In less than 1 month it will be 12 years since I left my home country for good.

I’ve never wanted to come back, until now.

Today, it feels like my hands are demanding to be near my home. But I can’t do that, no matter how much my body points towards the Caribbean Sea.

What happened?

If you’ve been online, you’ve seen the horrific images about the twin earthquakes that happened on the northern part of Venezuela on June 24th.
In Venezuela, June 24th is the day of remembrance of the Battle of Carabobo.

I never paid attention to our absolutely amazing History teacher in high school — Olis, the nicest lady I’ve ever met. So I’ll copy-paste right here what happened on that day in my country according to Wikipedia: The Battle of Carabobo, on 24 June 1821, was fought between independence fighters, led by Venezuelan General Simón Bolívar, and the Royalist forces, led by Spanish Field Marshal Miguel de la Torre.

When I found out that an earthquake has struck Caracas, La Guaira and many other northern parts of Venezuela, I could only think “Today is the anniversary of The Battle of Carabobo, what the actual fuck”. It was a meaningless thought, but it was the first thing that came to my mind.

I was in the movie theatre, watching Disclosure Day. My partner sent me a text telling me that “There was a very strong earthquake in Caracas, you should send your dad a text”. So I did. And my WhatsApp message was not getting through. I am publicly apologizing to Mr Spielberg, because for the last 45 minutes of his newer film I did not pay attention at all. I mean, third act was great, but my stomach was not collaborating with me. I felt nauseous. I even tried to call my father several times while sitting inside the cinema.
He didn’t answer. My messages where not going through. I managed to text with my grandmother and she told me that she got in touch with my uncle and my dad, so I was able to finish the movie without having a stroke.
But I will never forget that last scene and how fast I got up from my seat and ran home when the credits started to roll.

I kept trying my dad’s phone, but he wasn’t picking up. I wasn’t until I got home that he answered, probably, the 13th call. “Hola hija, estamos bien. No pasó nada aquí. Nos asustamos, si. Pero estamos bien. Nos vinimos a casa de una amiga porque ella si tiene Wi-Fi, en la casa no hay luz entonces no nos podíamos comunicar. Parece que fue horrible, pero nosotros estamos bien”. My father is an extremely nonchalant guy. To the point where sometimes it doesn’t even make sense.

After I hung up, I called my mom, because she lives in Chile but I wanted to know if my grandfather and his wife were okay — they live in Maracay, a city 70 miles away from Caracas, where there was also some devastation.
After she confirmed my grandfather was okay, I asked her, “Mom, has my dad always been so careless and chill about everything? I think the earthquakes where fucking bad, but he sounds extremely calmed. And now I’m thinking about it, I don’t think I’ve seen or heard my dad be worried about anything ever”. She replied, “Si, el siempre ha sido así. No sé por qué. Nosotros tenemos más de 25 años divorciados, pero siempre fue así, como que no le para a nada”.

I thought maybe I should be more like my father. To not care so much. To not let things that are out of my control affect me how they usually do. Maybe I should be more like my father.

But the reality is I am not.

That Wednesday, my partner and I spent the remaining of our afternoon and the majority of the evening glued to our phones.

When you’re an immigrant, your countrymen inhabit the screen you hold in your hand all the time.

You see them still walking the streets that taught you how to stand. Old friends and lovers existing on the neighborhoods you left behind. Photos. Videos.
All you get when you leave is blurry images of your city while scrolling mindlessly through Instagram Stories.

I pride myself on not wanting to come back. Because my country has always been broken.
But right now, my blood wants to escape my veins, it wants to run on top of the rubble, on the faces of my loved ones.

I want to be the Blood of Christ, covering everything, just so I can be there. I’ve always hated that idiom of “Cover me with the Blood of Christ” that Christians use, I find it too dramatic. Today, I’d like to become God. So I can be everywhere.

While I do believe in God, I think that God is a weird concept tethering us to each other.
I think God is a girl in a crowd.
And these past few weeks after the disaster, I’ve been seeing God in the faces of everyone.

I see Them in my friends going to La Guaira to help.
I see Them guiding the hands of the countless international rescue teams that answered the call from all over the world and got as fast as they could to Venezuela to rescue people under the rubble.
I see God, sleeping in tents, carrying crying children, rescuing cats and dogs from the collapsed homes.

The fear of talking about the government

There’s one thing I cannot do: talk shit about the illegitimate government.

I cannot talk freely about what I think because I still have family living in Venezuela. And I fear for them. Of what would happen to them if I opened my big fucking mouth.

That’s a special kind of rage. The rage that comes with silence.

When a foreigner asks me about Venezuela, I talk to them, but leaving traces online would affect my family’s safety and I cannot do that.

That makes me mad. It’s a special, visceral, ardent type of pain. Because I know I have a way with words. I could write extremely poignant articles about the stuff I’ve seen, about the stuff I know. But I can’t because I am afraid.
I always joke about how I would only need 5 minutes to convince AOC to change her perspective and speech about Venezuela. Because I respect her and I think she’s a fucking badass.
I never pick up fights with left-winged inclined people, mainly, because I am left-winged myself.
But our “government” is not, and I think a bunch of people outside of Venezuela don’t understand that.

