Life has surprised me in a thousand ways. For better or for worse, my life has been full of surprises. What I have tried to do is that each one of those surprises inspires me, lifts me to another level, even if, at times, with some surprises I have fallen into the darkest hole of existence.

Perhaps that desire to be surprised was what made me wake up early this Sunday, July 28, to vote in the presidential elections that took place in my country, Venezuela.

I had breakfast, got dressed up and went out to exercise my right. The streets were full of people and I could feel the joy among the people walking by. When I arrived at my polling place I quietly waited in line and had to wait for three hours to be able to vote. The voting centers were full of people who loudly proclaimed a change of government. This surprised me because my urbanization is very Chavista and I never thought I had opposition neighbors.

The idea was to wait until 6 p.m. to go to the voting centers and then to stand at the entrance of each voting center to supervise the counting, to know the results and to defend the votes. And so I did. At 6 o'clock, together with some friends and family, we went to the nearest voting center and sat down to wait for the results.

While we were there, we received information from other centers where the opposition had won in a landslide. The joy, the hope, the desire for change was evident in all of us and that wait turned into a vigil.

When the witnesses at the voting tables in our center declared Edmundo Gonzalez the winner, there was music and jubilation: what had been a dream for the past 20 years was about to become a reality. Venezuela would return to the path of economic, social, educational and health recovery. And most especially, Venezuela would see its children again, those who have had to leave in search of a better life.

But time began to elapse and the National Electoral Council had not made any pronouncement. I admit that I had my apprehensions, my doubts, since this is the modus operandi of this government: to wait for the early hours of the morning, while people are asleep, and to give fraudulent results. But I said to myself:

_Nancy, this time it will be different! We have to trust! -And I wished with all my heart that God would work a miracle for us.

The international media had their projections and the Venezuelan opposition also had theirs: both were giving the opposition candidate as the winner. All of Venezuela had also witnessed how in every voting center, even in the most remote villages, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia had more than won against Nicolas Maduro.

However, the bad guys have no morals and after midnight, the president of the National Electoral Council announced Nicolás Maduro as the winner. To be honest, at that hour when the criminals act, it was not a surprise for me: it was a “chronicle of a death foretold”. I felt like crying, I went to sleep thinking that there are ships that sink because of the wickedness of those who steer them.

Today, Venezuela dawned militarized and in an express act, without waiting long, Maduro was declared the winner. At this hour, as I am writing this, the networks are talking about protests, people rising up, burning of tires, confrontation, which does not surprise me because Venezuela is a country of people who want the best. What would have been a great surprise is that this rogue government would have accepted defeat and surrendered power. That would have been the biggest surprise of my life and maybe the best.