I was not there, I’m not here

On the way home, with a hellish rain and a horrible wind, with my family in the car, I want to tell you a story. The Brus-Ramos family have just spent the weekend with very lovely friends, where the children played and had fun, the adults talked, drank and laughed; or at least it's how looks, I'm not so sure because I was not there. I remember that I had some conversations, I told funny stories, I laughed, I mess around with the kids; but I do not know how it happened, because I was not there for a second, I was always in Venezuela. I categorically decided to dedicate a couple of days exclusively to my family, more for selfishness than for altruism; more for the need to refill my energy and continue giving hope to those who live at the other side of the Atlantic. But I failed, despite all my efforts, I couldn't be there with them. I look the weather around me and I'm about to confirm my theory, I was never there, I'm not either here , because i'm trapped in a horror dream. It's been 60 hours without electricity in Venezuela. That resource we don't use to think about, because it is part of our lives, in my country it is no longer available, and with the darkness, added to all the other calamities, hell's door has been opened.

Newborns dies in hospitals, patients dies due to lack of dialysis, equipment and refrigerated medications; the food, which in the middle of a humanitarian crisis has costed sweat and tears to get, it rots and nothing can be done; the transport has collapsed, there is no water, there is no gas; the cell phones are running out of battery and while the electric service does not work, the phone lines and internet either. For us, the diaspora that observe from a distance, we see how our family and friends die in slow motion, how the thin rope that keeps us connected gets broke, we are moving to the limbo. I can not stop thinking about the holocaust, all the people who were able to escape the Nazi barbarism and saw from far away the disappearance of their beloved ones; I think I have a similar sensation now. It's still raining outside but luckily we got home and I was able to run to take a bath, not because I have an imperative need to get rid of the dirt from my body, but because I urge myself to cry without my children seeing me. I want to cry, kick and scream like a desperate madwoman, but for them, I must do it in silence, because their happiness is my act of rebellion. I hide, in the bathroom, in the room, even pretending that I have to hang clothes (when I hate housework), to be able to vent, to check on the news, to see the images of how my country is turning off, to see the deaths than seems geographically distance but feel emotionally so close, with the frustration in the skin for not being able to do anything more than tell the story. I am afraid of tears, because if i let them free, i'm not sure if I will be able to stop, but today I allow myself to drain secretly and invited all Venezuelans around the world to do the same: cry, scream and escape, to be reborn as the phoenix, with Hope, energy, power and love. This is the part of the battle that we have to fight, for the ones we have there and for those who depend on us here. We have to be an information center, we have to give a little light when the darkness threatens to take over everything. Venezuela lives a Holocaust, a humanitarian tragedy, ferocious, implacable, painful, frustrating, but it is a race of resistance that I will not abandon. From the Diaspora, we are going to give ourselves time and spaces to recover and continue filling those who are locked in the most painful disaster. To all my friends who visit me and write to me, I apologize, because although they see me physically, I am not here, but one day I will return.