So I try to be kind. To American communists, English Labour Party affiliates and Chileans in general, to mention a few of the groups I’ve had the privilege to talk to.

I always try to explain how government propaganda is clever and massive in Venezuela, how it’s overtaken the narrative about my country, how in 30 years of this regime, we have been sequestered by thieves, authoritarian figures and plain ol’ fascists.
That you just can’t see it because they hide behind a Che Guevara picture, inside of the bags of food poor people get every week from the government. As if a bag of free food every week could replace a government.

Politicians Lie

5 days or so after the earthquakes, the interim president went on live TV and lied. Blatantly.
She said that help came from them, that the Army, Navy, Special Forces and Police spread out in the disaster zone. That they were helping. This is a lie.

When I watched that press conference I felt my soul leaving my body.

I know politicians lie. It’s a given. It’s a normal thing.
But I’ve never seen someone talk that amount of SHIT on live TV in my entire life. Never.
I was - and still am - absolutely flabbergasted.

The help people in Venezuela came from foreign countries and civilians.

The only help that arrived to the more than 500 totally collapsed buildings in La Guaira was international. Rescue teams from Mexico, Argentina, El Salvador, Honduras, Qatar, the UK, the US, France, Lebanon, Italy, Spain, and many more, started arriving two days after the earthquakes hit.

They joined the neighbors, the families, the civilians, on the mission to rescue as many alive people that they could.

Like I said, I was glued to my phone, I’ve seen every video of the disaster zone.
There was not a single military man on the rubble. Not a police officer. Not one. None. Zero.

Civilians have been rescuing people with their bare hands for more than 3 weeks. Civilians. Read again. Civilians.

International rescue teams are not afraid, so they’ve been speaking about it. You can find interviews from a member of a Chilean rescue team, explaining how he and his team were constantly harassed by the Police. How they where asking them for documents and IDs every two hours because “they could be Spies for the Yankees and the opposition”. Which is something incredibly dumb, insensitive, and overall scary. It’s scary how the illegitimate government will go the extra mile to quote-on-quote find SPIES and not to help the people they should be protecting.

And I could go on and on about the ineptitude of the illegitimate government, about the evil I see every time a photo of the interim President and her gang of bullies that have my country trapped under a dictatorship. I could write about the devilish demeanor of the people in power in my country.

But that’s not my goal.

My goal is to spread the word about how can everyone help from anywhere in the world.

Numbers that will never get confirmed

There hasn’t been a reliable census in Venezuela since before the Year 2000.
It’s estimated that the country has a population of a little bit over 28 Million.
This is not including the 7,9 Million Venezuelans living abroad.

The government has been withholding - and failing to gather - official information for years.
We don’t know anything about our country, for example, we never knew how many people died during COVID in Venezuela.
There’s no official reports about Maternity Death Rates, number of children in the foster system, or any information about the unhoused. Nothing.
We only have the information CIVILIANS and private organizations can gather amidst the chaos.

Another great example of this is the last elections that happened in July 2024. The CNE - the organism in charge of counting the votes and of organizing the elections in the country - has been sequestered and it’s working under the corrupt regime since 2001. That makes 25 years of illegitimate elections in Venezuela.
So, on July 2024, the opposition took matters into their own hands and took over every Polling Center to MANUALLY count the votes inside every single Ballot Box.
They even created their own website to digitalize every-single Ballot so people could see the results in real time.
Something that the Venezuelan government did not do in 25 years, the people did in one night.

They digitalized 85,18% of the Ballots, proving that the opposition leader, Edmundo González won over Nicolás Maduro. Here are those results:

https://resultadosconvzla.com/

They stole the elections anyways, and Maduro stayed in power until he was removed by US Forces on January 2026. And on that day, Delcy Rodriguez, the now “interim president” took charge. Arbitrarily.
The people DID NOT ELECT HER, then, when Maduro was taken by the US government, she negotiated to be a “transitional figure” and on July 3rd, the 6 month period that is allowed by the Venezuelan Constitution ended.

Today, July 21st, she’s still in power. The people never elected her.

—

The numbers we can get are - like I’ve said - reported by civilians, private companies and NGOs.

NASA reported that more than 58,000 buildings were absolutely destroyed with their latest satellite reports.

The estimated amount of missing people reached the 67,000 mark yesterday. You can see it on this website.

The estimated Death Toll surpassed the 5,000 mark today. More than 5,200 people are confirmed dead.

UNICEF estimates more than 680,000 children are in need of assistance.

The amount of dead and missing pets is not reported anywhere, but I found a young man online that is rescuing close to 30 cats in La Guaira every night since the tragedy. The reports of missing pets are flooding social media.
He works making personalized T-shirts, and stopped all his work to go help the cats he can, on his own. Every fucking night —and I would give everything I have to be there with him. Everything. Cats are everything to me. This specific side of the tragedy is really messing with my head.

