Forbidden err

Thinking alone, with myself, I asked myself what I thought about the last forty-three years lived here, on this Earth. Well, I answered myself, I like living here, I really like it and probably that is why I am still alive. Then I added, you know, my dear Marina, the last forty-three years here have been really difficult, having gone through periods when there was no strength left to continue moving forward. For many years I lived with my head down, always walking down the streets staring at the tips of my shoes, as if I had a huge burden of guilt that weighed on my head, body and soul. No, of course I am not perfect, but at least I admit it, but some people I have met along the way will never admit their mistakes in relation to me. It has been twelve or almost twelve years since a woman threatened me by saying that in Sardinia if they want to get rid of a human corpse, they just give it to the pigs. Was that a joke? No, I had never heard that phrase from anyone before, in all the years I spent in Italy. It was there, in the house where I worked, that I heard it. The phrase that became the last straw for my patience and drove me to attempt suicide.

If I ever met that woman again and if I found the strength to ask her why she said that cruel phrase to me, do you think she would apologize? No, I don’t think so. She would never apologize or admit what she said to me then.

And my memory is full of those strange phrases and equally strange events. But I don’t try to forget, as someone tells me, convincing me that my head is to blame for everything, no, on the contrary, I record everything in my memory down to the smallest detail, trying not to miss anything that I had to experience.

From 1996 to 1999 I studied at a fashion and design school in my hometown and beloved city of Mykolaiv in Ukraine. I think it was 1997 (spring) when two Americans, a man and a woman, visited my class. They were dressed all in gray. The man was about sixty years old, the woman was older. What surprised and impressed me about her was that she was dressed all in gray, her hair color, her dress and even her tights, everything was gray. What surprised me about the man? When one of my classmates asked him what impression he had of our city, he answered that the inhabitants of the city dressed uniformly and that the city itself reminded him of the province of Chicago. Here I will describe his physical features. I think he was of average height, gray hair, with an admixture of the remains of a natural color, darker; plump and with a belly.

Now about the main thing. About seven or eight years ago, I started being followed on all social networks by the profiles of Prince Harry, the grandson of Queen Elizabeth II. These “princes” treated me differently, some confessed their love and said that they wanted to marry me, some asked for money for charity, and some convinced me that I simply needed to buy some kind of royal family card and thus become part of it, so to speak, find my place in high society. This whole story lasted for several years, but one day I received a video call, I was at the factory at that moment, at my workplace, they were calling from Nigeria, but I still answered this video call and who did I see there? I saw Harry, with a deathly scared expression on his face. He spoke English, and of course I didn’t understand anything, I don’t know if it was a video recording or a real-time call, but the fact remains, it was him, it was his voice. Suddenly the call was interrupted, and someone from the same number wrote me the following phrase: “We are getting married, but we will get divorced, she is a prostitute.” Immediately after that, they sent me several pornographic photos of Meghan. I got scared and immediately deleted them. Then it was like the proverb. The further into the forest, the more firewood. I have my own personal rule, never to make any vows, but that day I swore that I would not watch Harry’s wedding for anything. Someone decided otherwise. Because I know that someone has been managing my life as if it were his property for a very long time.

Since 2012, since the very moment when I tried to commit suicide, I have been admitted to mental health clinics at least twice a year.

On May 18, 2018, in some inexplicable way and for some reason incomprehensible to me, I found myself in a clinic again for the umpteenth time in my life. I didn’t want to see anyone and I didn’t want to talk to anyone at all, I even turned off my phone so as not to hear anyone. Each time I was in the clinic, it was like being in prison, like dying. I just experienced real shock every time. I could go without eating or drinking water for several days, and just cry. Cry for days. When the shock passed, I usually tried to forget, draw, sometimes watch TV.

