"The Seas We Swim": An Open Letter to Migrationsverket

It has been a dark month, but I refuse to apologize for the emotions I have been going through, despite a voice inside my chest that reminds me daily how weak I have become.

I've experienced struggle in this life on many occasions, but while this one is different, it is also not different at all; every day is a reminder of how psychological the notion of "hope" is.  Some days, hope seems nothing more than a lie we tell ourselves in order to inspire our legs to keep treading water for one more day.

"Don't sink now," we tell ourselves.  "The rescue boat could be here tomorrow."  

Meanwhile, we continue to swallow water.  The taste of salt never leaves our lips.

On good days, you look forward.  The light at the end of the tunnel becomes more pronounced.  It's like running a marathon and reaching the 20th mile, and you say to yourself, "All I have is a 10k left to do! It only takes me 50 minutes to run a 10k... this will be over sooner than I know it!" Your lungs fill with spirited breath and your feet fall to the cadence of the music, and you bask in the feeling of accomplishment; you fantasize about the finish line, as if you can already feel the tape break across your chest to the sound of cheers.

On bad days, you look backward.  All that can be seen is a pit of darkness from whence you came, and you grimace at the thought that you still have months left to go.  It's like running a marathon and reaching the 20th mile, and you say to yourself, "Holy fuck.  I've already run TWENTY MILES.  And I still have an entire 10k left.  I surely cannot make it." All the pain in your joints is acutely felt, and your labored breathing becomes even more pronounced.  You see people passing you, and you doubt yourself, your preparation, your stamina.  And then you watch as the race organizers pick up the finish line and move it farther and farther away. Your lungs burn and your knees buckle. It becomes psychological warfare, and your army of resolve runs thin.

October 2015. Within the span of 25 days, we saw the discontinuation of applying for priority, and we have endured the update of wait times twice.  And they have doubled, from 4-9 months, to 8-14+ months. Compounding this is how we continue to receive obscenely conflicting information; even just one day after wait times were updated, a woman at the Umeå office told us that we would need to wait 16-17 months.  Some days, we all hear 14-15 months.  And on others, 18-20.

It isn't the length of the wait so much that brings us to our knees; it's the pillaging of our hope.  Such a flimsy, whimsical thing to persist off of; like using a willow branch as a walking stick.  And just as soon as Johan and I personally made it to 9 months (indeed, exactly the longest month we had been told we would have to wait for the past 6 months), the wait times double.  Everything we built our future on -- our wedding plans, our family planning, our living situations, our very livelihoods -- becomes capsized in the single refresh of a webpage.

How is it possibly humane to pay and be placed in a queue that gets longer for each month you wait?  

Questions you begin to ask yourself.  Questions of justice, questions of equality, questions of deference.  It blurs together like paint in water; everything becomes a shade of indistinguishable mire.

I cannot apologize for succumbing to depression; I can only promise to do better, to be stronger, to learn from these difficult times and toughen myself.  Fact of the matter is, I've been pushed into water and I don't know how to swim. I flounder about and I'm told the sea floor is just within reach, only to have 10 million gallons of water flood in and push my feet farther from the ground than when I even began.

I am told that my pain does not count.  Pain in the head and heart is not life-threatening, and so like cattle we are pushed into an ever-increasingly crowded pen and we're told to simply not breathe as hard, if we feel the pressure compressing our rib cages inward too greatly.  

"If you exist a little less, then we can fit more people into this queue." 

I hesitate in admitting that I have not been able to sleep without taking a Benadryl each night, since the end of September.  I hesitate in admitting I've lost 7 pounds in the last 4 weeks.  I hesitate in admitting that sometimes I sit back in awe of depression, and say to myself, "So this is what those Zoloft commercials were talking about."  These are the feelings that are depicted as a little gray frowny cloud hovering over your every step.  This is why Eeyore never smiled when he was around friends.

Not every day can be a motivational speech. 

Some days you contemplate the war waging in your mind as you wait.  You think about the hundreds of thousands of refugees who cram themselves in between you and your loved one, and you question the credibility of the pain you feel.  Does some pain matter more than other pain?  Do my partner and I have a right to feel it? You find yourself begging philosophical questions:

"Would I rather be in the position of taking a bullet to a life-threatening part of my body if it meant I could be in a world-class hospital that would care for me immediately; or would I rather take a sword wound to a non-threatening part of my body but suffer the healing process with no medical assistance whatsoever?"

