Why am I leaving Estonia?

I don't know if I'm gonna post this or not, but if you're reading it, it means I have.

I think burnout is not going to do justice to the feelings that I have experienced in Estonia. I am exhausted; I feel like a robot that is just trying to survive, and nothing else matters to it. Recently, I had a demeaning experience in one of the Estonian healthcare clinics, and the events that followed made me feel like I'm still living in Iran. I came out of Iran because I felt trapped; I felt that my voice was not being heard, and at some point, it is quite dangerous because when you don't have the opportunity to speak up, many things can happen to you, and people can do all sorts of things to you.

I must say talking about my real feelings has always been hard for me. Google says I have avoidant attachment disorder, but how I would describe it is that showing any kind of soft emotions makes me feel horrible. I hate to be seen crying. If you've known me from before, you must remember that you barely have seen me cry. I don't hug anyone mostly; I don't say I love you. It feels weird and cringe to me to show emotions, and I know for a fact that I am in the wrong, but I can't help it. I feel like my insides are being crunched; I feel like I am melting into myself when I try to show emotions. Also, I know that all these feelings don't mean that I am incapable of love and feeling emotions. In fact, I am extremely sympathetic, but something from within is stopping me.

As I was saying, Iran wasn't a good place for me to stay. Even though I had my family and friends, I could not bear the thought of unpredictability of my future, whether it was my financial future or my safety. I didn't feel safe. There were many things that you could have said that might have made your destiny indescribable, my voice was muffled, like those nightmares where you scream but nothing comes out, but this was real life! scary right? You could have been gone into trouble for the simplest thing you'd say and no one would or could support you, no one would have believed you and that was the last straw for me, I got out.

I moved to Europe, Estonia. Mostly because I could afford to live here compared to other European countries. I didn't know much about the culture and the people and to be honest Google didn't help either. I came here with hopes and dreams, with so many aspirations. I had the spark as they say, I was excited! Now not so much, or not at all to be exact. Of course living life independent of my parents and family was also another reason for me to be hit with the reality of life, paying rent, expenses, grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning, taking care of my own physical and mental help, AND dealing with some despicable human beings that changed the trajectory of my life. But I think it could've been easier, see, I have dealt with all kinds of people in my 30 years of life, people who abused me in every possible way, but I gotta say that top 5 of them I met in Estonia.

When you move your whole life to another continent and you're unfamiliar with everything, the least you could ask is for some understanding from the people there. I didn't need them to kiss my ass, love me or even help me financially, I just wanted them to not be cruel to me, I wanted them to not abuse my vulnerabilities, but they did, they abused it to its maximum potential, no empathy whatsoever. I was alone, new to the place and naïve, unaware of the rules of living outside my own country, and people here saw that as a opportunity to bash me the hardest, and I will not forget that.

Took me loooooooong time and lots of being stabbed in the back to finally realise it wasn't my fault, to finally match their energy. Though it is already too late, I have lost my spark and my hope in humanity, also I am moving out of Estonia, so i guess there is not going to be energies to be matched.

One of the almost recent experiences that we had, was with a landlord that was a woman; I would like to call her a Bitch but I won't:). She lured us into signing a rental contract, in which she deliberately excluded an important clause that landlords usually add. She abused our lack of knowledge about the local laws and we signed it not knowing what we're getting into. Long story short we decided to leave because all her promises about the rental were lies and because of the omitted clause, we had to pay her almost 3000 euros. Before she even get that money from us, she sent us multiple berating and disgusting emails and was threatening not to let us go until a year. I could confidently say that she is the worst person I have seen in my entire life. absolutely no sympathy at any point, and she just milked us, an immigrant couple even though we were not rich and were struggling. And low and behold, we asked a few lawyers if we can pursue that and get our money back, and it seemed like not one soul gives a damn about foreigners in Estonia. We were tricked, we were played and we were left alone.