After lunch, on May 19, I sat down on the couch in the lobby of the clinic, and Harry’s wedding was on TV. It was painful. I felt destroyed. When I was young, I was in love with a guy who looked like Harry, the same type - blond hair, gray eyes, but he didn’t marry me. I wasn’t invited to his wedding, and I remember standing on the balcony of my house and watching him walk out of the entrance, all handsome, in a wedding suit. My soul was torn apart, but I couldn’t even cry for fear that someone might see my tears. And now, on May 19, 2018, I’m sitting in a clinic on the couch, in front of the TV, experiencing déjà vu.

I don’t like watching TV anymore, there’s always bad news for me there.

In the spring of 2021, I was in the clinic again. In the spring. Usually, people’s depression worsens in the fall, when everything around is gloomy and gray, but for some reason, every time I ended up in the clinic in the spring. Over time, I began to wonder why I get depressed in the spring. Now I have an answer to this question. Over time, I find answers to all my questions, I have come up with a formula for myself. Time and patience.

I loved spring.

One spring, I think it was the same 1997, I was walking to my fashion and design school, I had a lot of time before the lectures started, and I decided that I would walk from my bus stop to the school. I walked, admiring the young leaves on the chestnut trees growing along the streets. I stopped and looked at these green, translucent leaves. At some point, a man, a Caucasian, started following me. I decided to take a trolleybus to get rid of the pursuer, but the trolleybus was overcrowded, and I continued walking. He did not fall behind, but on the contrary, he quickened his pace, caught up with me and began pestering me with questions. He asked where I was going, I honestly answered him that I was going to school. Then he asked me “why are all the beautiful girls so proud?” and put one of his hands on my shoulder and the other around my waist, which scared me terribly. I was simply paralyzed with fear, but in my mind I was thinking about how to get out of this situation. The stalker asked what I was carrying in my bag, I answered that I was carrying books, but that day I also had money in my bag to pay for my studies. I was very afraid of this man and, maybe this sounds strange, but I tried to be polite with him and even make friends in a sense. We went into a yard, there was an elderly man sitting on a bench, I decided to ask him for help, but my stalker hugged me even tighter, pretending that we knew each other and sat me down on the same bench. At that very moment, the elderly man, looking at us, got up from the bench and left. My stalker continued to pester me with questions like where I live and so on. I told him where I live. He started leading me along some path, we passed under someone’s balconies, and I kept hoping that someone would notice us and help me. For some reason, my pursuer suddenly stopped and told me “take off the ring and don’t let me see it again.” I really did have a gold ring on my finger, which my mother gave me on my sixteenth birthday. Then he asked what kind of ring it was and I told him it was a gift from my mother. He suddenly grabbed me by the hair and pushed my head into one of the balconies, but he did it so hesitantly, I would even say carefully, as if he was afraid of something, then he told me “I will disfigure you so much that your own mother will not recognize you” and led me further. After a moment we found ourselves in an abandoned place, nothing was visible from behind the bushes, no houses and no people. We stood in this abandoned place, and I mentally began to turn to God. I thought: “Lord, I so want to see my mom.” Suddenly my pursuer asked if I had matches and cigarettes. I answered that I do not smoke, he made a gesture with his hand and I saw a gold ring in the form of a signet with a small black stone on his finger. I continued to pray mentally. He repeated that he wanted to smoke and suddenly said “I’ll go ask those guys for a cigarette.” He spoke with an accent. I looked in the direction where he had supposedly seen the guys, but there was no one there. He left. I was left standing alone. I wanted to run away from that horrible place, but something inside me told me that if I ran now he would catch up with me and that would be the end for me. He really did come back. I prayed, and he left again. Now I “took off” from that place in high-heeled shoes and ran along the courtyards. One woman entered the entrance of a building, I shouted to her that they wanted to rape me, she said that I could hide in the entrance and entered her entrance with a frightened look. Then I thought that I needed to run straight to school and I ran. Having reached the school, I met a woman I knew and told her everything that had happened to me. She replied that I needed to go to the police and the two of us went to the 《Berkut》 department. There I gave testimony and described my pursuer in detail. The investigator was recording my testimony, but suddenly someone called him on the phone, and he told the caller that he was busy with a case, allegedly an attempted rape. After some time, the stalker was detained at the market, not far from my school, he was already pestering another girl, or so I was told. For some reason, they put us in the same car and took us to another department. They took us to some office, and the guys from this department told me not to be afraid, but I was scared, now he knew where I lived, where I studied.