The latter is also known as the "Sambo Visa Process". The chances of us dying are far less than the former, and so we are left to fend for ourselves. The task plagues the vulnerable, and plucks out the weak who lack the endurance to forge onward.

The mind acknowledges these things, but wonders how permanently its  constitution will be damaged once it sees this process through.  The spirit became a battlefield months ago.  The heart has lost a lot of ground.  

Do I have the right to have meltdowns over this process, even though others have it so much worse than me? 

Simply put:  It's ok not to be ok.

I fear this post being read by people who have not also been fighting a psychological war.  Those who can sleep, those who have peace in their insides.  Circumstances differ but every human has the capacity to suffer, and while it might vary in the body, it does not vary in the mind.  Exhaustion plagues us all in the same way.  We all can only endure for so long.

We - both applicant and Swede - are more than just a dossier number and a 1.500 SEK fee payment.  We are flesh; we feel pain, and at a certain point, the degree of pain between a bullet hole and a knife stab is very hard to distinguish.  Suffering is suffering.  Some of us just have a greater tolerance for it than others.

We are sentient beings, bound by human nature and trusting of the principles of equality and justice, which society demands of us in return for the promise of reciprocity.  This is the basic notion upon which stable, functional countries are founded.  The idea that we are all equal and deserving of fair treatment, humanity and respect, and that our voices can be heard.

We do not blame you, Migrationsverket.  You have no more control over the laws and state of affairs than we do.  You can do only as you are bid, and we can do no less but endure.

We also understand that, no matter whether we are refugees or sambo applicants, Sweden truly owes us nothing (save, perhaps, for the parceling of humanity of which Sweden is quick to declare). We are all otherwise nothing but foreign immigrants.

The difference in our situations, however, is that we are traveling to be with Swedish citizens or others who have legal and protected rights, and ought to be treated with at LEAST the same modicum of dignity and equal treatment as other applicants.

We are not asking for special treatment; we are asking for FAIR treatment. We understand our wait times might need to be longer, but is twice the length justifiable?? And for those wait times to compound so severely?? We are nothing by life boats bearing an already stormy sea; we do not need the spear of Poseidon knicking us at ever turn, forcing us to spend more energy bailing water than we do trying to paddle to the next wave before it crashes down on us!

Keep your promises. If a certain wait time was listed, then pay that debt! Otherwise what good is your word? Of course we will cry out if we are told to stand on a carpet, only to have it ripped out from underneath us. 

Does Sweden subscribe to consequentialism, in which the ends justify the means? Is it acceptable to treat one class of people unequally because humanity is seen to be more possible in the end by doing so? Because in an effort to be morally upstanding, you have become inadvertently discriminatory of those who have played by the rules despite being ambushed repeatedly. Our Swedish family ask for nothing more than to be reunited. Do they not have a right to seek this in a fair manner? Must they continue to be treated as second class citizens in their own homeland, by their own countrymen?

Order must be upheld as an indelible priority in a stable society; the chief quality of which is equality. Mistreatment of one group of people in favor of another cannot be tolerated - particularly when the losers in the battle are the very ones whose tax dollars are funding the other side of the equation.

At the very least, the Alien's Act needs to be modified so that we can visit our loved ones post-interview per the laws governing our tourist visas, without fear of having our application rejected.  As we have no idea when "the decision time" will be, please at least allow us to visit our family and not place the burden solely on them and their ability to travel to us.  We do not want a hold placed on our application, either.  There needs to be an adjustment to the law to allow us to visit our people without fear; it is cruel and unnecessary to force us to be separate, not to mention unjust. If we are able to prove our own funds, accommodation and health insurance, we should be allowed the same rights as asylum seekers: to stay in Sweden with our family until our cases have been judged.

Mercy.  Please do not siphon away any more of our hope.  Please be compassionate to those of us separated from family, loved ones, children... our people who need us just as much as we need them. Please do not punish us just because our pain cannot be seen.

Because we are drowning, too.