I have no one to open up to.

I am from Myanmar and came to work in Thailand. Because there is war in my country, my village was burned down, and I lost all my belongings and could not recover anything.

I have a mother with kidney disease and a grandmother. Before coming here, we had moved to another safer place, and for that living expenses and other needs, I had to borrow money from other people.

I came to Thailand as a migrant worker after borrowing money because in Myanmar the monthly salary is only around 60 USD, which is not enough for us. When I first arrived here, things seemed okay at the beginning, but later my employer delayed and sometimes didn’t pay my salary, so I had to change jobs. There were even days when I had nothing to eat. I never told my mother about all these situations because if she knew, she would only feel stressed and helpless without being able to do anything.

Now I have about USD 6,000 in debt. Out of that, the lender is urgently asking me to repay 3,000 USD first. They message me every day and insult me. My job only pays about 370 USD per month. From this, I have to cover my family support, my living expenses, and debt repayments. To save on food costs, I mostly eat at places where food is given for free.

Right now I’m feeling extremely stressed and exhausted from struggling alone with many pressures every day.

I feel even more sorry because my creditor also urgently needs money for his father’s liver cancer treatment.

I keep swinging every day between wanting to keep fighting until everything gets better, and wanting to just give up. I’m so overwhelmed that my mind can’t even think properly anymore about what I should do next. If you were in my place, what kind of mindset would you have? I really don’t want to think about anything anymore.

I really need encouragement and real-life experiences from people who have gone through financial stress like mine and managed to get out of it, even though most people don’t want to listen to problems like this.