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Dear Mom:
If my desire to see you was worth money, I´d have enough already to pay a ticket to Venezuela, and I´d be by your side right now!
But these times are hard. I left Venezuela in search of a better future for me, for you, for all those I love.
Although in this distant country I found the hope I lost in my home country, the road is not easy.
I miss you Mother.
In a nation where they point at me for stealing work from their citizens, in which I sometimes fear to speak and my accent is noticed, where my life depends on permits and I have no rights, I feel floating...
As if I were an airplane gliding in the sky waiting for permission to land.
Permission which does not arrive, even though I am very eager to work.
All the spaces in this country are occupied and I miss belonging; I miss my home, and my home is you.
When you go to another country you not only leave what belonged to you throughout your life, you also leave behind all the habits, the smells, the textures, the voices that have made you the person you are.
Three times a day I realize that the perfect measure of salt and pepper is between your fingertips, rippled by wrinkles.
Those little details make my soul wrinkle ...
Mom, when something went wrong, I wonder if everything would have been better if you had thrown me that morning the sweet sign of the cross that you gave me every day from the door frame .
"Vaya con Dios, hija ...", you said.
And I: "Voy con Dios, Mami." but I want to go with you too!
Every day hurts.
Looking at the cell phone screen as a portal to my country, to my people, I pray that your voice will go through the screen and make me feel that I am there, with you.
You are stronger, Mom, when you prefer me to be far away, even if it hurts.
You tell me to have strength, that this is for my future ... but, what about my present ? What about the hugs that I lost ?Can not you wrap some in paper and send it here ?
Or, can you not appear here in person, even if only for a moment ?
But this is the place I have chosen to live. These are the times we live in, the circumstances that millions of Venezuelans have had to overcome.
And, although there are clearly guilty persons, there is no longer any relief in pointing them out.
It does not help: their faces sink and they lose themselves in the greater pain that they have caused to millions of Venezuelans.
Losing, burying, seeing someone you love die in a hospital bed, it is a high price ...
And with that in mind I try to tell myself that I lost little, that I am one of the lucky ones ... but, still, it hurts.
Mothers always talk about how valuable it is to witness the first years of their children's lives, because they do everything for the first time.
But, now I am missing out on enjoying your last years together Mom.
It's a horrible thought, I know, but in my solitude it takes strength. May God make you strong, make me strong ...
May this be a better year for all and, even if it is far away.
I will always be with you ... I will close my eyes and suddenly I will be in front of you, I will run to your arms to fill you with kisses and shout "I wish you the best, Mom. Have I already told you that I love you? "
Adapted from original
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