The UN estimates that the total affected by the earthquakes is close to 6,8 Million people.

What I would want you to do if you read this…

I would love if we could all donate personally to this guy, Thomas. This young man’s Instagram account used to be mainly to advertise his personalized t-shirt making business, but since the earthquakes hit Venezuela, he’s using it to spread information about lost and found cats. You can follow him and watch his amazing work through his videos here: https://www.instagram.com/art_franelas

He became a leader of a small team of people trying to rescue as many cats as possible. He’s going to La Guaira every single night to feed and rescue cats by himself. More people have joined him on this selfless act, but they need help.

They need money for gas, to buy kennels and box/feral traps, protection equipment for the rescuers and cat food.

This young man and a few volunteers are risking their lives every day to enter collapsed buildings to get cats out of there.

So, for every subscription I get from this post I’ll donate that money to him. If you pledge for a year, it’s $50 US dollars. That money will go STRAIGHT TO HIS PAYPAL ACCOUNT. The actual cost for that donation is having me on your inbox every week, but feel free to block me or unsubscribe. I just want to help him.

I can share more donation info through private messaging in here, feel free to send me a DM and I’ll send you his PayPal, Binance and Zelle information.

All the money he’s receiving there, he is using it to save more cats from living on top of the rubble and in the streets of the city that was devastated, La Guaira. Please, consider donating to him directly

I want to help all the cats and all the rescuers because this is honestly the thing that breaks my heart the most.

Every time I look at my fat orange cat sleep under the sun all afternoon, I feel guilty. I feel sad. It’s not my fault, in fact, is no one’s fault. But it hurts so much to know that there’s thousands of lost and sick cats in the streets, waiting for someone to rescue them, to feed them, to give them a home again.

Other ways to help. Don’t forget EVERY PENNY MAKES A DIFFERENCE

A thing that’s been making hard for people in other countries to help Venezuelan survivors is the corruption. For example, we CAN’T DONATE TO THE VENEZUELAN RED CROSS BECAUSE IT WAS TAKEN OVER BY THE ILLEGITIMATE GOVERNMENT. So, there’s no Red Cross in Venezuela. Because the directors are literally in cahoots with the corrupt officials that are in power.

There’s a lot of good, trustworthy organizations working on the ground, here are some of them:

I narrowed it down to a couple NGOs so it’s easier to navigate.

• Yummy Venezuela: Yummy is the Uber/UberEats in Venezuela. They’re a privately owned company that offers transportation services and food delivery services. The CEO has been extremely transparent and active about the donation platform they created. The donation link even has a Transparency section - with photos - so you can see where the money is being spent.
  They’re offering free rides to people that’s donating to relief efforts, buying supplied to distribute directly to people helping in rescue efforts and covering costs of independent rescue teams such as the Topos of Azcapotzalco.
  They removed their fees for drivers working on the platform so they can make the 100% of profit if they decide to work.
  They got a bunch of international companies to pitch in and match donations in their site.
  I can attest for their legitimacy and their endless efforts to help Venezuela.
  You can donate to Yummy here from anywhere in the world in US Dollars.

Donate to Yummy

• SunRisas: At Sun.Risas, we are activating our emergency response network to provide immediate assistance to the communities most affected. Working hand in hand with trusted local partners and volunteers, we will focus on delivering essential resources, coordinating relief efforts, and ensuring support reaches those who need it quickly and responsibly.
  Extremely legitimate relief organization. I personally know friends that are working with them on site.
  You can donate to SunRisas here from anywhere in the world in US Dollars.

Donate to SunRisas

• Fundación Juan Pablo 2 Santos + FundaProcura + Fundación CIREC for Hospital Ortopédico Infantil: This is a joint effort between Juan Pablo Dos Santos, a disabled and double-amputee activist, athlete and influencer, that has been visiting and personally helping victims of the earthquake, that are now amputees and disabled. His work is immeasurable. He has been visiting children, mobilising celebrities, and joining efforts with Fundación CIREC (Colombia) and Funda Procura (Venezuela) to open a fund that will be used for the ongoing care of amputees and disabled people. This includes getting prosthetics, physical therapy and medical care.
  I can personally recommend this fund because Funda Procura has helped two close family members. I have an aunt that has been disabled for more than 25 years and she used to go to their health center when we lived in Venezuela. They were also a real important support for my late aunt, after she became disable because of a decease she got before she passed away.
  You can donate to FondoHumanitario77 here from anywhere in the world in US Dollars.

  FondoHumanitario77

This it not over.

Not even close.

And I don’t have a clue of how I will ever feel ready to write about my own life in here, or if I’ll ever post an “outfit check” on Instagram again.

But I’ll be here, sharing, spreading the word, and hopefully, helping in every way I can from abroad.

Venezuela is still suffering, and that suffering won’t stop until the illegitimate government officials are behind bars.

Siempre, Alejandra.

