Before I ever stepped onto that airplane to go to Holland, I was already marked. Already judged. Already doubted. The roles had been assigned long before I ever opened my mouth.
I didn’t arrive as a blank slate. I carried a story, not one I had written, but one imposed on me by others. A story shaped by centuries of racism, queerphobia, and privlege. People didn’t see me. They saw a projection, a stereotype and used it as an excuse not to look any deeper.
From the very start, I was not recognized as a whole person. I was filtered through the lens of dangerous, inherited myths. My existence triggered associations I hadn’t earned but couldn’t escape. None of them weren’t based on my actions but they were default assumptions, already present in the way people looked at me, avoided me, gossiped about me, explained me away.
I was stigmatized before I had a chance to speak. My classmates,like most people, were shaped by the norms around them, by unspoken lessons about who counts as “normal,” who deserves empathy, and who doesn’t. They didn’t need to be openly cruel. Their silence, their distance, their passivity, all of it worked together to isolate me.
They, too, were searching for identity, testing boundaries, trying to belong. But I was doing all that while carrying far more. I wasn’t just managing personal insecurities. I was navigating racism, queerphobia, and mental health stigma, all at once. I wasn’t more unstable. I was more vulnerable. They had room to stumble. I didn’t.
From day one, everything about me was treated as suspicious. My Roma identity was loaded with old prejudices — criminality, volatility, untrustworthiness. My queerness was either erased or distorted. And when I grieved, when I asserted a boundary, when I cried or asked for help, it wasn’t read as strength or even as a normal human need. It was seen as instability. My pain wasn’t just misunderstood but it was weaponized against me. It became a reason to exclude me.
People didn’t need to know me to distrust me. All they needed was what they thought they saw. And what they saw, they had already been taught to fear. So when I responded like anyone would - to hurt, to loneliness, to exclusion - my emotions weren’t read as human. They were seen as confirmation of a story they’d already decided was true.
And sometimes, that story didn’t just isolate me. It endangered me.
I remember one afternoon, I was in my room, crying. I had been carrying so much for so long, and the weight had finally pushed me so down that I had no other release left but tears. Camilla, my flatmate, was home. But as always, she said nothing. No knock on the door. No question. Just silence and gossips.
Then the doorbell rang. I heard her open it, and then I heard voices, loud and agitated. Suddenly, a large man I had never seen before stormed into my room. Yelling. Furious. Loud.
Apparently, he was a neighbor who had heard me crying. Camilla and I had never met him. But she let him in, and not just into our apartment, but directly into my room. She didn’t ask if it was okay. She didn’t warn me. She simply handed me over.
He barged in, shouting that I was disturbing the peace. He called me names. He was terrifying. He refused to leave. When I told him to get out, he insisted he had the right to be there because Camilla had let him in. Only when I threatened to call the police did he finally leave.
I was frozen. Humiliated. Exposed. And after he stormed out, I heard Camilla speaking to him in the hallway. Calmly. Kindly. Reassuring him. Telling him she understood. That he should contact the landlord. She even gave him the landlord’s name, as if his rage was valid, as if my crying had somehow justified his aggression. She didn’t just let him in. She reinforced the message that my fear didn’t matter and that his outrage carried more weight than my safety.
There was no apology. No moment of recognition that what she had done was dangerous. That she had invited a hostile stranger into our home, and guided him straight to my room. If he had physically assaulted me, there would have been nothing she or I could have done.
I was so full of fear and panic that I had no choice but to leave Oulu that very same day. But it didn’t end there. The next day, Camilla messaged my sister to say she was "worried" about me because I hadn’t come home. She didn’t mention the man. She didn’t say a word about the danger she had allowed into my space. Instead, she told my sister that the whole class was thinking about organizing an intervention for my drinking. As if I had disappeared because of alcohol! As if the real, physical fear I had just experienced; being screamed at by a stranger in my own room, meant nothing! As if my pain was evidence of my failure, not hers!
That wasn’t care. It was erasure disguised as concern. It was easier for her to turn me into the problem than to face what she had done. Easier to medicalize my trauma than admit she had exposed me to danger. Easier to pathologize my reactions than to confront the violence she enabled.
