Life as a Neglected Refugee

I did not plan to become a refugee. Nobody ever does. One day I was living in a small Ukrainian town, teaching literature to restless teenagers, taking long walks with my children on summer evenings, and saving modestly for the future. Then, within a few weeks, our lives collapsed into fear, noise, and smoke. The missiles fell, the electricity failed, and the classrooms I once filled with poems and stories became shelters with mattresses on the floor. In March of 2022, I left Ukraine with my children and a single suitcase, believing Europe would be a place of refuge.

At first it was. The train stations were filled with volunteers holding signs in every language, offering tea, sandwiches, blankets and soft words. My children clutched teddy bears given by strangers. We were photographed, we were interviewed, we were applauded. Politicians spoke in grand tones of solidarity, of freedom, of a shared European destiny. In those first weeks I felt that my suffering meant something, that it had been noticed. I felt less alone.

But life as a refugee is measured not in weeks but in years. And years have passed. The kindness of those early days has ebbed away, replaced with indifference, sometimes irritation. The headlines have shifted elsewhere. The strangers who once clapped now avert their eyes.

The Bureaucratic Labyrinth

Every morning begins with paperwork. I have learned to fear the official letterhead. A brown envelope in the postbox means another form to complete, another certificate required, another deadline I cannot meet. To remain legally resident, I must apply and re-apply: for temporary protection, for housing vouchers, for work permits, for school registration.

The offices are cold and crowded. I sit in endless queues with other refugees, each of us clutching folders of documents—birth certificates, medical records, bank statements translated at our own expense. The clerks are not unkind but they are tired, and their eyes glaze over when they hear our accented speech. A missing stamp can send me back to the beginning of the process. I have become an expert in signatures, seals, and the fine print of regulations, though none of this expertise earns me dignity.

I once taught my students about Kafka. Now I feel I am trapped in one of his stories.

Work and Exploitation

I had a profession in Ukraine. I was proud of it. I taught language and literature, and I believed I gave young people more than grammar and vocabulary; I gave them a way to think, to imagine, to question. That identity has dissolved. In Europe, my diploma counts for nothing. Officials tell me to “retrain” or “requalify”, but such processes take years and require resources I do not possess.

Instead, I take the jobs that nobody else wants. Cleaning offices late at night. Washing dishes in restaurants where I am forbidden to speak to customers. Picking vegetables in fields for wages paid in cash. Employers know that I cannot afford to protest. If I complain, I lose the work; if I lose the work, I lose the rent; if I lose the rent, I return to the shelter.

There is no shame in manual labour, but there is humiliation in being treated as invisible. Colleagues talk around me as though I am not there. Sometimes they laugh at my accent, assuming I do not understand. The worst part is not the exploitation but the silence—an absence of recognition that I am more than a pair of hands.

The Shelter

When we first arrived, we stayed in a municipal shelter. It was a converted gymnasium, with rows of cots separated by thin curtains. The lights were never fully turned off. Babies cried through the night, and the air smelled of disinfectant and exhaustion. Volunteers brought food, but there was little privacy, no space to call our own.

My children asked when we would go “home”, but home was a memory I could not offer them. Later, we moved to a small apartment provided by the local government. It was a gift, but a temporary one. The lease expires every six months, and each renewal feels like an act of mercy rather than a right. We live surrounded by the fear of eviction, our lives balanced upon the good will of officials who never answer their telephones.

Loneliness

The hardest struggle is not hunger or cold, but loneliness. The language barrier is a wall. I attend free classes, but progress is slow. My children learn faster; sometimes they correct my pronunciation, which fills me with both pride and shame. They begin to dream in the new language, while I still stumble over the simplest phrases. I am losing the ability to help them with their homework, and with it, I fear, their respect.

Neighbours nod politely but do not invite me in. Invitations are for people with steady jobs, with permanence, with status. I live in a kind of suspended animation: present in body, absent in community. The longer I remain, the more I realise that integration is not a matter of months but of generations.

The Weight of Gratitude

We are told we must always be grateful. Grateful for the shelter, for the welfare, for the chance to live in safety. And I am grateful. I know that others have less. But gratitude is not the same as happiness. Gratitude cannot erase the gnawing despair of being unwelcome. To express dissatisfaction is to risk being called ungrateful, and so we bite our tongues. We say “thank you” even when our stomachs churn with anger. We smile when we are ignored. Gratitude becomes a mask that hides our wounds.

Small Acts of Kindness

Yet there are moments of light. A neighbour who leaves a bowl of soup outside my door when she sees that I am unwell. A priest who speaks slowly enough that I can follow his sermons. A volunteer who still calls every week to ask if we need anything, long after the others have stopped. These gestures do not solve our problems, but they remind us that we are still human, still worthy of care.

News from Home

Every evening I call my mother, who refused to leave Ukraine. Sometimes the line fails, sometimes she cries, sometimes she pretends everything is fine. I do not know which hurts more. The war continues, and each conversation carries the possibility of being the last. I feel guilty for being safe while she remains under fire. The guilt seeps into everything: into meals, into laughter, into sleep. Safety without peace is a burden of its own.

Identity in Exile

I try to keep Ukraine alive in small ways. I cook borscht on Sundays, though beetroot is expensive. I teach my children Ukrainian lullabies, though they answer in the new language. I attend gatherings of other refugees, where we exchange recipes, news, and fragments of hope. But the longer we stay, the more fragile these threads become. My children dream of belonging where they are, and I cannot deny them that. I live in fear that Ukraine will vanish from their memories, as though a country could be lost not only to war but to time.

The Future

I tell myself this is temporary. That one day we will return, rebuild, restore. But the war does not end, and the years accumulate. I wonder if “temporary” is becoming permanent. I fear that my children will grow up strangers to their homeland. I fear that I will die here, in a country that never learned my name.

We are neglected not because people are cruel, but because they are tired. Compassion has an expiration date. Once it passes, we remain—silent, waiting, invisible. Europe has given us shelter, but not home; safety, but not belonging.

I endure because I must. I endure because there is no alternative. I endure because within me lives the hope that Ukraine will rise again, and that one day I will walk through familiar streets, not as a stranger but as a citizen who has come home.

Until then, I live in exile, balancing between gratitude and despair, holding on to fragments of identity, waiting for the day when the world will remember that I still exist.