Very, very upsetting...

I've returned to witness the forum journey but can't help but comment personally to Too Much Reality in Life.

I am absolutely LIVID that this sort of thing can happen to anyone in any western civilization under the guise of democracy. I am furious to hear your story knowing that I personally cannot help you through the very fact that I am an Auslaenderin and thus no-one would hell listen to me, even if I stood up in the middle of Zurich and screamed bloody murder! They would just bow their heads, shuffle along, tut - anything to block out the shock of someone's bad reality.

This is absolutely intolerable a situation. It is fundamentally wrong. The problem is not you, my friend. The problem is Swiss society, its bureaucracy and its acceptance of what it does not want to know. Unless you, or someone else Swiss who can be persistent, are prepared to make a song and dance by taking your situation to the newspapers, by finding an interested editor who is also prepared to make a noise, you will be a statistic. You are worth more than being just a statistic. And those who do not serve your best interests are not worth protecting.

Your debts are not who you are. Your housing situation is not who you are. Christ, students in UK leave university with 60,000 CHF worth of debt, then go around the world traveling, then come home, then start to pay it off two years later! It is very EASY in Switzerland to get into debt. Miss one tax payment, miss one form deadline, and they linch you. The system is not set up for individual cases. It is set up to deal with the 'normal' person. This is why it is failing you. It is not you, I repeat, It is the system. And, as with other commentators above, I fully push you to step into the world beyond this tiny, tiny dot of a country that has failed you - to any of those that border here - if you can build your courage.

I absolutely understand any hesitation. It takes so much guts and strength to keep going on a daily basis when life is painful, and beating down on you monotonously. But you will get through this.

I would rather not place my contact address here since I seem to have created some enemies (and friends too, maybe!). But if you have one, then I'm sure we would, individually (as a forum is not the right place for this) respond, and maybe in our ways, as survivors in our own small lives, may be of some positive influence to you.

I think this story encapsulates the whole sentiment of these postings - that whoever we are, wherever we live and wherever we come from, we just want to be treated like decent human beings.

Wendy 27 Aug 2008, 07:30 - Report