I arrived in Italy at sixteen with a residence permit for family reunification. My mother had been in Lombardy for years; I had stayed in Ukraine with my grandmother and my older brother. When I finally arrived, I had left everything I knew to start over here.

I was arrested at twenty-three. In prison you can't renew your documents — it's a rule, not an exception. My residence permit expired while I was detained and there was nothing I could do. A family reunification permit can only be renewed at expiration: if you miss that window, you lose it forever. I missed it.

In prison I had started studying at a hospitality school. For the first time I had an idea of what I wanted to do. When I got out, at twenty-seven, I wanted to continue. But without valid documents and without money, I couldn't afford to. I had to work.

I found an employer who hired me as a furniture assembler, off the books, with the promise that he would regularize my status. I waited for him for years. He never did. I worked for a miserable wage, without a contract, without rights, counting on a promise that was worth nothing.

In the end I had no choice: I went back to Ukraine. I left my mother, I left the small network of people who had stayed close to me even during my detention. I went back to a country where I saw no future. Shortly after, the war broke out.

I'm not telling this story for pity. I'm telling it because what happened to me wasn't bad luck. It was the precise result of a system that made no provisions for those who leave prison without documents. No help desk, no extension, no way out. I paid for the crime. The rest I carried with me without having chosen it.