But I’ve bathed on the Pacific ocean in Autumn. I sweated in the Brazilian winter and got to run in the pouring rain through flooded streets in Buenos Aires.

This is the continent that birthed me and watched me become a woman.

These are the stories from my travels in America. And I will say America because it includes North, Central, and South. I’m not just talking about the US.

Like on every installment, I have to start by talking about how all of this is probably thanks to my mother.

She and I used to travel to a different place every year. I wrote about our Mexico City trip 20 years ago here:

Mexico City

On a single-mother budget and with a huge list of places she wanted to visit, we used to have a lot of fun.

In Venezuela, I got to travel to Falcón and Zulia, to big states in the western part of our country. Also to Isla Margarita, our own slice of beachy heaven. And to Choroní, a beach town hidden behind a huge, rainy mountain.

The Falcón trip we did has always lived like a road-trip memory in my mind. We went with our Christian neighbor and her son — the redheaded asshole I’ve written about before.
I don’t remember a lot about that trip, but I know we drove there on my neighbor’s car and I had to endure the redheaded shithead on the back seat for at least 7 hours.
On that trip we visited the Médanos, which is a small slice of desert we have in Venezuela. I remember loving it. The immensity of the sand banks. Throwing ourselves down the gigantic slopes. The desert. Hot, soft, inviting.
You can actually see the sea from parts of that area. Standing on the sand, watching the horizon during the sunset.
I mostly remember the sunsets and the beach. I also remember the hotel we stayed at in Adícora, walking down the main plaza in Coro and buying local sweets to take to my grandfather as a gift.
The first time I put my headphones on and melancholically looked outside while resting my head on the car window was on that trip.
Falcón is a hot state. Half mainland, half peninsula. I remember getting my hair braided at the beach. Sleeping in the sun. The hot, greenish leather car seats. Highways, long, eternal. When-are-we-getting-there type of highways.

—

I also went to Maracaibo with my mom. That trip is a blur in my mind. I remember hating it so much. I think the hotel was cute and old and I have some images of our room and the hotel lobby and stairs in my mind. I remember going to a sort of broad-walk and staring at the Catatumbo lightning, the weird lightning that is active more than 10 hours every night.
On that trip, we went to the Basílica de la Chiquinquirá because I was born on her naming day and my mom wanted to take me to her church.
Aside from that, and the scorching heat of Maracaibo, I don’t remember anything from that trip.

—

I could write for ages about Choroní. A small beach town located behind a huge mountain and national park called Henry Pittier. My mom and I used to go there quite a lot, it was cheap, walkable, and very close to the small city where my grandfather lives, so we used to stop there to visit him and his amazing wife and then go to the beach for a couple days. We used to take the bus there, the most horrific bus ride every fucking time. The road there is treacherous and narrow, up hill, then down. I used to complete crosswords in the bus on the way there.
This is the one video from that road I could find online:

@medicenchino356Todos juntos….! 💪 #guerrerosdelcamino🇻🇪 #buses #conductores #choroni #viaje #turismo #venezuela🇻🇪

Tiktok failed to load.

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My memories from Choroní are scattered because it’s probably been more than 20 years since my last visit.
But I have one engraved in my brain from the biggest tropical rainstorm I’ve ever witnessed. I still haven’t seen rain fall like that. I remember hitching a ride to the hotel with some local kids on the back of a pick-up truck. 4 feet of water flooding the streets. Bathing under the stream that came down from the gutters of the hotel we were staying while laughing. I remember laughing. I’ve never been a lover of the rain because thunder gets on my nerves, but this was different. I remember feeling overwhelmed with joy. Running down those flooded streets with my mom, soaking wet. No cellphones, no laptops, no responsibilities. We just allowed the rain to cleanse us.
I remember the beach, a small but crowded beach behind a small hike up a small mountain near town. I remember my mom’s beach bag and our flip flops. My braided hair. Eating ice cream from a coconut shell.
I remember being scared of the town at night, but I also remember being happy. Going to bed exhausted after a long day in the sun.

—

We used to visit Margarita quite often. Maybe once a year.

I have a very vivid memory of me and my maternal grandmother on the hotel room at night. I will talk about this when I write about her.

But I’ve been to Margarita countless times.

The last time I remember going with my mom was maybe on Summer 2011.
My cousin was dating T. The guy I’ve written about before when I was talking about the rap concerts in Caracas. I loved him so much. And I was so excited we were in the island at the same time.

On this trip, my mom and I stayed at my aunt and uncle’s apartment. It was a gorgeous apartment, located in Pampatar bay. It had a beautiful balcony overlooking the beach. It had A/C and extremely comfy sheets. It had a bathtub, something I never had at home.
I watched Casablanca for the first time on that trip, on the huge TV in the living room. I remember it so clearly: sitting on the sofa drinking a cold glass of Nestea, sunburnt, crying over her leaving. “Here’s to you, kid!”. Every time a man has called me ‘Kid’ I am back in there, crying because she had to go.