And that’s what stigma does. It doesn’t just isolate you, it rewrites the story. It twists the narrative until even your survival looks like instability. Until even your fear becomes evidence against you. A reason to dismiss you. To silence you.
That incident wasn’t an exception. It was the clearest, most violent expression of a pattern that had already been shaping my daily life.
I had been carrying three stigmas. Three markers that, in the eyes of many, meant I didn’t deserve care. I was Roma. I was queer. I struggled with my mental health. And when you carry all three, something even more devastating happens: people stop seeing you as fully human. They don’t protect you. They don’t believe you. They don’t stand up for you, not even when danger is in the room.
Sometimes, they even open the door and let the danger walk straight into your home.
That is not normal human behavior. It’s what happens when stigmas intersect.
It doesn’t just multiply harm, it compounds it. It builds a narrative so powerful that even your fear can be turned against you.
When you live with intersecting stigmas, everything you do is misread. Every reaction becomes a trap. Slowly, that trap reshapes how you move, how you speak, even how you think about yourself. And that is the worst thing: the invisibility of it. It's not so obvious as other forms of oppression. It's not black or white. It's subtle and it's confusing. So you you don't even realize what is happening, and instead of resisting, you absorb it all.
After the event I remember calling my friend Filipa, I knew from our time together In Czech Republic, about what had happened, and I remember her tellling me: "Come back to Prague. Come away from that vile country." And I was suprised. I was suprised that she didn't put the event on me! After enough pressure, you start blaming only yourself.
I started to shrink, trying to adapt, to survive, to become more “acceptable.” But no matter what I did, the story never changed. Because it was never based on who I really was. It was built to hold me out. I was the Other, the one deemed unworthy of protection or dignity they had reserved for themselves.
And this breaks you down, piece by piece. Not all at once. But gradually. Quietly. You stop asking for support because you’ve learned no one’s listening. You stop reaching out because you’ve been told you reach too far. You stop expressing joy because it might be misunderstood. You stop expressing pain because it definitely will be misunderstood.
And in that silence, you begin to disappear. Not because you want to, but because they make it impossible for you to stay visible without being punished.
I was never seen. I was watched.
I was never heard. I was interpreted.
I was never included. I was tolerated.
Until I wasn’t.
When I finally broke under the weight of it all - the racism, the exclusion, the queerphobia, the emotional isolation - I wasn’t met with understanding. I was met with blame. “She was unstable.” “She brought it on herself.” “She was too intense.”
The stigmas I carried were never isolated. They fed off each other. That’s what intersectional stigma means. It’s not just the sum of different prejudices but their entanglement, their interaction, their power to shape a much heavier, more dangerous narrative.
Being Roma already meant being seen as untrustworthy. Being queer already meant my feelings were dismissed as inappropriate. Having mental health struggles already meant my distress was ignored.
But together, these identities didn’t just mark me as “different.” They marked me as dangerous, irrational, unworthy of empathy, not credible.
The system didn’t see me as someone in pain. It saw me as the problem. Every emotion I expressed became evidence against me. When I was sad, it wasn’t natural but a liability. When I cried out, they said, “See? She’s unstable. She’s obsessive.”
There was no space for me to just be.
This is what it means to live under the weight of intersecting stigmas.
You don’t get to just be, to feel, to hurt, to love, to exist, without it being twisted into something dangerous.
And when that weight finally breaks you, the world doesn’t ask what broke you. It just points at the pieces and says, “See? We were right about her all along.”
But they weren’t right. They just never cared to ask who I truly was beneath the story they forced onto me.
And that story - their story - nearly destroyed me.
Privlege takes everything
But there was one thing that kept me going through everything: the promise of my Erasmus exchange. It was my light at the end of the tunnel. Finally, I thought, I would get some space. Distance from my classmates. Distance from Senni.
I had chosen my destination carefully, making sure I wouldn’t end up anywhere near them. As far as I knew, Senni hadn’t applied to Fontys in the Netherlands, and Samppa was planning to go to Slovakia.
