Crazy Milk / Blog /

Fear

22 April 2024

Apparently I am afraid of mail. At least official-looking mail from government agencies.

Just now when I returned from the store, there were three letters from the canton addressed to each of us. I just received my settlement permit, but apparently I'm still nervous about my status here in Switzerland. Various thoughts ran through my head: "What if they're kicking us out?", "What if I've unwittingly broken some rule and they're rescinding my settlement permit?", etc.

It turns out that the subject of the letters was entirely benign: we are no longer subject to mandatory tax withholding at source. But my reaction, that gut fear of having messed up, tells me that I still have a lot of work to do on my integration.

(I have made progress on this in the past year. Letters addressed solely to me no longer trigger this reaction, but in this case the identical letters to all three of us was something I don't think had every happened before and seemed somehow ominous. I was correct however in my assumption that this was related to my recent change in status.)