My cousin and her boyfriend stayed with us for one night before they went back to Caracas, and after my mom went to sleep, we sneaked cigarettes to the balcony and stole a rum bottle from the kitchen cabinet. We had a couple smokes and drinks, talking, looking over the whole island and examining the lights on the docks. We were happy.

-
The last time I went to Margarita was when I graduated high school. See, my class was going there together for their graduation trip, but my best friend and I had other plans. Because we didn’t want to go there with the whole class, we wanted to go by ourselves.
So we did.
The thing is, everything was very tense because I had just started dating my partner, and he was said best friend’s ex-boyfriend. 13 years later, everything seems so silly.

We got those plane tickets and the apartment we were going to stay in before I started dating him. We were traveling with three girlfriends that did no go to our school.
So we planned a whole girls trip to celebrate our high school graduation and it got tainted by the fact that she was pissed at me because I was dating her ex. Who she did not gave a single fuck about, mind you. And who I loved so much, I mean, I still do. He’s still my partner. So it was not a regular case of “the bad friend that fucked your ex”. It never was.

We managed to have a decent amount of fun. The other three friends served as a damper so she would not kill me.

There’s a fun story about us buying weed on the beach and then getting terribly wasted which seemed crazy at the time because we were good drinkers and avid weed smokers, so it made no sense that a random joint made us get so, so sick.
Years later, I found out through a friend that grew up in Margarita, that during those months, the guys selling weed to tourists on that part of the island, were lacing it with… crack. Yes. We smoked crack. We never knew and of course it was not intentional, we just thought it was lousy, low quality weed.
I found out about this 5 years after our trip while I was living in Chile. I often laugh about it, because what in the actual fuck. And I’ve never gotten weed from a stranger since.

I remember mourning my friendship with this friend on that same trip. 5 girls sitting on beach chairs at midnight in front of the pool inside of the apartment complex. I remember sitting in there, hot breeze covering my sunburnt 17 year old body, crying because I loved this man so much, but I was going to lose my friend because of it. It’s funny how life works, because in the end we did manage to work things out, but a couple years ago, we lost touch again. Rapidly and with no explanation. She just cut me off. For good. I think she reads this, but she has never said that to me.

I remember her teary, drunken eyes, sitting in that chair. Staring at me. Wondering why I started seeing this guy she used to date. I remember her hair wet after getting out of the water. I was genuinely scared that she would try to kill me. She is so tough, rough, intense. She was mad at me like she had never been before.

It was a good trip, we had lots of fun. But that was the first time in my life where I lived a part of my life without her unconditional love for me. That was the last time I saw her before leaving the country in 2014.

I got to see her again when I came back to Caracas in 2022, but we fell off again a couple years after that. The fact that she’s not in my life today still hurts.
I still mourn her laugh and our shared vocabulary. I will write about her soon. Because she will always be a part of me.

—

I also visited Cumaná with my dad when I was 7 years old. I hated that trip. It was probably the worst two weeks of my life. I just missed my mom. And I was such a baby. Because that trip was actually amazing in hindsight.

We went to the beach, we watched TV on the apartment. He even took me to the only castle in Venezuela, which made me so excited and there’s a film photo of us somewhere on that castle. I don’t know where that photo is.

I remember the Cumaná apartment clearly. I remember laying in bed, crying, being afraid of the dark, and kneeling on the floor praying for the days to pass fast so I could get home.

—

I went to Aruba once or twice with my mom but I was a toddler so I only remember meeting another little girl at the pool of the hotel and becoming friends with her until she broke my favorite toy and I hated her for it so we did not play at the pool again.

I think I went on that trip also with a couple cousins but I honestly don’t remember well. I think I see images of us as kids in the hotel pool and I do know there’s a picture from that trip. I remember the bathing suit I had. But nothing else.

Aruba is the furthest north I’ve travelled in the Caribbean and South America.

My mom and I used to go to the US because my uncle, aunt and two cousins live in Florida. The first time we went I was 7. My oldest cousin was just born. She was not two months old when we arrived to meet her.

I remember the drive from the Miami airport to my uncle’s house in West Palm Beach at night. I seated in the backseat next to my two month old cousin sleeping in the car seat. I remember it so well. A baby. Our baby. She was so small. It was late, late at night. It was the first time I heard a baby cry and it made me laugh. My mom, my aunt and my uncle were laughing at me laughing at the baby. I was preoccupied and felt evil when I started laughing at a crying baby, but the adults made me realize you could cry because of nerves. So we laughed it off.

On that same trip, my mom took me to DisneyWorld Orlando.

Like I said, I was 7 years old. So I was so excited to go to DisneyWorld. My mom got me a notebook so I could ask the Disney characters and princesses for autographs.
I am so mad I lost that book, because it had all those autographs and the descriptions of the characters written with my 7 year old handwriting.
I realized on that visit to the parks that I don’t really like rollercoasters, I like walking around. The Alice in Wonderland “Mad Tea Party” Teacup ride was my favorite because I love Alice more than anything.
I greeted every single character in the park, hugged every princess, drank every fun beverage and my mom got me a beautiful Mickey Mouse necklace charm I still have.

