August 9th, 2016; six days before my 16th birthday. Any other person would have been busy organizing their birthday plans, or maybe just wondering what they would ask their parents to get for them. Some people would have gone out shopping for party supplies or clothes, perhaps a new phone or gaming console—to be honest, I really wanted that PlayStation 4. But what stood before me did not look like a gaming store, or any store for that matter. It had bright metallic wings, small rounded windows lined up along its sides, and the rumbling of its engine made my legs shake.
A plane. I was leaving. I was leaving Venezuela.
Leaving the only place you have ever known is not easy. Family and friends you might never see again, places you never got to visit, all of that gets left behind—all of it becomes a memory you hold onto to get you through the tough days. That memory travels with you wherever you go, reminding you of where you come from, where you belong, where you wish you could come back to. I guess that’s why I keep writing about this every single chance I get to.
But why do I keep writing about my messed up country? Just why do I miss it so much? When I’m asked that question, I can not stop myself from thinking about the smell of my grandma’s kitchen, when she cooked with the few things she had every time I even implied I was hungry. My friends and our inside jokes make me smile involuntarily as I remember all the times we were kicked out of a public place for being too loud. Images from holidays like Christmas and New Years warm my heart, when all the family put aside their differences and got together to celebrate the joy of another year on Earth with the people they loved. I left that behind in Venezuela, but the physical feeling of being there is not what I long for, but rather the emotional feeling I assigned to all of those things. That was my “normal.”
But I won’t sugarcoat it—my normal had a dark side. It was normal for me to see white, empty shelves at every store I went to; it was normal for me to try and forget that I was hungry, knowing the food in the fridge was supposed to last for the rest of the week; it was normal for me to pretend I didn’t feel sick, since medicine was hard to find, and expensive. It was normal for my family to feel unsafe at any place, to be afraid of everyone, to receive threats from people we didn’t know. And it was definitely normal for almost every Venezuelan to hate our government, just as much as they seemed to hate us. In all honesty, what I said was my normal was a lot of people’s normal, too. But not everyone had the chance to escape it.
I certainly never thought I would. But once I did, it became the hardest thing I ever had to do.
The plane that would take me to my new home loomed over me, almost intimidating me. “Run! Get out!” my mind told me in a desperate attempt to escape, but that decision was no longer in my hands—and I understood it had to happen. My future in Venezuela was dark and empty, filled with the dreams I would never be able to fulfill. As I sat down on my seat, I looked out through the window, and emotions overwhelmed me, hitting me with the force of a thousand suns. I have felt sad before, but the sadness that took over me when I left hurt. It hurt me deeply, slowly, as if I was losing a part of myself.
Don’t get me wrong; I do not miss my normal. A chance to live a better life was a dream come true. But this was my country. I went to the same school for years, lived in the same city all my life. I was sad. But more than that, I was angry. I was angry at the fact that so many things were being taken away from me, that the things I worked on were meaningless now, that my sixteenth birthday was six days away and I would spend it alone. Clenched fists fell to my lap, my frustration finally letting itself out, and I fought back the tears with all my strength.
“Be grateful,” I told myself. “Be grateful, be grateful, be grateful,” I repeated, feeling ungrateful.
My grandma’s smiling face as she said goodbye to me popped up in my mind, reassuring me that things would be okay. I thought of my room, the safest and most comfortable place I knew, where I wrote many stories I never got a chance to finish. Would someone ever read them, or would they remain unfinished, begging for an ending?
People, places, things, memories. They all flashed in my mind as a lonely tear rolled down my cheek, something my sister did not miss, reminding me that dad said we shouldn’t cry. I smiled, wiping my tear away and holding her hand tight, not saying a word because I had none, and we didn’t need any. We understood.
The plane started moving, and everything became all too real. “Say your last goodbye,” I whispered to my sister, eyes filling up with tears again.
The night sky showed a beautiful deep blue, illuminated only by the airport lights. Silently, I thought of my memories as lights, and wished for them to stay by my side and illuminate the path ahead. When the road gets too rough, they shine brighter. And when I write about them, the tears I did not shed that day get a chance to come again.
