Prologue
They say when you move to a new country, you leave behind who you were. But no one talks about the ghost that follows you, silent and faithful, carrying all the parts you tried to bury.
I wasn’t looking to escape my past when I left Europe. I carried it with me in quiet suitcases, zipped shut over the life I’d built and lost. Every cup, every photo frame, every shirt still carrying his scent – all gone now, given away or sold for coins that jingled in my pocket on the way to the airport.
I told myself this was what rebirth looked like. But the truth is, rebirth isn’t a phoenix rising from ash. It’s crawling from the ruins with blistered knees and broken fingernails, whispering to the dawn, “I am still here.”
And as the plane cut through darkness over the Atlantic, watching the stars burn cold above the clouds. I didn’t know if I was flying toward something, or simply away from everything I could no longer bear.
But I knew one thing: I couldn’t turn back.
Part I – Arrival
I arrived in New York City in the trembling dawn of March 2020, just days before the borders shut like iron gates behind me, carrying with me nothing but two suitcases and a small bundle of savings in cash, just enough, I hoped, to keep me afloat until I could find work.
The cab ride from JFK felt like drifting through a dream that hadn’t decided whether to be hopeful or nightmarish. A pale sun spilled across silent streets, washing the graffiti-covered brick walls in gold. Steam rose from sewer grates, curling around rows of shuttered shops like ghosts reluctant to leave.
I pressed my forehead to the cold window and tried to picture what he would have said if he were here. “Look at this place, Sofia” he would have whispered, “It’s ugly and beautiful at the same time. Just like you said it would be.”
I closed my eyes. His voice felt too real, too close, and I couldn’t bear the echo.
We had dreamed of immigrating to the United States ever since we were kids, whispering promises of freedom under quiet European skies. We never knew exactly where we would land, only that it would be somewhere bigger, somewhere that could contain the versions of ourselves we couldn’t fit into that small village life.
But when he died, the dream felt like broken glass in my chest. Sharp, pointless, impossible to hold.
Still, I came.
I had to.
Part II – The Shut Door
The apartment I rented smelled like bleach and old dust. It was barely furnished – a narrow bed, a scuffed table with two chairs, and a kettle whose handle burned my fingers the first time I used it.
Within days of my arrival, the city that was supposed to be my rebirth became a locked cell. Streets emptied as if humanity had evaporated overnight. Stores closed one after another, metal gates pulled down over darkened windows. Ambulance sirens wailed through empty streets, their echoes weaving between silent towers like restless ghosts.
I did have a work visa. Back home, I wept with relief the day the embassy stamped it into my passport. For a brief moment, it felt like I held proof in my hands – proof that after years of applications, interviews, and waiting, there was finally a place in this world willing to let me in.
But that illusion shattered the moment I arrived. My visa allowed me entry, yes, but it wasn’t the end of the road. I still needed to apply for my work authorization status on-site in the United States to register my presence and unlock the rest of the process. Only then could I receive a Social Security Number. These nine digits meant I could legally exist in the systems that ran everything from employment to bank accounts.
I didn’t know that the pandemic would close nearly every federal office before I even had the chance to submit my documents. Websites were outdated, forms were unclear, and phone calls were routed to endless voicemails with messages stating “Due to the current health crisis, processing times will be delayed indefinitely.” Each recorded voice felt like a door slamming shut. Each unreturned call was another reminder that I was no one here – a ghost in a city of locked buildings and shuttered help desks.
Without that number, I couldn’t open a bank account or set up the services everyone else takes for granted. I couldn’t sign a proper lease or get a job to pay rent. For most people born here, having a Social Security Number is so automatic they hardly remember when they first memorised it – it’s like breathing, a silent proof of existence stamped into their lives from birth. But for me, trying to live without it felt like trying to lift a mountain with bare hands. And because no one ever has to think about it, they couldn’t understand why I struggled so hard just to buy groceries, to keep the lights on, to find a safe place to sleep. Without that number, I wasn’t just invisible. I was nothing.
So I spent my days refreshing immigration websites, scrolling through the same sentences over and over again, each click feeling like scratching at a locked door with bleeding fingers, praying that someone, somewhere, might finally open it.
At night, the apartment swallowed my thoughts whole. I would lie under thin blankets, watching headlights crawl across the ceiling, listening to my own breathing just to remember I was still alive.
Part III – Blake
At night, when the loneliness pressed hardest against my chest, I scrolled through old messages with Blake, the young American woman I’d befriended online while learning English. She was twenty-seven, bright and fast-talking, with a humour I never quite understood but always appreciated. We had spent countless evenings video chatting before I moved, her teaching me slang phrases and me teaching her fragments of French poetry. She had promised to take me thrifting in Brooklyn, show me the best dumpling shops in Chinatown, and introduce me to her friends from her academic circles. “You’re going to love it here,” she had said. “It’ll be your fresh start.”