But I want to talk about the Orlando Motel experience I had. I did not realize that I’ve had that experience until I watched The Florida Project by Sean Baker.
See, park tickets are expensive, and like I’ve said before, my mom sacrificed a lot so she could give me those experiences. And in 2002, well, TripAdvisor and AirBnB were not around. So probably through a travel agency, my mom booked a Motel that was near the parks for us to stay in. It was probably very cheap and it had a train station at a walking distance so we could take the train to the parks’ complex, so it was extremely comfortable and safe.

The motel look exactly like the one in The Florida Project: greyish pink walls, a huge neon Vacancy sign and tons of rooms with a window overlooking the hallways where they were located.
I’ve also said before that my mom is part clueless, part nonjudgmental, so she probably is finding out that these type of motels are horrible places just today when she reads this. Our experience was fine, totally fine. Nothing ever happened to us, but that movie made me realize how privileged I am. Because I stayed on that motel for maybe 4 nights so I could visit the parks.
But I’m sure that there were families and kids living there while we were just passing by.
That movie made me feel even more grateful for my life and my mom, because I remember sitting on the table next to the window while eating girl dinner and going through our leaflets and maps of the parks. Happy. A happy kid.
I know the motel offered breakfast, but breakfast was only black coffee and pink icing donuts with sprinkles. I do remember my mom being disappointed and eating that donut before going out in the morning. I remember the early 2000s decor, tables and wallpaper. I remember the display in which the donuts were and the coffee pots filled to the brim next to a stack of cheap ceramic cups.
If you’ve ever watched a movie that has scenes inside of a Florida motel, that’s the description you should imagine. It looked exactly like you would expect. I don’t remember the bathroom, but I remember the warm light from the bedside table lamps and going through my autographs notebook at the end of each day.

I think we went to Orlando like 4 times. But my mom never took me to Epcot because she said to me “You’re too little to like it there, we’ll come back when you’re older so you’ll have more fun”. We still have to come back, but I don’t feel I missed a lot.

—

Out of all the trips we made to Florida, I remember one fondly because it was on Easter. We usually went on Christmas, so experiencing Easter in the US was something I was looking forward to.
I remember having so much fun at an Egg Hunt organized by the church near my uncle’s house.

I tried Peeps for the first time on that trip and I buy myself a package of Easter Peeps every year since then. I love Peeps.

—

We visited my family in West Palm Beach maybe 5 times. I remember a lot from those trips:

• The McDonald’s that was outside of my family’s housing complex

• Running around with my little cousins through the complex with our bikes and skates

• The pool inside of the complex was always extremely cold, but I did go in a couple times

• The Target that was that was outside of my family’s housing complex, I loved going there

• The Johnny Rockets inside of the Target

• Getting a dress for NYE and leaving the tag on, so we could return it the next day

• The strip mall next to my family’s house because it had a Dunkin’ Donuts, a chiropractor and a cinema complex

• Going to that same cinema complex to watch The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep, the first movie I watched without Spanish subtitles on. My mom kinda explained it to me but she’s not fluent in English, so we basically just watched it for the vibes and because we loved to go to the movies when we were abroad. Also the movie where I learned about the Scottish accent lol

• The West Palm Beach Downtown Mall that was extremely fancy

• The Dollar Tree aka my favorite place in the world and where I got all my notebooks for school so I would be the cool kid with American notebooks

• The fact that Mobile Homes are not trailers but they kinda look like it but they aren’t. They live at the mobile home housing complex still

• How I used to stand on top of the vents on the floor of my uncle’s house when the heat was on

• The Florida winter being surprisingly cold

• Buying small Valentines themed gifts for my friends from school at the Target

• The first time I “manifested” something was on December 2008 in West Palm Beach. There’s a photo of me smiling with my whole body covered in post-its that read the things I wanted for the year 2009. The one I remember the most was the one in my forehead, it read “Pony”, a nickname my friends and I made up for the guy I had a crush on. Later that year we would become a couple and he would end up being my first love

• Getting my first laptop, a crisp, brand new silver MacBook

• Getting my first iPod Nano, the black glass model. 2GB capacity, 512 songs. It felt like a lot — and now I have 48 GB of music on my iPhone, lol

—

We also used to visit Miami because my mom had friends there and it was a bigger city than WPB. I remember walking down the broad walk in Miami Beach, looking at the Art-Deco buildings and driving around Calle 8 at night and watching people smoke cigarettes outside of the Salsa Dancing places.

I remember some sort of Art District and entering a gorgeous gallery where the owner allowed us to enter his office and seeing a bunch of old Polaroids hanging from his wall.

I also remember taking a weird train/subway system to a park where we would meet a friend of my mom’s who was going to pick us up and being so scared because it was dark and cold and we were alone in the platform. It was probably not even 8 pm, but like I said, I was a scaredy kid. I remember arriving at our destination, a huge park on the Finance District and then getting in the car with my mom’s friend.

