It’s Not All Mindset. Sometimes It’s Just Impossible

She said:
“We’ve come a long way too. It all starts with a mindset.”

She lives in Sweden now.
In freedom, in space, in silence.
Surrounded by nature. In a home where you can breathe.
In a life that may look modest on paper, but where basic needs are met.
Where you can recover from your struggles.
Where there’s room to think about the future. About possibilities.

We’ve lived together for ten years in just 15 square meters.
In my childhood bedroom, upstairs in a house that doesn’t feel like mine anymore for a long time now.
With a partial flat roof above our heads that boils in the summer.
A broken desk as our kitchen.
One window that’s always open to not feel like we’re 100 percent locked in.
And a covert narcissistic, depressive mother downstairs who, for years, decided everything — even whether Mart was allowed to live here and who prevented us from finding our own place until 2020.

We sleep, eat, sit and live on the same bed.
We fetch water when she’s not home.
We have no kitchen. No quiet. No privacy.
We are chronically overstimulated. And exhausted.
Not because we do nothing — but because everything we do costs ten times as much.

And still, people say things like:
“Think in possibilities.”
“It all starts with you.”
“Believe that change is possible.”

As if we haven’t been doing that for many years now.

But mindset isn’t a lifeline when you’re buried in concrete.
Mindset doesn’t fix a housing crisis.
Mindset won’t help if you can’t work, can’t borrow money, and can’t leave the house during daytime due to an overly sensitive brain.
When your body gives out.
When your mind is overwhelmed.
When there’s no quiet anywhere.

The people who say it’s all mindset are often the ones who’ve already arrived somewhere.
Who now live in peace, in nature.
Who can work, save money, make plans, dream, fail, and try again — because they have the space to do so.
Because they have the privilege of going through a “rough patch” without that patch defining their entire life.

We’re not in a rough patch.
We’re up against a wall.
A wall that doesn’t move.

And we tried to break through.

We even had a camper once.
Not to travel the world or live wildly — just to breathe.
Just to wake up with the sky above us instead of a ceiling pressing down.

We only had it for two years.
We couldn’t use it as often or as long as our hearts desired. Mother demanded seeing our babygirl every few weeks, but so we parked the camper where others had it parked. But a nasty neighbor always found it and did everything they could to have it taken away from us.
And so, the government took it away and destroyed it….

Other than that, it’s very hard to live in a camper in this country.
Not unless you own land. Or money. Or connections.
We had none of those.

And so, like every glimpse of freedom we ever had, it was taken.
Not because we failed.
But because this system doesn’t allow people like us to exist differently.

I’m not writing this out of self-pity.
I’m writing this because I want someone to say:
“I see you.”

Not to fix me.
Not to give advice.
But to finally acknowledge that this fight isn’t about attitude.
It’s about dignity.

And that’s not mindset.
That’s survival.

And if you’re reading this thinking, “But there’s always a choice…”
Then you’ve probably never really been without one.