But after I arrived, her replies changed. They became shorter, clipped, cautious. I knew something was wrong the day she left my last message on read for over a week. Eventually, I saw her posts trickle through my feed – photos of her and her new husband, a man with an American flag profile frame and a gaze that seemed to pierce the camera like a challenge. His captions were always barbed with anger about lockdowns, “fake news media,” and how immigrants were ruining the country. He shared articles about conspiracies that blamed foreigners for everything from job losses to the virus itself, their headlines screaming half-truths and twisted statistics.
Sometimes, I wondered if she believed any of it. Or if she just stayed quiet to keep the peace in her own home. I saw fewer photos of her alone. Fewer posts about art and volunteering. More photos of his truck, his guns lined up on a polished wooden table, flags hanging over their patio in silent, righteous judgment.
I imagined her reading my messages late at night when he was asleep beside her. I pictured her thumb hovering over the keyboard, wanting to reply but hearing his breath deepen next to her, feeling the warmth of his body and the weight of her own silence. Maybe she told herself she would respond tomorrow. Maybe she told herself she hadn’t seen it. Perhaps she believed that ignoring me was safer or kinder.
Eventually, her replies stopped altogether. And I understood. Her world had shifted under her feet, just as mine had. But while I was trapped in a studio apartment in a city that didn’t know my name, she was trapped in a house with a man who hated everything I represented. Our silences became the bridge between us, stretched thin over a chasm neither of us dared cross.
Part IV – Tea at Dawn
Every morning, I woke before dawn, when the city was still holding its breath in the dark. I shuffled across the cold linoleum floor, wrapping my sweater tighter around my shoulders. The kettle rattled as it heated, steam curling up in pale ribbons that disappeared into the cracked ceiling above. I was always careful not to touch its scorched handle, after burning my fingers the first morning in a moment of sleepy carelessness that left a red mark for days.
I made weak tea in a chipped mug I found tucked behind dusty plates in the cupboard, its faded print reading “World’s Best Dad.” I sometimes wondered who had left it behind and whether they had missed it. I held the mug with both hands, letting the gentle warmth seep into my stiff fingers, then my wrists, then deeper into the ache of my bones. Outside, the sky lightened slowly over silent rooftops, turning from charcoal to ash to the palest blue.
I would sit at the narrow table, knees pressed against the wood, breathing in the faint scent of tea leaves mixed with city dust, and I whispered into the dim room, “I am still here.”
Persistence, I realised, isn’t fighting battles with raised fists or demanding the world bend to your will. Sometimes, it’s simply waking up again. It’s the quiet refusal to die in a place that doesn’t want you, the small act of boiling water and drinking tea, proof to yourself that even without a plan or a promise, you chose to stay.
Part V – Paper Walls
Bills kept arriving – mostly rent notices and reminders from the landlord about additional fees, each envelope a reminder that I was alive but still invisible. I couldn’t even set up proper utility accounts without that nine-digit number, so everything was funneled through temporary arrangements and cash payments that drained what little savings I had left. Rent, electricity, phone credit – all demanding proof of my existence in a country that hadn’t yet decided if it would let me stay. I spent hours filling out forms for benefits I wasn’t eligible for, jobs I couldn’t legally start, and assistance programs that were suspended under emergency orders.
Each form forced me to prove myself in ways I never imagined back home: scans of bank statements I didn’t have, proof of immunisations I couldn’t translate, certified copies of certificates for a life that no longer existed.
When the exhaustion grew too heavy, I would push the papers away and sit in silence, staring at the cracked paint on the wall, wondering how many others before me had sat in this very spot, feeling just as small.
Part VI – The Forum
One evening, after another silent day spent filling out forms and checking unopened emails, I found myself staring at my phone long past midnight. The apartment was dark except for the glow of the screen reflecting in the window, casting my tired eyes back at me.
I typed “USA immigrant support” into the search bar, not really expecting anything. But a forum appeared – a simple website with no fancy colours or branding, just lines of posts cascading down the screen like an endless prayer wall. People were pleading for information about visas stuck in limbo, venting anger at politicians and agencies that never replied, sharing tiny victories: a work permit finally approved, a neighbour dropping off groceries, a call from home that didn’t end in tears.
Their stories made my chest ache with recognition. I realised how many of us were floating in the same silent ocean, unable to see each other in the dark.
I introduced myself, my fingers trembling as I hit ‘Post.’ I wrote simply: “New here. Alone. Don’t know what to do next.”
Within minutes, replies began to appear:
– “Hang in there, sis.”
– “I’ve been where you are. It gets better.”
– “Message me if you need to talk. I’m serious.”
I read them over and over, blinking away tears that burned hot against my tired skin. Their words felt like warm hands pressing gently against my back, keeping me upright when my own strength faltered.