—

The only other place we used to visit in the US was Naples.

The first time, I know we took a train that had hard seats and huge windows, but I don’t remember anything aside from it being long and uncomfortable and the outside of the train being covered in some sort of vinyl with a print of clouds and blue skies. I remember my uncle leaving us at the train station and drinking a juice box in my seat.

But one time, we took a Greyhound bus. And, God bless my mom and her nonjudgemental state of mind, because now I know that no one would ever do that. We were only a couple hours away from Naples and probably the Greyhound fare was pretty cheap.
So we took the bus. I remember being intimidated by the amount of people looking at us like we were aliens. And in some way, we were. Because I think no middle-class American ever took those busses to get anywhere.
I’m assuming the Hollywood narrative I’ve been fed all this years after the experience is extremely classist and I accept my ignorance on the theme, but I don’t think we were “supposed” to take that bus.
See, we use to take busses to go to my grandpa’s house in Venezuela all the time, and yes, they were cheap and mostly used by working-class people, but they never felt as intense as that Greyhound trip.

But we got to our seats and I fell asleep as usual. At some point, the bus stopped in the middle of nowhere. It was a rest stop that had a gas station and a 50s themed diner/restaurant. So we went down to “explore” as my mom says and we entered the diner. Since we were in Florida, they were selling Postobón, a pink Colombian soda. I. remember drinking it on the table while looking at the bus outside because I thought they would leave us stranded. Of course they did not.

Again, nothing happened to us. I don’t even think it was unsafe, it was just unusual.

This is the route we took:

I hated Naples because it felt extremely boring.

But we were going to visit a friend of my mom that lived there in a huge, posh, two-story house in front of a lake with an indoor pool. I now understand they were rich rich. But when I was a child, I just thought they were plain boring.

Her friend, J, took us to a bunch of places in the city that I don’t remember. But I remember the Naples Public Library and the local Barnes&Noble.

The public library was massive. And I don’t think I’ve seen something like that again. It felt like the promised fucking land. Filled with books, new computers and an audiovisual screening room. I roamed those hallways for hours the day we visited.

The Barnes&Noble was also immense. I remember holding Harry Potter copies and telling my mom “These are much more beautiful than the paper backs we have!”. I don’t think she got me anything except some TeenVogue copies, but I know I was in awe.

We also spent a lot of time walking around the lake inside of her private community. A huge lake that connected all the houses. White picket fence type of community.
That never meant anything to me, but the only time I picked an orange straight from the tree and got to eat it with my bare hands was on J’s property. She walked with me to the tree and picked me up so I could grab the orange and pluck it out. It was amazing. I have that image engraved in my brain. A big, round orange popping off from the tree when I grabbed it with my small hand. I sat on the grass and ate it in the sunset overlooking the lake. It’s a nice memory.

I also remember J’s guest room where we used to stay and its wonderfully soft sheets, big pillows, and feather comforter.

It was a beautiful house.

—

We never traveled outside of Florida but I would really like to get a visa so I can visit more places in the US.

But I had fun. I was happy. I got to go to an Easter Egg hunt, to shop at Target, to soak my popcorn in butter at the movies. I got to walk weird, long, empty streets with my mom and I was able to hug Princess Aurora - my favorite - when I was 7 years old.

I’m very grateful for those trips.

My mom and I also visited Sao Paulo, Bogotá and the Atacama Desert together.

We went to Bogota on December 2010. I was heartbroken for the first time. I remember listening to the S1 Glee soundtrack while looking at a bus window. “I bust the windows of your car, and though it didn't mend my broken heart, I'll probably always have these ugly scars, but right now I don't care about that part”. I’m talking about this version.
We went to a big, beautiful mall and strolled around. We visited the Botero museum and I loved it so, so much.

Our hotel in Bogotá was fancier than the hotels we used to visit in our trips: it had a luscious bed with huge pillows and a window overlooking the street.

On that hotel room, I watched the Owl City “Fireflies” music video and chatted with my first boyfriend via BB Messenger, I know, right?

I honestly don’t remember much from that trip aside from feeling that that city was so calmed and quiet. A big library and walking around the plaza surrounding the Botero museum. I also remember a couple of American tourists that people in the street were assisting because they were homeless addicts just being a menace on the streets in downtown Bogotá.

We went to Sao Paulo for NYE 2011.

I remember a lot from that trip. We stayed at my cousin’s apartment in the Financial district and it’s funny because he now lives here in Mexico City and his apartment here has the same books, DVDs and CDs he used to have on his bookshelf in Sao Paulo. The apartment was small but his furniture was too big for it, again, it’s the same as his apartment here in Mexico, 15 years later.

We stayed there because he was going on a work trip on the same days we were going to visit, so it was very comfortable and we met him on the last night of our trip because he was coming back. He took us to an amazing pizza place and we had the best pizza I’ve had in my life.

I loved Sao Paulo because it's a big city. The Ibirapuera Park is still one of the most beautiful parks I’ve gone to in my life. I remember sunbathing in the grass and eating a sandwich at a food stall in the park. The scorching sun burning my skin in the best way.

