Oud en nieuw

Oud en nieuw is not a festive reset for Emma Nieuwenhuis but a recurring threshold where the past becomes evidence for a future she fears. In a conversation with Beatrice, Emma describes the holiday as ending, in most moods, with her crying on a rooftop and watching the fireworks. Her account turns a public celebration into a private reckoning with despair—and into a scene where the possibility of survival is bound to other people.

A recurring year-end crisis

Emma says that Oud en nieuw tends to bring her to a rooftop in tears, looking at the fireworks. The distress is not confined to one mood: she presents the pattern as recurring whatever her state. As she looks back over what has happened and tries to infer what lies ahead, the prospect leaves her feeling worse rather than hopeful. The calendar’s apparent promise of a fresh beginning therefore sharpens, rather than relieves, her sense of an unwanted future.

Beatrice, Sergei, and the reason to stay

The disclosure takes place while Emma is speaking with Beatrice, who is afraid of Christmas and asks why Emma does not jump from the rooftop. Emma becomes tearful and answers by naming Sergei’s presence: he might be beside her, handling a bottle of champagne inside, or stealing a festive doughnut. These ordinary possibilities make him present in the scene without turning the exchange into an abstract argument. Emma says she cannot do that to him, and that her life is connected to the lives of everyone around her.

Her answer does not resolve the despair she has described. Instead, Oud en nieuw exposes the tension between wanting escape from recurring depression and remaining because suicide would injure people she loves. Emma then explains depression as a shadow she cannot outrun and mania as a light she has previously run toward, only to pay a price for looking into it too long. In this exchange, the holiday concentrates that longer pattern: neither the turn of the year nor the fireworks promise release, while connection offers a reason to endure the moment.