After that night, I began posting daily reflections – small notes about the sunrise over rusted rooftops, the taste of watery instant coffee, the wail of sirens fading into dawn. Words to prove I was still here. Words to remind someone else that they were too.
And it was there, among those midnight conversations and flickering threads of hope, that I first came across Lina.
Part VII – Lina
Her username was BabushkaNYC. I almost scrolled past it, thinking she was someone’s grandmother just learning to use the internet. But her post caught my eye. The title read: “Need help with online forms, please.”
Inside, her words were short and hesitant, typed in fractured English: “Hello. I Lina. I need help. Food stamps application. My English is no good. Thank you.”
I clicked on her profile and saw she had joined the forum only the day before. Her bio simply said: “Immigrant. Alone. Queens.” Something in my chest tightened, as if a wire was pulling me forward. I sent her a private message before I could overthink it.
“Hi Lina, I can help with your forms. Let me know when you’re free to talk.”
She replied almost immediately. “Thank you. Video call? I not type much.”
That evening, I sat at my small kitchen table, brushing my hair back and wiping the fatigue from under my eyes before clicking ‘Accept’ on the call. The screen flickered, and there she was – a thin woman with soft grey hair pulled back in a bun, her face lined with years of worry and resilience. Behind her, faded floral wallpaper peeled from the walls in curling strips.
“Hello, dear,” she said, her voice trembling but warm. “You are… from Europe, да?”
I nodded, surprised. “How did you know?”
“Your name,” she smiled. “And your eyes. They are tired eyes, like mine.”
We worked through the forms slowly. Lina’s hands shook when she tried to hold up her ID to the camera. Arthritis, she explained. The pain was bad in the winter. Her children were back home in Belarus, unable to visit since the borders closed. She hadn’t seen some of them in over two years.
As we filled out the questions line by line, she told me stories of her village. Of how she used to bake rye bread in a clay oven outside her house. Of her husband, gone now ten years. How quiet the apartment felt at night when all she could hear was the hum of the refrigerator and the clatter of the heating pipes.
When we finally finished, she pressed her palms together in thanks. Tears pooled in her milky brown eyes. “You are a good girl,” she said softly. “God sent you to me.”
After that, we spoke every few days. Sometimes about forms, and sometimes just to pass the long hours. One morning, Lina confessed she hadn’t eaten fresh vegetables in weeks. She was too afraid to go outside with the virus spreading, and delivery cost more than her pension could cover.
Without thinking, I offered to go for her. I had gone out just the day before, and it was terrifying – stepping onto streets still echoing with sirens, masked strangers weaving around me like ghosts. But Lina needed help, and I was here for her. The grocery store line snaked down the block. I held a screenshot of her list on my phone, reading the neat Cyrillic letters she had written, picturing her hunched over her table as she wrote them.
When I finally knocked on her door and she opened it a crack, her eyes lit up like the sun breaking through storm clouds. “You are an angel,” she whispered.
“No,” I said, placing the bags on her doorstep “Just someone trying to put some good in the universe”.
Part VIII – The Letter
Winter melted reluctantly into spring, though some mornings still bit at my skin with a cold sharp enough to bring tears to my eyes. But the days grew longer, and sometimes I caught the scent of thawing earth drifting up from cracks in the pavement.
I kept helping Lina. Each visit became more than groceries and forms. I would sit on her doorstep, sipping the coffee she brewed strong enough to wake the dead, while she spoke of Belarus – of birch forests and old Orthodox churches with bells so heavy they shook the ground when they tolled. She told me about her son, who serves for the army back home. She showed me photos of him on her old phone, his face framed by dark hair and a serious gaze that softened whenever she spoke his name.
Sometimes she would pause mid-story, her eyes glassy, and say, “You remind me of him. Not your face, but… something here,” and she would tap her chest lightly.
I didn’t tell her, but hearing about him brought me a quiet comfort I didn’t fully understand. There was a loneliness in her that mirrored my own. Sitting there on the cold concrete outside her door, I felt like we were two exiles building a small island together, safe for a few hours from the currents of a world that didn’t want to claim us.
Days turned into weeks. My savings are sinking lower with each rent payment. The landlord left terse notes under my door. I sent out job applications by the dozen, knowing none would move forward without that nine-digit proof of existence.
Each morning, I checked the mailbox in the lobby, my pulse quickening every time I saw a white envelope. But it was always bills, or advertisements for things I couldn’t buy, or notices reminding me that without proper status, eviction was only a signature away.
One Tuesday, after spending the morning helping Lina renew her utilities assistance, I returned home exhausted. The apartment felt darker than usual. I dropped my keys on the counter, kicked off my shoes, and sat at the small table, my head cradled in my hands. I thought about calling Lina back just to hear her voice, but even that felt too heavy.