I had a plan. I had already secured an internship interview with a Roma media organization in Prague. My plan was simple: after Erasmus, I would spend only a few more months in Oulu before heading to Prague to start something new. Something that was mine. A fresh start. A chance to heal. To have fun. To be safe. I just wanted a moment to breathe, a break from all the chaos.
But then I heard that Senni and Jussi were also going to Fontys, to the exact place I was suppose to run away from everybody. I couldn’t believe it. I could swear I remembered Senni saying she wasn’t going to apply there.
At some point I remember going to our international coordinator, Heikki Timonen, to ask if I could switch my exchange to somewhere else I have applied. Or Maybe to the Czech Republic, where I had friends and familiarity from living there before. But he dismissed me outright. It wasn’t possible, he said. No flexibility, no options. It was too late to change. I either go to Fontys or I don’t go at all. I had to accept it.
And then came another twist: Senni and Samppa said they wanted to talk with me. I was foolish enough to think maybe they had finally understood how they had treated me and were ready to apologize properly. But it wasn’t that. They wanted to tell me that Samppa - along with Jarno, his best friend from our class - had also changed their Erasmus exchange location to the Netherlands!
I begged them to reconsider. To go anywhere else, anywhere but the same place I was heading. I asked them both: Can’t you just choose somewhere else? Maybe Slovakia where Samppa and Jarno were originally going. Wouldn't it be easier for Senni just to change there.
But they told me there were no other options. Samppa looked at me straight in the eyes and told me that the Erasmus program in Slovakia didn't accept anyone, so they had no choice but to come to the same place where I was going.
I was devastated. But there was nothing I could do.
Later, in an attempt to salvage what little remained, I invited Samppa and Senni to a meeting in town to discuss how we could manage the exchange respectfully. They were over an hour late but I waited. And in that meeting we agreed together that they wouldn’t live in the same place as me and that we’d all treat each other with respect. But none of that happened. Looking back, it was never even real. Just a performance designed to keep me hopeful, compliant, unaware of what they were actually doing behind the scenes.
Before the exchange, I met the international coordinator, Heikki Timonen, again to finalize the paperwork. He was cold. He claimed I hadn’t replied to his emails, but I had never received any. Still, he kept on insisting that he had sent them. Then came the final blow. Timonen tried to make me change my exchange destination to Scotland. Apparently, he had already contacted them and arranged a placement, without my input. I was confused. Before, I had been told there was no possibility to change locations. Samppa and Senni had also said they couldn’t change theirs. But now Timonen was telling me otherwise.
I had already made all my plans: the internship interview, meeting friends in Germany and in Czech Republic. Plus, Scotland was much more expensive than the Netherlands. So of course, I told him no way. But he wouldn’t take it. He dropped another bomb: he refused to sign my exchange papers unless I first met with our guidance counselor, Heli Huttunen. This was something he didn’t demand from the other students. He insisted. No meeting with Huttunen — no Erasmus. So I went.
In the meeting Huttunen asked me questions about my life and studies, things like that, nothing specific. But at the end of the meeting she said something I’ll never forget: “Be careful, even the walls have ears.”
That was when I started to realize something was happening behind my back. I messaged Samppa directly and asked if he or Senni had spoken to Timonen about me. He denied it. Said I was being paranoid, if I remember correctly. And I was foolish enough to believe him. Or maybe not foolish, maybe just programmed by the world to believe everything they said about me.
Even before the exchange began, the fragile agreement of mutual respect between Senni, Samppa, and me was already crumbling.
I remember one moment vividly. We were helping someone move out of their flat. At some point, everyone else stepped out to carry furniture, and Senni and I were left alone. Out of nowhere, she turned to me, coldness in her eyes. She said that Samppa and the boys in our class had made a ranking of the girls based on looks. Then she asked if I wanted to know where I placed on that list. I told her no — I didn’t want to know, I didn’t care. But she wouldn’t stop. She kept insisting, a smug grin spreading across her face, as if it was some cruel joke at my expense. Just as she was about to say it, the others came back. She stood up quickly, pretending nothing had happened, and walked away.
