You know who she is, and you understand who you are, and now maybe you’re ready to understand who I am.
~ The Bartender, Predestination (2014)
August 26th, 2026
Hi there.
It’s been a while since I last wrote something for the Fôrum. Today is the day of the WLV, which is always a good excuse to reflect on the past year. And boy, has it been a year for me.
Some of you may know already, and some might have gathered it from the contents of my Fôrum posts in April, but this year, especially these past few months, has been quite difficult and transformative for me. On the day of my 25th birthday, April 8th 2026, I started writing. And I haven’t stopped since. My Google Docs of “poetry” has reached a hundred pages. A hundred. Of this, only a few pieces have been shared publicly. I’ll keep it that way for a while. The piece that kicked up the most dust, Predestined, was admittedly quite concerning. I feel like I owe you, the humble Fôrum reader, some explanation.
See, at the start of April, I experienced a heavy mental episode. The specifics of it are still to be figured out by me and some well-trained professionals, but it wasn’t pretty from the outside looking in. The odd part is, however, that during that period I felt the best I ever have. Such are the ways of (hypo)mania. I wanted to capture that feeling. That feeling of immense clarity and purpose. I’m not entirely sure if I did a good job, though. A few readers found my “magnum opus” to be worrying, but others seemed to see parts of the artistic intent and messaged me saying they liked it. The view count we have installed showed the biggest peak the Redâkkie had ever seen. Mission accomplished? Not really.
I don’t think the intent behind Predestined was clear enough. That’s my fault for making it incomprehensible, with information buried underneath unnecessarily. It’s part of the writing style I employed at the time, which I luckily abandoned a couple dozen pages into my Docs. It’s all a bit less “schizo” now, as the younglings say. Because yeah, quoting some B-list 2014 movie (which you should really watch!) and writing a letter to an unidentified “You” who died (but also didn’t?) is rather schizo, I can see that.
So why dig it all up again? Some, if not most of you had already forgotten about the article. Surely it’d be easier to let it all blow over and quit writing to publish publicly altogether. And I mean, it would be. But something in me doesn’t want the confusion and concern to triumph over the love and understanding I tried to put forward. I wanted to give back to the Koornbeurs and this just won’t do. I hope that by explaining myself, I’ll do what I set out to do in the first place. To give back to the Koornbeurs in my way. Maya’s way.
One of the first and most important interactions I’ve had with the Koornbeurs was during my OWee. It was 2020 so, thanks to Covid, the OWee was 95% online, which sucked. Massively. The Koornbeurs made the best of it, however, and, among various other activities, they had a livestream. In it, two people, who I’d rather leave unnamed, were answering questions from the Twitch viewers. My question was as follows:
What do you do when you don’t know what your identity is yet?
~ Baby Maya, 2020.
It’s a question that has plagued me as much as the next first-years, I know, but it’s a question I still haven’t answered definitively years later. Hell, just two years back I still thought I was a man. Life can surprise you in funny ways sometimes. I feel like I’m edging closer to an answer, though. Somewhere hidden in the whitespaces within my dozens upon dozens of pages of poetry is my identity and I’m slowly starting to get a glimpse of it. The Koornbeurs has given me the time and space to explore myself and I can never thank all of you enough for giving me that opportunity. I see the new first-years come into the Koornbeurs and I hope that they feel that they too can take up that space and explore their own identity, whether through writing, talking or simply existing within a building that accepts and welcomes them. I think that’s where the true value of KB lies. In the O of O.J.V.
Predestined was supposed to be a capstone article of my first twenty-five years of my life. It’s not by any means, but that was the intent. I sat on a park bench in Rotterdam for three hours writing it and various other pieces that probably won’t ever see the light of day. It must’ve been quite the sight to see a sleep-deprived vaguely woman-shaped entity furiously writing there for such a long time. No phone, no food, no water. Just writing uninterrupted until inspiration ran out. Writing about decades of trauma is a strangely freeing experience I’ll never be able to repeat and I think I prefer it that way.
So what was it actually about? It’s difficult to rationalise what I created while definitely acting irrationally, but I think I’ve reached a point where I can do so. A few things coincided in that time period. I fell in love (horribly so), accepted the death of a great friend and, I reached the milestone of being alive for twenty-five years. Despite everything. That, plus sleep deprivation and substance abuse, culminated in a lot of short-circuiting in my brain. Death became life, greetings became farewells and I became, well, Maya. It was the first moment I truly accepted my gender and expressed it in public fearlessly. I even figured out a full legal name with four components. All within a day’s time. Add to that an unhealthy obsession with Predestination, a movie about timeloops, identity and love, a lovely gifted notebook, nice pens and a couple of hours to burn and before I realised it, many pages had been filled with a plethora of thoughts on life and my place in it.
I look back on what I wrote with an appropriate amount of shame. I still stand by the general spirit of Predestination, though. I made it through twenty-five years of ups and downs and I want to show others they can too. Hopefully, that message wasn’t lost in the twists and turns between my brain and the Fôrum.
In the end, it was all a bit of a rollercoaster for me as well as those close to me. I do sincerely apologise for that. It is never my intention to hurt others with what I write and publish. For now, my Docs is shared with a few close friends and rarely will a piece make it out into the public. Do stay tuned for that, dearest reader. The Fôrum has always been a platform for members to express their deepest emotions (or just fuck around) when they need it most. Allow me to take that space, too. Also feel free to ask for snippets of the 100+ pages if you feel like it. Sharing is a healing experience for both parties involved.
Thank you for making it to the conclusion of this article, I know it was a bit of a ramble. I felt like I owed you guys one.
Much love and until the next one,
~ Maya “van de Redâkkie” Mokkenstorm,
Uw Gebroken Spiegel.