After several hours spent in that department, they told me that I could now go home. I said that I was afraid that he might kill me, to which one man from the department replied that I watched a lot of movies. I insisted on my own, and they were forced to give me a person who would walk me home. That’s how I met a guy who, as it turned out, liked me a little later. A few days later, he invited me to go for a walk together and began to visit me.

I had been in love with that guy with gray eyes for a long time, who married another woman. So even if my new boyfriend was cute, smart, professional and all that, I couldn’t love him. One day, he and his colleagues and I were drinking tea in a cafe, and they started talking about my stalker, and that’s how I found out that he was released from prison three days after his arrest, due to lack of evidence. I was upset. What other evidence was there supposed to be besides what I talked about in my testimony? I was disappointed, including in my new boyfriend, because I felt like he couldn’t protect me and so I decided that we needed to break up. We broke up. I saw him briefly when I entered the Institute of Culture in Mykolaiv. He was guarding some facility that was located next to the institute where I enrolled in correspondence courses. He looked at me, I looked at him and that was it, after that we never saw each other again.

In the same 1997, I experienced another shock, my former classmate, with whom I had studied in the same class since the age of six, was killed. It was a terrible murder, I couldn’t believe what had happened. I was told that she was at a disco in a nearby village and that she allegedly told her friends that someone was waiting for her and that’s why she needed to leave. Her boyfriend tried to stop her, but she got into someone’s car and drove away. After that, her boyfriend committed suicide. I kept thinking why this very young girl’s life was taken away, and her boyfriend’s life was ruined. I often dreamed of her, but one day I dreamed of a white car, in my dream I even saw the license plate of this car, and when I woke up in the morning I clearly remembered this dream and had the feeling that it had something to do with the murder of my classmate. I even told someone about this dream then.

I loved spring, in the spring I was always overcome by some extraordinary feeling of happiness and optimism, but the older I got, the less I felt this same happiness and optimism. Why?

When I was young, I really liked fashion, and then I was sure that my life would be connected with this industry. Every time I went to class at fashion and design school, I was overcome by very strong emotions, both positive and not so positive. With positive emotions, everything was clear because I did what I liked. With negative emotions, things were not so clear. I’ve noticed more than once that both teachers and some classmates laugh at me, and maybe because of my own sensitivity, I was very painful about it. That’s what I thought at the time. When two American visitors, the ones I mentioned earlier, came to our classroom one day, it was a man’s statement (which the woman told us I don’t remember), that our city reminds him of the province of Chicago, and that people in our city dress monotonously, that all this terribly outraged me and the American visitor seemed too arrogant to me, I will even say more, he seemed terribly ill-mannered and insensitive to me. How was I able to remember this episode? Everything that happened in my life and in the life of my family, comparing some facts, I considered a huge injustice, which means that it was not an accident, too many accidents fell on our fate. And then I suddenly came up with another formula. When too many accidents happen in one person’s life, it is no longer an accident, but a pattern. I mean, something that’s being done intentionally. For example, if a person works very hard, puts his soul and heart into his work and all his physical strength to boot, but this does not bring results, he should look around, most likely he is surrounded by rats. Rats are not always visible right away, but rest assured they’re next to you and taking your bread away. Rats are not particularly gifted people, so they survive in society at the expense of more gifted people. And you can also find yourself surrounded by snakes that poison your life by incriminating you with their poisonous tongues. I’ve lived in constant fear for most of my life, but now I’m not scared, but just terribly disgusted.