It was just one moment. But it told me everything.
I was scared. I was afraid the bullying would follow me into the exchange. So one day, few days before stepping into the plane, I sent Senni a message asking her to refrain from speaking badly about me behind my back during the exchange, so I wouldn’t become the target of people’s hatred and contempt again. Senni’s reply was cold: she said she could talk about whatever she wanted, to whoever she wanted, and that people knew how to choose who they preferred to spend their time with.
After all this, I still decided to go. Tickets were bought. Agreements signed. Kela support applied for. I couldn’t back out. So,I told myself maybe things could still be repaired. Maybe I could reclaim this experience. Maybe if I just tried hard enough, I could make this exchange mine. Maybe if I stayed quiet and invisible, my classmates would finally leave me in peace.
But that peace barely lasted a few days.
Despite the agreement we had made, that Senni and Samppa would not live in the same place with me during the exchange, it became clear from the start that they had never intended to respect it. I remember the sinking feeling when I learned, before we even arrived in the Netherlands, that we were all being placed in the same student apartment building. I messaged them about it, trying to understand. Senni’s response wasn’t concern or regret but anger. She called me “unbelievable,” as if I had violated some unspoken rule, even though it was all three of us who had agreed on that boundary together.
That moment was my first glimpse of how things would be: agreements redefined, promises rewritten, and boundaries erased and all at my expense.
And then, when we arrived, we were all placed in the same hostel room for the first few days because there was no room in the dormitory. There were plenty of beds, but Senni and Samppa insisted on sleeping together in a double bed right next to mine. It wasn’t just the physical proximity that disturbed me; it was the symbolism: the performance of closeness, the dismissal of everything I had tried to communicate, and the way they collapsed the space between us not out of necessity, but defiance.
I tried to voice my discomfort gentl and, respectfully. I said I hoped they would take my feelings into account. I didn’t want to be trapped in a room where I had to witness a couple who had hurt me, entangle themselves in each other while I lay there, silenced by politeness and shame. I asked them not to cross that line, not to turn that room into a place where I had to swallow even more than I already had.
But again, Senni lashed out. Her anger came sharp, like I was the one being unreasonable. Like asking for basic emotional space was a betrayal. There was no room for my vulnerability. No space for the pain they had caused, or for the very human request that I wouldn’t be further humiliated.
And it only got worse from that. Just days after arriving in the Netherlands, I learned the truth. Everything I had feared, everything they told me was just in my head, had been real all along.
One morning at breakfast, Jarno accidentally let something slip: he and Samppa had always had the option to go to Slovakia. The placement wasn’t canceled, they had been approving applicants. The program had even reached out to check if they were still coming! Samppa had lied to my face. But still, I swallowed the shock and said nothing. What could have I done anymore in that situation.
Later during that same breakfast, I happened to mention Heli Huttunen’s strange comment to me during our meeting. Jussi and Jarno looked confused and laughed, but Senni and Samppa exchanged a tense glance and fell silent. I saw the color drain from Samppa’s face.
What a terrible breakfast it was - all their lies coming out!
And that’s when I realized the truth. It hadn’t been Timonen they spoke to — it was Heli Huttunen, the guidance counselor. Senni and Samppa had gone to her, not to change their own plans, but to try to block mine.
When I confronted them about it, they first lied. Then, realizing they couldn’t keep it up, they admitted it. But they refused to say what had been discussed. They refused to apologize. According to them, they hadn’t done anything wrong. Apparently, it was acceptable to treat me like this — to lie, manipulate, gaslight and weaponize the system against me.
During that conversation, my hands were shaking. I was terrified. Terrified that the bullying wasn’t over. That it would never be over.
And I was right.
The truth is: what they did wasn’t just cruel. It was calculated. They didn’t just hurt me by accident. They made choices. And when they were caught, they chose silence. They chose to deny, to withhold, to refuse accountability. That’s not innocence. That’s impunity.
It wasn’t just social exclusion anymore. It had become institutional. They weren’t just classmates using peer pressure. Now they were using staff, counselors, coordinators. They were using the system. They knew how to play it. And they knew I had no way to fight back without being framed as unstable, dramatic, or “too much.”
