People who know me know that I had planned to leave my country, Venezuela, before the pandemic arrived. They also know the transformation I underwent as a result of living through those days.

By the year 2020, Venezuela was experiencing terrible shortages and being starving was not a metaphor for us. The whole country was a dark room where goodbyes were our daily bread and to be honest, a part of us was leaving with every friend or family member who left the country. Personally, although my body remained in Venezuela, I was not here, my heart was far away from these seafaring lands: Venezuela, for me, was an empty ship dragged by the waves.

So one day I decided to leave. The little I had gathered would be to pay for airfare and food: in another country friends and a job awaited me that would help me to maintain my lifestyle and to send money to my family. But a few months before I left, the pandemic arrived and with it came chaos.

At home, my elderly mother and my sick sister, clung to me, like one who holds on to a branch to save himself, before the avalanche of things that began to happen and in that fear, I had no choice but to be strong, to be brave. So Nancy, who used to go to work in heels, with dresses and suits, in a cab or her own car, had to put on her tennis shoes, a flannel and pants, and get together with people, get on trucks or walk long distances looking for something to eat for the three of us.

In the odyssey I lived in search of food, dragging my 21 grams of soul, like an animal, I had to face other people who were also like me: looking for survival. Several times I cried on the way home because I did not understand how a person like me, who had studied, who had prepared myself, should be fighting for a chicken, for milk, for toilet paper.

However, when I got home, I dried those tears of impotence, took off my clothes and took a bath so as not to contaminate my people, and I told my mother and my sister, with real courage, everything I had experienced that day.

They closed another supermarket. Now there are only three left. Here there is milk and I also got coffee. Today we will finally have coffee with milk. I expressed with real joy before the happy eyes of my sister and my mother: for me at that moment their well-being was above my own.

Locked in the house we learned of the death of friends we could not say goodbye to because it was forbidden. The mixture of sadness, fear, uncertainty was a monster that threatened us if we opened the door. Only I could get out: only I could face that monster even though inside I was also frightened.

So, looking back:

I miss the Nancy oblivious to all the calamities of the world. I miss the feeling of being immortal, the one that made me go through life lightly, with an empty backpack, crossing the street without looking sideways.

I miss those friends who died and that I could not say goodbye to: Julio, Alberto, Dana, Francisco, Guillermo.

I miss the “normal” world, the one where science fiction did not exist: where no one talked about vaccines, viruses or masks. Where it was unthinkable that a kiss and a hug would be frowned upon and a cough or a sneeze would make us change sidewalks.

I miss the Nancy who wanted to leave, the one who didn't know that if she was far from home, she would want to go back to take care of her own.