When I try to understand what my life is like, I associate it with the work of a sapper. It's as if I'm not living, but I'm constantly clearing mines. I have no margin for error. One mistake and you know what's next. I also associate my life with horse racing, when a horse jumps over obstacles. Only horses are luckier in life than me, because their jumps over obstacles have their beginning and their end. For me it's different, the more obstacles I jump over, the more of them come my way. And so on and so forth. I can't even remember when things were different in my life for one simple reason, it was always like this. Maybe as a child or maybe as a teenager things were different? No, it wasn't. I rewound the film of my life back to when I was a teenager and rewatched all the footage. There's nothing to remember. When I was thirteen my father (not my biological father, he adopted me at an early age) committed suicide. I remember washing dishes in the kitchen, he asked where my mum and my sister were. I replied that my mum had gone back to work and my sister had gone for a walk outside with her friends. He then asked why I looked sad I said it was because of a bad grade in school. He smiled and said that when he got a three at school it was like a five for him, kissed me on the cheek and walked out of the flat and I was left standing there paralysed. That was the last time I saw him alive. Later, a few days after his funeral, my mum found his note in her bag. He had written it on a small scrap of newsprint. In this note he wrote, addressing his mother that my mum was not guilty of anything and that she would love my mum like him. There were only two lines in the note, but he said everything in them. In the second to last line, he wrote, ‘If I'd known sooner, I would have killed that goat.’ I know that goat just ruined his life. I'm looking for him.

When I was in high school, I was often attacked by one of my classmates. She would come to my house after school and we would play with dolls, and at school she would just turn into a monster who would abuse me in every possible way. I still have a picture of her throwing my textbooks on the floor, shaking them out of my bag and putting the bag on my head. All this happened in the presence of the rest of my classmates, and no one dared to interfere with her, as if she had some special power over them at the age of thirteen.

Fifteen years after graduation, we had a reunion with former classmates. I didn't want to go to this meeting, but I overpowered myself and went anyway. I felt out of place there. I often feel out of place in society. At the meeting, each of my classmates stood up and gave a speech. I prayed to God that it wasn't my turn to give a speech. Afterwards, the informal part of our anniversary began. Everyone asked each other about life, but the most important thing I noticed was that all my former classmates present at the meeting, school years brought the warmest memories. I, on the contrary, wanted to go home as soon as possible, when suddenly my former monster classmate sat down beside me. She said she was ashamed of her school past. I was relieved. So she hadn't completely lost her conscience.

So that's what I'm getting at. I have always been observant and this observation I was gifted by nature, in myself I did not bring it up, but just like a sponge absorbs water so I absorb information from everything that surrounds me. The information is stored inside me on a subconscious level, but when I need to get an answer to a certain question, this information I have collected sooner or later comes to the surface of my memory and thus I get an answer. Is it the same for you?