For hours, I sat there, staring at nothing, until the dusk painted shadows across the walls. Hunger gnawed at my stomach, but I had no appetite. Instead, I boiled water, made my usual cup of tea, and sat on my bed watching the city lights blink alive one by one.
That’s when I noticed something under the door – a slip of white against the dim lobby carpet. My chest tightened. Slowly, I stood and crossed the room, my bare feet silent against the cold floorboards. I bent down and picked it up. It was an envelope, thick and official-looking. For a moment, confusion flickered through my mind – how did it get here?
Then I saw a small handwritten note taped to the corner: “This was in my box by mistake. Thought it looked important. – Leo, 3B.”
Leo. I didn’t know him, but I’d heard quiet guitar chords drifting from his apartment some nights, soft melodies that made the cracked walls feel less empty. I remembered hearing once through the hallway vent that he’d lost his job recently – I didn’t know where he worked or what he did, only that he seems to playing more often after that. There was a gentleness in his playing that felt like a promise I didn’t yet understand.
My hands trembled as I turned the envelope over, reading the return address in bold, government-printed letters. I pressed it to my chest and closed my eyes. Tears welled up, hot and unstoppable, though I wasn’t ready to open it yet. Instead, I whispered a silent prayer to my late husband, to my friendship with Lina, to Leo – this stranger who unknowingly carried hope to my door – and went to bed.
Because in that moment, holding the unopened letter under the flickering kitchen light, I felt something shift inside me– something like hope uncoiling after a long, silent winter.
And though I didn’t know what the next day would bring, I knew one thing for sure:
Tomorrow, everything might finally change.
Part IX – Becoming
The next morning, sunlight streamed through the thin curtains, painting gold across the cracked walls. I sat at the kitchen table, the unopened envelope resting before me like a sleeping animal, its presence heavy with promise.
I let myself savour that quiet moment before knowing–before reality returned to claim me. I made coffee, strong coffee, the way Lina likes it. I sat and watched the steam curl into the morning light, breathing in its warmth, letting it settle the shaking in my chest.
Finally, with trembling fingers, I tore it open.
Inside was a single page. My Social Security Number, printed in black ink that seemed to glow under the powerful sunlight. Nine digits that meant I could finally exist here. I could get a job. I could pay rent without fear. I could begin again.
Tears blurred the numbers, and I pressed the paper to my chest, letting silent sobs shake through me, releasing months–no, years–of fear and grief I hadn’t realised I’d been holding so tightly.
I thought of my husband then, of the day we sat on our tiny balcony back home, his arm wrapped around my shoulders as we planned our life across an ocean neither of us had seen. I whispered to the quiet room, “I made it, love. I made it.”
Later that morning, I called Lina to share the news with her. She cried too, whispering blessings in Russian I didn’t understand but felt deep in my bones.
That afternoon, I walked out into the city with a strange lightness in my step. The sidewalks were alive again, lined with café tables and people sipping iced coffees under pale spring skies. Children laughed in the park, their voices carried on the breeze like music. Even the pigeons seemed less desperate, pecking at breadcrumbs with quiet satisfaction.
I paused in front of a bakery window, my reflection merging with racks of fresh bread and golden pastries inside. For the first time since arriving, I saw not a foreigner, not a widow, not an invisible shadow slipping between crowded streets – but simply a woman becoming.
Becoming brave enough to stay. Becoming strong enough to begin again. Becoming someone who owns her past without letting it drown her future.
And as I stood there, letting the morning sun warm my face, I felt it fully – the truth I had whispered to myself all those dark mornings:
I am still here.
And finally, I was ready to see where it could take me next.
Later that evening, after the sun dipped behind rooftop water towers and the air turned cool with summer’s promise, I knocked softly on 3B. When the door opened, there he stood – tall, tired-eyed, guitar propped against the wall behind him.
“Hey, Leo,” I said, my voice trembling with quiet courage. “Thank you… for the letter. I… I was wondering if you’d like to come over for dinner tomorrow night. I’d love to cook something to say thank you properly.”
He blinked, surprised, then smiled – just a flicker, but enough to make my chest tighten with something unfamiliar and warm.
“Yeah,” he said softly. “I’d like that.”
For the first time since arriving in this city, I felt the invisible threads of my life beginning to weave into something more than survival.
And just like a whispered promise, our story faded into tomorrow.
Author’s Reflection: This story echoes my own journey as an immigrant arriving in a country I barely understood, during a time when the world felt like it was coming to an end. While Sofia’s path is fictional, her quiet persistence, her isolation, and her moments of silent triumph are drawn from memories of my first mornings here, holding tea in trembling hands, wondering if I’d made the greatest mistake or taken the bravest step of my life. “Alien” is a reminder that reinvention isn’t about dramatic rebirths but about choosing, every single day, to keep becoming me.
Does this journey remind you of your own? Share your story in the comments below – your words might remind someone else that persistence is always worth it.
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