Onkruid vergaat niet

Onkruid vergaat niet is a phrase Emma uses twice as a joke about herself during periods of serious distress. Literally, it means that weeds do not perish. In Emma’s conversations, the image gives her a way to speak about surviving without making that survival sound secure: first it deflects concern, then it is returned to her as a gentler insistence that she is more than the joke allows.

A joke that conceals distress

During a phone conversation, Emma is asked what she would have done if the news had been bad. She answers with Onkruid vergaat niet, calling it a painful joke. The remark does not reassure the person on the other end. They tell her that her habit of hiding what is happening—including the fact that she has been admitted to hospital—leaves others worrying without knowing why. The phrase thus works as a shield, but not an effective one: it turns a serious question into humor while leaving the distress beneath it unspoken.

The phrase returned on the bridge

Emma uses the same joke again while speaking with someone who says they feel powerless when she disappears into the hospital and cannot be helped. This time Emma calls it an awkward joke. The other person replies that she is not a weed. The exchange briefly changes the phrase’s direction: what Emma uses to reduce herself to something stubborn and unwanted is answered with a refusal to define her that way. Yet Emma says that remembering this is sometimes difficult. As she reaches the end of the bridge and steps onto the pavement, the emotions have ebbed, but a gap remains between them. The reassurance matters, but it does not resolve their helplessness or distance.

Survival without a cure

The phrase’s humor sits beside Emma’s account of depression as an experience that can drain her until she is only fragments of herself, clinging to life while being pulled deeper. The memory of a depth beyond the balcony gives that description a concrete and dangerous history. Elsewhere, Emma describes a different present to her psychiatrist: the fog has lifted, and the world seems newly visible and intelligible. Her answer that she feels good and clear compresses a difficult experience into a response the psychiatrist can readily receive. These sharply contrasting states make the joke’s apparent certainty—she will endure—feel provisional rather than triumphant.

Emma later asks to be allowed to go, recognizing that those around her may fear another decline while insisting that this life is hers to live. She also acknowledges that things will get worse again. In that context, Onkruid vergaat niet is not a declaration that the illness has vanished or that resilience guarantees safety. Its recurrence holds together two truths the narrative does not reconcile: Emma survives, and survival can still involve concealment, recurrent depression, and the need for other people’s care.