The system is naked!

And the wounds it leaves on us keep bleeding

I grew up believing a simple story: Systems exist for us. To protect us, support us and uphold our dignity. It’s what schools taught, what adults repeated, what every “About us” implied.

But almost every system I ever touched taught me the opposite. Not in theory. In practice that I have felt on my own skin, often cutting me to the bone. And not just once or twice. But over and over, across decades, across contexts.

This is the story of how I learned the most painful lesson there is and what it revealed about the world we built.

The lie I was supposed to believe:

I wasn’t taught to distrust systems. I grew up thinking they existed for us.

Equality, Dignity, Freedom, etc. These were not abstract ideals, they were promises, appearing in many constitutions as our legal rights. But very early, I learned that there is a fine-print. Equality doesn’t include everyone, Dignity is performative politeness and Freedom is suffocated by artificial boundaries.

And the first time I understood that was with my brother.

Childhood, Act I.: The System Betrays Equality

My older brother is severely disabled and does not speak. That meant I grew up a body-reader.  Not a mind-reader, but a reader of tension, breath, micro-expressions, misalignment. I could always feel when someone’s words didn’t match their intent.

And what I felt, again and again, between the lines and inside systems designed to “help,” was contempt. Like it was his choice to be different and cause inconvenience to every system.

Doctors deciding, within seconds, that because he couldn’t speak, he couldn’t think. Him being rejected by the system, because he literally could not even enter the vast majority of them. Our life was a never-ending pilgrimage across institutions using the language of care while delivering the experience of dehumanization and exclusion. The only place we found actual support was in tightly knit civil communities. Well… At least we helped each other instead of the system helping us.

I kept asking: Why is everybody lying? If we say we are all equal, why does the system behave as if some of us don’t count? If the system says it’s here to support why does it abandon?

That was the first breach in the story I was taught to believe.

Childhood, Act II.: The System Betrays the Future

Then came school. The place I was excited to enter as I was told it will be a place to learn, grow, and “become someone.” But what I learned there was very different.

Every time I asked a question out of curiosity, I was silenced. Every time I diverged from the standard, I was corrected back into the line. Every time I challenged something that didn’t make sense, I was punished or humiliated. Not privately, but publicly, to make an example.

It didn’t take long to understand the real lesson:

School wasn’t designed to nurture thinking. It was designed to socialize compliance. Curiosity was treated as disruption. Intelligence was treated as insubordination. And the message was quiet but precise: Don’t question. Don’t doubt. Don’t deviate.

And again I asked: Why is everybody lying? Is this really the place that will help me become successful in life?

I entered school believing it was a place for minds. I left it understanding the system had other priorities.

Adulthood Act I.: The System Betrays Integrity

Then came the corporate world. Where every onboarding deck and every leadership speech promised:

• “Your voice matters.”

• “We put people first”

• “We want fresh perspectives.”

• “We need people who think differently.”

And every time I delivered exactly that, the system muted me and reacted with dismissal, silence and a pivot to “other priorities”. For a while I wondered whether women were the exception to “your voice matters.” But then I realized: all employees are.

The corporate system doesn’t betray me personally. It betrays its own words. Think of the annual engagement surveys and tell me: is it always followed by meaningful corrective action? Think of the last time your employer was in trouble and tell me: were people put first?

And again, the same question surfaced: Why are we lying about what we value? Why do we talk like a community and act like a hierarchy? Why does it take an interpreter to decode corporate language?

Different system. Same pattern.

Adulthood, Act II.: The system betrays Dignity

Then came my father’s years long battle with cancer. This is the part where I learned that hospitals have their own dictionary for “care”. One that excludes dignity, information, consent and humanity.

We were never told the truth. Not about the severity. Not about timelines. Not about decisions.

Not about what dying actually looks like. We couldn’t plan. We couldn’t prepare.

We couldn’t choose. My father couldn’t choose. He spent his final years in and out of hospitals, surgery after surgery, looking more and more like a patchwork blanket. He kept going with yet another promise that they’ll heal him, and he will stay with us a bit longer, while - in hindsight - his first diagnosis was a crystal clear stage 4. At least, through sheer willpower he could hold on to life long enough to walk me down the aisle.

What my family and I had to become overnight wasn’t noble. It was brutal. We became untrained nurses, oncologists, lab result and hospital report analyzers and emotional anchors. It was necessary because the system failed us. And it left us with years of fresh trauma to process.

This time I didn’t ask, “Why are we lying?” I already knew.

Many Systems, One Logic

Growing up, I thought each betrayal was separate. Government and healthcare failing my brother. Education attempting to kill my individuality. Corporate culture silencing my mind. The medical system dehumanizing my father.

But they weren’t separate. They were identical. Every system made the same choice: its own survival over ours.

And then came the revelation: I wasn’t betrayed as a person. I was witnessing the operating logic of modern systems. Once I saw the pattern, I couldn’t unsee it:

Systems don’t exist FOR us. They exist THROUGH us. And yet they keep failing us.

I Stopped Taking It Personally

I used to think something was wrong with me, that I must be a misfit. That maybe I was too sensitive, too idealistic, too outspoken. But the truth is, I just saw the gaps others had learned to ignore. And I refused to fit into those gaps because they made me suffer.

My wounds are deeply personal. They are still bleeding. But they were the result of systemic behavior, and they were never about me. My pain wasn’t a misfortune, it was a lens. One that I earned the hard way.

Every system claims noble values. Every system intends to do good in theory. But in practice, they betray the very purpose they claim to serve. This is the betrayal we rarely name. But it happens every day in every official building to billions of people across the globe with disappointingly few exceptions.

We Can’t Fix What We Can’t Name

I don’t write about systems because they hurt me. I write about them because I finally understand why they hurt so many of us. Because once you name the pattern, you see the truth: If it was human-made, it can be human-remade.

But only if we stop pretending the system works.

I’m not done talking. And I’m certainly not done writing. Because these patterns need to be dragged into the light.

And because I still believe, despite everything, that this shitshow can not be the best we can do.