They changed their plans and then tried to push me out of mine. They talked to people behind my back and called it concern. They left me out and called it coincidence. They watched me shake in fear and said nothing was wrong.
What happened during those weeks wasn’t just a continuation of the past. It was a deepening of the same structure. A structure that allowed some students to rewrite the rules, to shape how the system responded, to bend policies and people around their preferences. A structure that allowed them to step over me, to erase me, and to walk away untouched.
And I was left to carry it all alone.
That night, I just couldn’t be in the same room with them. The idea of sharing space with Senni and Samppa after everything, after all the silent warnings my body and mind had been trying to scream at me, felt unbearable. So I left. I walked through the unfamiliar streets of the city, not to disappear, but to find some air. Some place where I could exist without being swallowed by their presence. I wasn’t lost. I wasn’t out of control. I was an adult woman removing herself from a situation that was already harming her.
At some point, there were messages between me and Jarno or Jussi. I don’t remember who wrote first. I only remember that I asked if one of them could come see me. I just needed someone. Someone to remind me I wasn’t alone. Someone to listen. But they wouldn’t come. Not one of them. They chose to look away for their own comfort. And I told them, calmly and clearly: I’m not coming back to that room with Senni and Samppa.
And then, they called the police.
Not because I was in danger. Not because I was missing or unreachable. They knew what was going on. I had told them where I stood. I was just drawing a boundary. Saying no. Refusing to walk back into a dynamic that had already torn so much out of me. But that was enough, apparently, to justify calling the authorities. And I believe they did it in order to shame me.
At first, I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they were worried. Maybe they thought they were protecting me. After all, I was a woman alone at night in a foreign country. But then later in the exchange, when Senni herself vanished for hours in the night - we were all worried, Samppa was pacing, I suggested calling the police - and they refused. It wasn’t necessary, they said. She would be fine. Space, for her, was something to be respected. So no, it was never about safety. It was about control.
When they needed space, it was natural. When I needed space, it was seen as irrational. Problematic. Even dangerous. I wasn’t treated like someone with agency. I was treated like a risk. Like something unstable that had to be managed.
That night made something very clear: their version of care was not about seeing me as a person. It was about keeping things comfortable for themselves. It was about control, power and privilege.
Later, after it had all happened, I texted Elli. I told her how much it hurt what Senni and Samppa had done. I just wanted someone to see it for what it was. But she already knew. Somehow, even with half of Europe between us, she already knew everything. And all she said was: “You should never have come. You’re ruining everyone else’s exchange”.
That was the moment I realized: they weren’t just trying to get rid of me. They already had. Long before that breakfast. Long before the lies came out.
The decision had already been made, I just hadn’t been told.
Afterwards, I remember Senni looking me straight in the eyes and saying, “If you weren’t so unreasonable, maybe we could have still been friends.”
She even told me that when we first arrived in Holland, she thought to herself, everything is going so well, maybe we can be friends again.
But the truth?
I had just been quiet. Submitting. Shrinking myself to survive. Everywhere we went, I walked behind them. Always behind. That’s what she meant by going well. Not connection. Not understanding. What she wanted wasn’t a friend. Not even a person. Not a human being. Just silence. Just obedience. Someone who didn’t ask for too much. Someone who didn’t speak when it made her uncomfortable. Someone whose pain could be ignored, whose boundaries could be erased, whose presence could be tolerated but only as long as it was small enough not to challenge anything.
I was allowed to exist only in the margins of their comfort. Allowed to be near but never seen. Allowed to speak but only if my voice stayed soft, apologetic, harmless.
That’s the kind of “friendship” she was offering me. Conditional. Hierarchical. Hollow.
And when I finally broke that illusion by asking not to be lied to, not to be manipulated, not to be erased, I became the problem.
Not because I had changed. But because I had stopped playing the part they needed me to play.
I wasn’t unreasonable. I was resisting.
And in their world, resistance wasn’t allowed. It was a threat to their comfort, to their privilege.