To be honest I already knew way before that if we encounter any legal or non legal problems in Estonia, we are screwed. I came to this realisation around year 3 to 4 of living here. People here like to keep it quiet. From what I gathered, and this is not out of spite, it is based on my personal experiences and my foreigner friends experiences, no one likes to be involved in anything, the general public does not like to bother themselves with doing anything to help others specially foreigners. They don't like competition, involvement, and they simply are not very empathetic.

In here I felt like Iran again, even worse. My voice was once again muffled, I was forced to be quiet and let it go, there was no law protecting me, protecting us foreigners against being exploited by locals. In fact I feel like all they wanted from us was to leave, and that is precisely what we are doing. I couldn't criticise Estonia in any shape or form, in a friendly setting criticising would result in them hating you and never contacting you again, in Facebook it resulted in coordinated group attacks, not only from the locals, but also from other foreigners who believed that by siding with locals, they're going to be subjected to less scrutiny and discrimination, which in fact is what flatterers of any dictator government would do, it never works, it just makes you lose your identity and dignity.

Anytime I tried to talk to someone about the wrong treatment they had toward me, they just disregarded my feelings by saying "Everybody is being treated this way!", and for a while I thought they are right, but no they were not, it was just blatant disregard and ignorance of the person who I was talking to.

I never thought I would say this in a country that is part of the European union and Schengen, a country that claims to be developed and first world, "I don't feel safe here!". I don't, I am scared that if something happens to me, the law might disregard me, I am afraid that people here will never back me up, even if they are 100% sure that i am in the right. I am afraid that the lack of empathy would cause people to side with what benefits them rather than what's right. Besides there is a very unfiltered hate against the foreigners and their existence in this country that might endanger our safety. You know as foreigners we had a hard time even finding rentals. Local landlords told us directly that they don't rent to foreigners. Many jobs won't hire you because you're a foreigner. The moment your foreigner name appears on their application, your chances of getting hired decrease significantly, unless you are IT or some other extremely needed profession that there are not enough Estonians to fill the market for. And there is no place to make a complaint, even if there are ways to be able to claim your rights, local employers and landlords are much more familiar with all the exceptions and loopholes which would eventually cost you more than them.

I also have no friends here, and you might say it is on me, maybe you'd say I wasn't outgoing enough? Or I was too much outgoing? Maybe you'd say, well try Facebook or go in different events? Maybe you'd say many things. For 4 years, I tried every little trick in the book of friendship, I tried to be like them, dress like them, talk like them, I tried to be as people pleasing as possible, apologising for things that didn't need apologising, explaining myself, demeaning myself and my country's situation to make THEM feel more comfortable, inviting them to my home, trying to show love for whatever they offered, only saying good things about Estonia, and yet I could never make it to the second date. The only friends that I managed to find were foreigners or mixed people, and interestingly they all move out of Estonia. I think most foreigners do.

Something that instigated me to write this-even though I wanted to write for a long time- was a recent experience that I had in a clinic in Tallinn meant for chest x-ray. I absolutely needed that x-ray so i went inside. If you've been to a chest x-ray, you'd know that you have to undress your top half and that is fine by me if the operator is a woman-uncomfortable but fine. In this clinic there was a man, middle aged or younger. the moment I went in I was surprised that a man is operating x-ray for women! He rushed me into taking of my clothes and didn't even let me to to think so i couldn't even ask for a female operator. To undress in front of a man, in an empty room with only him and me inside was demeaning and traumatising enough, but when we reached out to the clinic later, after a long period of time, they sent their lawyer to send us an email in which they said "It is what it is and you can do nothing about it.". They said this is Estonia and in here shit like this is normal and since all the country supports locals and local businesses instead of foreigners, I guess I had to accept it and shut my mouth, muffled voice remember?

I don't cry very often as I said, but I did that day and yet again I was forced to shut up and take it. When I moved out of Iran I was relieved because I thought incidents like this wouldn't happen again, I thought as a woman I wouldn't be discriminated again, such a shame.