Get out of the comfort zone

There are lives that can be in a showcase or display case, and as long as they remain there, they will be perfect, orderly, beautiful, worthy of admiration. One could say that this was the life I had for a long time. After graduating, even before, I had no need to use public transportation, for example, I vacationed three times a year in any state of my country, I changed my wardrobe according to fashion, and I bought, in large luxury supermarkets, food for an entire month, which was sometimes delivered to my home or my father would pick it up. Because I must confess that although I was an adult and independent woman, my father supported me in everything: he would take my car to the shop if needed, hire and supervise workers, and even could pick me up and drop me off in his car if mine or my taxi driver failed. As the song by Juan Gabriel says: 'I was very happy, I lived very well.'

Until 2016 arrived and my life had to come out of that display case I was in and live, more than a pleasant and easy experience, it turned into a series of events in which I had to survive and endure. Life thus became a trench in which I not only had to fight for myself and my loved ones, but also in which I could not give up, because otherwise I would be out of the game. Living became for me the greatest act of resistance.

The first blow was the death of my father, my trunk and my root, in 2016. His death left me an orphan and exploded the crystal world in which I had been born. Then came the economic situation of my country, in 2017 and 2018, which took me out of the bubble and I had to see and do what had never been seen or done before.

That's how I took off my heels, replaced dresses and suits with pants, t-shirts, and sneakers, and began to realize that life was not kind, but rather it bit. In those years there was a shortage of food and gasoline in Venezuela, so I had to walk many kilometers looking for an open supermarket and stand in long lines just to buy a package of flour, some coffee, and sugar. I had to sell all the gold jewelry to buy meat and milk because they were very expensive products, and we had to clean ourselves with lemon and baking soda because there was no shampoo, deodorant, or toothpaste. But above all, I had to pull out my nails and fangs, like a wild animal, to be able to defend what was mine, and when I say mine, I mean my family, but I am also talking about a place in line, a package of rice. I hardened my face and forgot my manners. It was not a strategy; it was the only possible way to survive.

What if I cried and complained about what I was going through? Of course! At that moment, I never saw anything positive in what was happening. I remember that my mother and my sister were sick and weak, and the only one who could notice them was me because I am the only one who has no children or husband, so every day I went out to look for "whatever there was" and came home, tired, but with the satisfaction of taking care of them. "I got coffee and sugar today, tomorrow I'll see if I can buy milk and maybe we can have coffee with milk," I would tell my mother and my sister as if that were a big deal, and they smiled at me because they knew all the effort I was making.

Over the years I have seen that stage as the beginning of a new Nancy, one more real, more empathetic, more rebellious and useful. I am almost sure that although I am still 1.58 meters tall, in those years I grew. As happens with some fruits: I matured after falling from the tree. And it is that I feel that in the early years of life our parents tried to place us, my sisters and me, in a place where nothing bad would touch us, they created a custom princess outfit and that, more than well, made us useless in many things. Today, of course I am a princess, but one that does not wear slippers, but wears Converse shoes and rides public transport.

The central image edited in Canva and the others are from my personal gallery. The text was translated with Google.

Thank you for your reading and comment, my friend. Until next time