Glennis Grace says she has suffered nerve damage as a result of the media riot about her violent outburst in the Jumbo for which she was convicted. “My entire nervous system was affected.”
It will haunt Glennis Grace for the rest of her life: her public assault in an Amsterdam Jumbo, for which she was sentenced to 200 hours of community service. An even greater punishment was the enormous media riot that arose. “All those people who have an opinion about you, all those items on talk shows, it just kept going.”
Literally crazy
Glennis has complained about it several times and this time she does so in an extensive interview with the &C. “Every time I thought it was calming down, it came back. There was a moment when I literally went crazy, when I thought: if I don’t wake up tomorrow, it’s okay.”
She seriously thought that, she emphasizes. “A blue Monday, yes, it haunted my mind. That was my low point. I called my mother and asked her if she could come right away. I said that I couldn’t cope anymore, that I was afraid of what I felt at that moment, the thoughts that came to my mind.”
Nerve damage
Glennis also suffered physical damage as a result of the media riot. “When I looked in the mirror, I saw someone I no longer recognized. My eyes looked strange, I was a shadow of myself. I also started having physical complaints. One day, a year and a half after the incident, I simply couldn’t get out of bed.”
She continues: “The pain was not normal. I am an athlete, I live a healthy life, I did not understand what the breeding was going on. Afterwards it turned out that my entire nervous system was affected, purely from the stress.”
Turning point
According to Glennis, the outside world did not see that. “People may not have noticed that I was stressed, they may have thought that I didn’t care that much because I could hide it fairly well, but of course my body responded to it. That day was a turning point. I had physiotherapy for months.”
Only then could recovery begin, she decided. “Exercising hard every day, eating well, talking to a coach: that’s how I slowly got back on my feet. You know, I don’t deserve the beauty prize, I certainly don’t play the victim role, but I just didn’t deserve this. I know it’s not useful to say things like this, but three years is just too long. This was too intense.”