This is how I found out who the American who visited my class in 1997 was. My brain, being under constant stress for a very long time, brought back to my consciousness the information that was stored in the depths of my memory. I kept trying to understand why Harry had called me, and if it was really him, why he had treated me so unfairly. What had I done to offend him? I kept digging into my memory, comparing facts, asking myself endless questions as I suddenly remembered the episode with the American visitors. I already knew that accidents in my life are not random and if I was sent Meghan's photo, it means that she has something to do with me. What was it, I asked myself? And then I was lucky enough to see some photos of Meghan in her youth, which were published by someone in various social networks. Looking at these photos for a long time, I came to the conclusion that she reminds me of someone, who? I started to look for more photos of her, including children's photos, and then it occurred to me that something in her appearance does not fit together. In the baby pictures I saw a dark-skinned girl with African features, and in the pictures of her as a teenager I saw a light-skinned girl with European features. There was no logic to it. After thinking for a while about how one and the same person could undergo such a significant metamorphosis I came to the conclusion that she had already resorted to plastic surgeons and various kinds of aesthetic services in her youth. Dark skin can't suddenly become light, sparse teeth with diastema can't suddenly turn into a brilliant smile without the help of a dentist. A large nose will not become a neat, snub nose by itself and curls will not become smooth strands. I became more and more curious to get to the bottom of it. I studied her appearance, her hairstyles, then and now, her make-up, the way she dressed, spoke, moved, and so on. And again, all the information I had gathered didn't fit together, but more like a prefabricated image, as if she was just copying different people. Here, she's an actress, a photo model, a star. And who am I? I asked myself. I also went to fashion and design school, we had lectures where we studied photo modelling, learned how to pose in front of photographers, walk the runway, and occasionally participated in fashion shows as models. I read a lot of information about Meghan and found out that in her clothes and in what she says, those statements that are supposedly part of her great life experience, in fact, she just copies from someone else and attributes everything to herself. I began to look even more closely at this person, and I looked and studied her for several years. Until I realised that she resembled me in appearance. I started comparing pictures of me and her, similar hairstyles, make-up and in some cases even clothes. She had my face. But I couldn't just accuse someone, especially someone I didn't know, of impersonation. I had to find corroborating facts. I already had a pretty clear picture in my head. Meghan was just me incarnate. But how could that be? I began to dig back into the past. And then the episode with the Americans came back to my mind. I started thinking about who they were, remembering what we talked about, what they looked like, and I mentally created their identikit. Then I thought if I put together everything that had happened to me over the last forty-three years, everything that had left an imprint on my memory, I would have a complete story. Suddenly I asked myself why these two American visitors had come to my class. I had taken a three-year Sunday course at the School of Design and Fashion, studying on Sundays, as it was not economically possible for me to study every day at the school. And also because it was the only course of its kind in the whole Mykolaiv, and even in the whole Ukraine. In 1996, when I started studying at the School of Fashion and Design, it was also the first year since the school itself was established. That is why American visitors were not lazy to visit us exactly on Sunday, and not on any weekday. Because the course was really special. I once again mentally drew a parallel between Meghan and me. I'm a photo model, and she's a photo model. Except that I am who I am, and she, unlike me, is all reshaped and re-stitched by plastic surgeons. Stories about Meghan's father, and her family in general, started popping up on the internet. I kept looking for facts to back up my theory. I mentally went back to ninety-seven again. Revisiting photos of me and Meghan and comparing them. One day I saw a photo from the late nineties of her with her father. It was the exact same American who attended our class in 1997. But I am very doubtful of myself and my abilities, so I started looking for more supporting facts. I remembered that that American said then that people in our city dressed in a monotonous way and that the city itself reminded him of the province of Chicago. The province of Chicago? That's great. I googled Thomas Markle, Chicago. It didn't take long. So I found another corroborating fact. Thomas Markle is indeed connected to the city of Chicago. He lived there for many years and worked there as a lighting director at a TV station, who if not him to understand light and shadows, actresses, models, their images? Why did he take photos and videos of Megan all the time, and who is now putting even her childhood and teenage home videos on the internet? At this point I don't have all the answers, but based on everything I read about Meghan one simple thing becomes clear. Being a teenager, she herself could not organise a whole mega-industry around herself, Meghan's image, everything that is written about her in books, talked about, filmed in endless documentaries is a business. For a business to grow, you have to invest in it. I saw Meghan in her home videos she had no looks or talents. Thomas Markle by my reckoning has invested a lot of money in his daughter. In her education and looks, but even if the light operator is making good money, his job is still not permanent and therefore his income is not as well. How did he alone provide Meghan and not only Meghan, he has children from his first marriage? And if they, as Meghan said, were not a well-to-do family, then who funded her trips to surgeons at such a young age? But the fact remains. Meghan's a star and I've been wiped out, I'd say practically wiped off the face of the earth.

