Five years ago I went through the worst day of my life. The circumstances of my mother’s death, Venezuela’s collapse, and a handful of stuff in my personal life did leave me with a bunch of mental scars — more so if I keep in mind that all of those things happened back to back and I never got to catch a breath. Healing from all that has been a slow process and, while I haven’t taken much care of myself, I’m still alive and have much to be thankful to God for.
I used to be very mopey this time of the year, and while yeah, some nights the weight of it all still hits me (and hard), I’ve become much more adept at managing the rollercoaster that is depression. I haven’t treated it, nor addressed it, I simply have managed to reach a balance and coexist with it.
The laughter of friends, being able to help others, and enjoying the little things in my atypical life, these are things that have helped me heal my soul after all I’ve been through. I have no words to explain how important this all has been to me.
Now that the Coronavirus pandemic is over after three long and very taxing years I was able to include my mom’s name and the names of other family members that have passed away in Friday’s service. By the time you read this I’ll most certainly be at church, attending mass, and praying, just as how I used to go every month after my mom’s passing without fail — at least until the start of the pandemic.
I’ll not just be praying, for I have much to be thankful for. Finally, after so many failed attempts, setbacks, and complications, I have the means to fulfill the promise I made to my mother and leave this country with my brother, towards a new, much better, life. While it’s not what I originally had been planning for all these years, it’s something not everyone gets to have, I have that very clear.
This time I feel very different, much better in fact. Sure, my health is still a mess (and I only have myself to blame for), and I feel heavy and sluggish because of my weight and sleep issues, but I’ve never felt this unburdened, it’s a strange new sensation to me.
My life right now feels like in a sort of transitory phase, an off-season period, if you will. As a result, I’ve detached myself from a lot of the real life bs in order to focus on tomorrow, and it’s worked pretty well so far. I do want to properly get back on content creation, and relaunch my projects, still working on that.
Certainly so, a lot of this newfound unburdened sensation is because there are no more big fights left to fight in this 5–year journey towards leaving Venezuela for me, and I’m closer than ever to starting a new life at last. I finally have Italian passports, which I think was something impossible to get for most of my life (or so I was led to believe), I have a brand new Venezuelan passports to be allowed out of this country, which I managed to get shortly before things got more complicated here (I’ll take that as the topic for my next post in this site) and there is nothing left to stop me from leaving this country anymore.
There is only one last fight to do, whose outcome has no bearing in our escape: to solve some paperwork nonsense pertaining to this apartment to see if we can sell it — this, however, is not something that can or will prevent us from leaving, so that’s why I’m not that stressed about it.
If I can solve it in a timely manner during the course of April and I manage to sell it soon then great, we’ll have a decent amount of money to start a new life, not a fortune for sure, but anything goes a long way — maybe even take a long overdue vacation since my last vacation was in 1999. Not to gloat but, I do have one of the best passports in the world now, so I can literally go almost anywhere, just have to work hard and save the money lol.
If I can’t solve it then it’s ok, I’ll just lock the place down and figure something out, we’d just have the money I’ve been able to save (which isn’t a lot) at our disposal, no biggie.
Unless something changes, we’re moving to Italy, as we already have citizenship and all that. Sure, we’ll have to really try hard at learning Italian but hey. Still trying to figure out where we should arrive, a place to rent, and some other relevant details.
After that then I’ll see what life has in store for us. Maybe I’ll finally get a work visa for the United States, Canada, or another English-speaking country, as I’ve failed so hard at it over the past five years. Maybe Sword will be a huge success once I get to publish it, and that opens more doors for me and my brother, only God knows.
After I’m out of church tomorrow I wanna start making plans to renew myself, starting in April. I need to finally stop making excuses and start thinking about myself and my health, get in shape, and all that.
Once I’m out of Venezuela I really wanna learn how to enjoy life again, and finally live, as there is so much I haven’t been able to do yet, I am, after all, a very much social outcast that always felt out of place — that might get exacerbated in Italy, we’ll see.
I take every March 31 to reflect on the promises I made to my mom on that day, and do a sort of self-review to see how I’ve fared over the past year. I’ve certainly been able to take care of my brother no matter what, and I’ve put food on his table without fail, that’s something I’m very thankful to God and life for.
I’ve certainly been neglectful in pushing him to pursue his own dreams and learn how to do stuff, though, that’s the part where I’ve dropped the ball at. It’s been five years and this is still a learning process to me, the whole having to be a pseudo father figure, a brother, and a caretaker at the same time.
I know things continue to be bleak everywhere, events that tend to feel like you’ve been humiliated, inflation, controls, chaos, and so much more — yet, even though I do not know how, I feel like things will work out soon enough, and everything will improve.
I still have a life debt to repay, and I fully intend on working towards that in the near future. I wanna be able to help others just as I was helped these past five years, whether at a local level or at a much broader scope, hoping to, little by little, make things better.
The best is yet to come, for all of us, I’m certain of it. At the end of the day, we’re all trying to seek our own happiness, aren’t we?
Until the next one,
-Kal