Reagan shaped the formative years of Tina-Ger Burns. This was a time when it became prudent to blame a victim for its predicament. After all, everybody had the freedom to better oneself at the expense of others.
Burning down the house
Tina-Ger was kicked out of her paternal home when she was fourteen years old. Her father had acquired himself a new wife who already had children and it was a cost saving measure. At the age of fifteen she was allowed back home. But after half a year and despite being forced to pay for room and boarding she was thrown back out on to the streets. It was the beginning of winter and Tina-Ger suffered from Pfeiffer’s disease.
The mother of Tina-Ger could not take care of her. She was forcefully admitted to a mental institution. Against her will, mother was violently injected with a toxic cocktail of pharmaceuticals. She could barely put one foot in front of the other. But this didn’t stop the Captains of the Clouds to pester and push her continuously to take action and blame her for her lack of initiative.
It is common practice to diagnose patients after they are drugged. Despite the fact that many of the medicines used in psychiatry have the same side-effects as the afflictions they’re suppose to treat.
Hiding from the flames
In the 1980s, thanks to writer and youth-worker Yvonne Keuls, the story of family-judge and vice-president of the court in The Hague, Theo Rueb, came to the surface and went on fire. This man systematically raped the boys who were placed under his authority. Although Tina-Ger didn’t identify as a boy, she thought it best to hide away from such a system.
She found refuge in old abandoned buildings and squats where the punks, drunks and junkies housed together with other fugitives from law and order. In those places there was rarely heating and often no running water and/or electricity. It was living with and like the pigeons; together in their own excrements. Tina-Ger saw no future in a life as an outsider. Despite the hardship, she started to attend evening classes and obtained a degree from Advanced Scientific Education which allowed for access to a university
And so ended the years of Tina-Ger Burns.