In 2001, when I was still living in Ukraine, something happened to me that finally changed my whole life. One day I went for a walk with my friend and we met another friend. We were chatting about this and that and suddenly this friend we met started to say that she was going to go to Italy to work. When we asked her what she was going to work in Italy, she said she was going to work in a bar or a restaurant as a waitress, but she didn't look happy. Suddenly my friend said she wanted to go to Italy too and she turned to me. ‘Let's go with you and me, because what are we going to do here? ‘No job, no money.’ I said I wouldn't go anywhere, not to Italy. But she insisted. Then this friend who was going to Italy said that it was not really a job in a bar or a restaurant, but that she was going to work as a prostitute. When I asked her why she was doing it, she told me that she had a child to feed, clothe, shoe and so on. We chatted with her for a couple of minutes and left the place where we met our mutual friend. On the way my friend started to tell me that she also wants to go to Italy and that I should go with her because she is scared alone. I said no, especially since my mum was already working in Italy and was going to make me documents so that I could come to her. We finished our conversation and went home. A few days later my friend came to me and said that she was going to Italy and that I should also go with her. I told her again that I was not going anywhere, but she said that they have already made me the documents. When I heard her say that, it was like I died.

I was so naive that I just did not realise that without my Ukrainian passport they could not make a foreign passport and visa for me. After that one of the traffickers came to my house and insisted that I give him my Ukrainian passport and for some reason he wanted to see my photos. I said that I would not give him anything, but he insisted and even kissed me. I don't know why or why not, but I gave him my passport and he chose one of my favourite photos, my portrait. It was taken by a photographer at fashion design school. I didn't like to be photographed and almost never smiled in pictures. But the photographer told me to imagine that I was smiling for the guy I was waiting for and I smiled involuntarily. He took my picture. At this photo shoot we (me and my classmates) had to make up an image of ourselves. I wore a red translucent shawl on my head, asked one of my classmates for her light coloured coat, put on some red or cherry lipstick and the photographer took my picture.

I really liked that picture. The trafficker insisted that I give him this particular photograph and said he would return it to me, make a copy and return it. I was desperate and didn't know what to do. But one evening my mum called me and asked me to go to my sister, I said I couldn't because I was going to Italy. When my mum heard my words she started to cry very hard, asked me not to go anywhere, and I answered that I couldn't not go because I had already made the documents. Through her tears she said that only I could do such a thing and switched off the phone. After some time my mum called again and I started crying and asking her to take me to her. She told me to find out from the women's traffickers how much we owed them for my documents and to agree with them that they would take me to her and nowhere else. Through my friend I found out that I had to pay the traffickers about nine hundred dollars for the documents and for taking me to my mother.

Before sending us (me, my friends and other girls) to Italy, a man who was among the traffickers gave me a bag and said that it had to be taken to Kiev and given to someone who was supposed to meet us there. Because of the fear that if I refused to take the bag they would harm my family, I took it. The man told me not to look at the bag, then wrote his phone number in a notebook and told me that if it was difficult for me to call him. Another man met us in Kiev and I gave him the bag, but before I asked him for his passport, I was probably told to do so. He showed it to me and asked ‘are you from the police?’

On the way to Italy I cried partly out of the fear of the unknown, partly because I have never been abroad before, even in my own city I travelled very rarely. We passed Poland and I looked out of the bus window at this completely unfamiliar, new world. Poland is beautiful, I remember beautiful houses, green grass, and in general I associate Poland with green colour for some reason. Then we passed through Germany, at the border we passed the control and the guy who checked our passports, returning them to us wished us all to find good fiancés in Italy. When we entered Italy, I kept looking out of the bus window and asking myself if I liked what I saw. I felt like I was disappointed with what I saw. Like I didn't see what I expected to see. It's hard to explain, but I did feel a kind of disappointment. I was supposed to be taken to the city of Modena. But they didn't, they dropped me off the bus at some sort of autogrill, which is what they call a place where you can stop to take a break, refuel your car, eat, or just have a cup of coffee. I didn't have a phone, I didn't know how to tell my mum where I was. I went to the bus driver and told him that I didn't have a phone and asked him to call me a taxi. I don't remember what he said, but eventually my bus drove off and I was left standing there at a loss at the autogrill.

Luckily I spotted the taxi and waved to the taxi driver, he waved back and I ran to him. He must have asked me where I was going and I didn't realise what he was saying and just intuitively said the word Modena. He realised that I didn't speak Italian and started talking to me in English, but I didn't understand English either. The taxi driver tried to ask me where exactly I was to be taken to, I understood it somehow, but I didn't know how to explain it to him. Then I took a piece of paper and a pen out of my bag and drew a train with carriages. He understood me, but there are two railway stations in Modena, a main station and a small one, and he was trying to figure out which of the two stations to take me to. I didn't know it and kept saying in English ‘train station’. The taxi driver asked ‘big train station?’ I don't remember what I said, but he opened the door and we drove off. When we got to the main railway station he said ‘money’ and I realised he was asking for fare. I only had a little over a hundred dollars with me, I handed him the money, he gave me the change and drove off. I was left standing at the station. I was to be met by a friend of my mother's, a fellow villager who was working in a house opposite the railway station. I was dressed in my best kit, which consisted of a grey shiny cloak made to look like python skin, the same trousers and waistcoat. My hair was dyed blonde and I was wearing black stiletto shoes. My friend's mum hadn't found me. But only now I wonder how she couldn't have seen me then. I was different from the masses of people on the station. But as I found out later, she really didn't see me and went back to her workplace. I stood there wondering what to do, how to contact my mum. Before I left for Italy, I tried to learn Italian with the help of an Italian phrasebook. It was a book with phrases for everyday communication. I only remembered ‘ciao’ and ‘La prego di darmi una telefonata’. I kept standing at the station, no one came for me and I started to panic. People came up to me and said something, but I didn't understand anything. Then I got the idea to ask someone for a phone, I said ‘La prego di darmi una telefonata’, gave them money in exchange for a phone call, but everyone nodded and said no. Then I noticed a street phone and went over to it and watched other people using it. Suddenly a nun dressed in all white came to the phone, I told her in Italian the only phrase I had learnt ‘La prego di darmi una telefonata’ and she gave me a seat. I gestured to her that I needed the phone card she was holding in her hand and she gave it to me. So I called my mum. She came to pick me up, along with her employer. When I saw her, (we hadn't seen each other for over a year), I hugged her and cried.

I lived for three months in my mum's employer's villa and got to know his whole family. The kindest people. His niece's children helped me learn Italian, gave me clothes because I only had summer dresses and light clothes with me. I was going to Italy on a tourist visa for three months, so I could not take warm clothes with me. I started to learn Italian almost immediately after my arrival, I never parted with my pocket dictionary and after a week I started to compose phrases and write them down in a notebook. Once , my mum's employer sister came into our room and said to me ‘Marina, say ciao’ and I said ‘ciao’. She looked surprised and told me that I said the word very well. So I lived in the villa for three months and they even took me to work in the ‘pastificio’, where I made ‘tortellini’ by hand, small dumplings, which in Italy are eaten with broth or with cream. But three months flew by like one day, my tourist visa expired and I suddenly turned into a ‘clandestino’ - an illegal immigrant. This caused a lot of problems and unpleasant moments. In the ‘pastificio’ they told me that they could not keep me any longer because if I had an accident during my work, for example, they could not even take me to an ambulance. Time passed, but no one was in a hurry to take me to a new job and my mother began to insist that I return to Ukraine. But when I remembered how I ended up in Italy I was scared and refused to return home.

To stay in the villa (the villa was twenty kilometres from the city of Modena) I also could not indefinitely, and I decided to look for a job in Modena. In the city for the first time I lived in flats that our women secretly rented to illegal immigrants like me. It was not easy to live with people you don't know at all, to sleep in the same bed with them, even to take a shower. During that period, a monk who helped our illegal immigrants to get a job with the Italians found me a part-time job for a while in a restaurant where I washed dishes. I remember washing huge pans (one of those pans could fit a person) and there was a girl from Africa working with me in the restaurant kitchen. She kept saying how tired she was and asked me to help her. I helped her, for which I was reprimanded by the owner of the restaurant. The money I was paid for washing dishes was not enough for a long time, I was ashamed to ask my mother for it, but I had nothing to pay for accommodation. So I found myself on the street.

Fortunately, almost immediately after my arrival in Italy, I met a lot of guys who were illegal immigrants like me. They spent the whole day in the city park and spent the night in an abandoned barracks. Even the water and light were connected there, so that they could cook and shower. They invited me to this abandoned barracks. So I had a roof over my head almost immediately. But it was impossible to stay in this barracks for a long time, because it was almost in the historical centre of the city and the police came there from time to time. During the day I spent time not only in the park, but also in the monastery where a monk helped our illegal immigrants to find work. We were allowed to have lunch there and many of us slept there. I started to sleep there too. But the police started to visit there from time to time. When I first came to Italy, I met a guy in a park, or rather he met me, because I never meet anyone first. I can't say that I fell in love with him, but he was courting me and I gave in. I didn't understand Italian very well at the time, but one day I heard him talking to someone on the phone. When I asked him one day what country he was from, he told me that he was from Yugoslavia or something like that, but I didn't hear in his speech any words like ours at all. And then I started to ask him persistently about his nationality. Eventually he confessed that he had come to Italy from Albania as a teenager. One day I decided to go and visit him. For some reason I didn't feel like spending the night in the convent. I remembered the way to his house well, but still in the evening everything looks different from the daytime and I got lost. And I must have called him then and ended up at his house. After all my struggles, even his unremarkable flat seemed like a paradise to me. We had a ‘romance’, but suddenly something happened that had far from romantic consequences. He forced me against my will to have sex with him in a form that I, because of my age, could not perceive at all. It was disgusting and humiliating. It was against my will. After a while he just disappeared from my life. I could talk about my relationship with him for a long time, because we spent almost two years together, but I don't think it's worth it. I will only say that twenty years after our separation we met by chance in one post office in the city. I recognised him, he had changed, and I must have looked at him very closely because he suddenly turned in my direction, looked at me carefully and recognised me too. I don't remember him calling me by name. We just walked out of the post office, had a few words. He said he remembered me as a nice girl, asked if I was married, I said I was getting married. Then I asked him if he had changed his place of residence and if he had children. He told me a little about himself and on that note we parted.

Melancholy is my usual state and it has almost never left me as long as I can remember. As a child, I used to stand at the window and watch the rain fall for hours. And now I'm asking myself what kind of feeling is this? Melancholy is like waiting for something every day, but you don't know what it is. And sometimes you know what you're waiting for and if it happens, you start waiting for something new. Melancholy equals endless waiting, as if from minute to minute a miracle should happen, no matter big or small, and the problem is not even that the miracle does not happen, but that the seconds of waiting add up to minutes, minutes to hours, hours to days, days to months, and months to years. And I still see myself as a child standing at the window waiting for something or someone. If there are past lives, then this waiting for something or someone must have been passed on to me from the past. I have even tried to unravel the secret of my endless, melancholy waiting. Thus, (if I am not confused in this story), I found myself in the Late Renaissance. And what did I find there? Oh, yes! A lovely heroine, and most importantly a real one, who spent her days and maybe nights in the walls of a lighthouse, long forgotten by everyone, waiting for her lover to come home. By the way, I even live in the same city where my heroine was born and if you write my name in abbreviated form, it will be pronounced exactly the same as her name. Except that unlike me she expected the same real hero of the story, and what I am waiting for I still do not understand, or maybe I do, but my brain refuses to admit it to myself, so I bring myself back to our days, although not very willingly.