We visited the Museum of Art of Sao Paulo Assis Chateaubriand and I cried because the building was so beautiful. The plaza below the museum was a place for skaters, antiques sellers and stoners to get together. My mom never noticed the stoners but I did and I was dying to ask them for a puff but of course I didn’t.
That museum was gigantic and beautiful and it had a see-through elevator that allowed you to see the people in the plaza below.

We used the amazing subway system and walked down Paulista Ave for hours. We bought a lot of good underwear and cheap jewelry. I even bonded with the sales girls at the Hope lingerie store because my first tattoo says “Hope”, so they gave us a discount and I still have the bra I bought there, it fits perfectly 15 years later.

We cooked a lot at the apartment on that trip because we had a fancy supermarket next to the building, so those girl dinners are the best ones we ever had.

We went to the movie theatre to watch Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol at the cinema complex on the mall nearby. It was in English with Portuguese subtitles, weird for us, but fun.

I remember that trip fondly because we enjoyed that huge city so much.

The last trip I took with my mom before moving to Mexico City on 2019 was to the Atacama Desert, Valparaíso and Viña del Mar.

It was bound to be a weird trip because I was leaving the country for good one month after that trip.

It ended up being one of the best trips we ever took together. Just indescribable.

To give some context, my mom and I are city girls. We loved living in Caracas, we visited Sao Paulo, Bogotá, Mexico City, Miami. When I was two, she took me to Quito, Ecuador. We were living together in Santiago de Chile. Aside from trips to the beach, we are not hiking/lakes/nature trip women in general. We love a museum and a cinema. We visit galleries and try new things at supermarkets.

But everyone in Chile talks about how incredible their country is and let’s be honest, the only big city in Chile is Santiago.

The south of Chile - and it’s chunk of Patagonia - is supposedly very beautiful, but it’s very expensive. Tourism in Chile is wonderfully organized and posh from every angle, so we went north, instead of south because it was overall cheaper.

I will never forget that trip.

My mom booked a 5 day San Pedro de Atacama tour that included almost everything one can do when visiting there:

• The Moon Valley

• The Rainbow Valley

• Sunset at Cordillera de la Sal

• Laguna Cejar

• Ojos del Salar

• Laguna Tebinquinche

• Termas de Puritama

• Geisers del Tatio and the thermal pool warmed by the geysers that’s in the complex

• Termas de Puritama

—

We flew from Santiago de Chile to the Calama airport. Calama is a small city, with less than 150 thousand people.

I am terribly scared of flying but there’s something about flying with my mom that made it easier. Like if the plane were to go down, we would die together. I was scared but weirdly calm, crying but not out of my mind. I hated every minute but she held my hand like she did so many times before.

When we arrived at the airport we were greeted by a shuttle that would drive 3 hours to take us to San Pedro de Atacama, the town we were visiting.

The town was small, rural. Dirt roads and small houses. A town in the middle of nowhere. The hotel we were staying in was located at the outskirts, so we walked a good kilometer to get there but it turned out to be some sort of ranch and it was beautiful and quiet.

We visited during the Autumn, so it was cold but not very intense.

I even remember talking with her on the phone a couple days before because we never had done a trip like this, so we had no idea what should we pack in our bags. “Warm and comfy clothing, blue jeans, sneakers and bathing suits”, she said. I packed a couple cigarette boxes in mine because I was not sure I was going to be able to get smokes at the town. Again, I am a city girl. I won’t ever live on a city without a cinema, a bookstore or a Starbucks, that’s where I draw the line.

We settled into our hotel and then went to the town to pay for our tours at the travel agency and check our schedules for the upcoming days. We were greeted at a small office and my mom paid everything with her credit card. This was not a cheap trip. In fact, it was very expensive. But it was all meticulously scheduled and it included transportation, food, and a guide/host for all visits, so it seemed fair.

And oh, my, fucking, God, it was.

-
That first afternoon, we strolled through the whole town, visited the main plaza, bought sunscreen and Advil at the pharmacy and had an early dinner at one of the four restaurants in town. I don’t remember what we ate but I remember it was really good.
We went back to the hotel to take a shower and go to bed early, because or first site visit was to the Geisers del Tatio and the shuttle was picking us up at the hotel at 4:00 am.
-
I remember waking up and everything being extremely cold. We were told to wear our warmest outfit because we would be driving up the mountains and reaching the 14,170 ft/4,300 meters altitude to get to the Geisers del Tatio. We arrived at the top at 4:45 am, it was still dark. But it was snowing. I’ve never been beneath a snowfall before, in fact, I don’t even know if I’m writing this right because I don’t know the terminology or the verbs one is supposed to use when writing about snow.

When we arrived we got out of the shuttle very quickly so we would not get wet because of the snow and proceeded to enter a container-like one floor building to have breakfast. A poor Brazilian woman was so sick because of the altitude that she did not leave the shuttle and spent all morning puking in a bag.

We entered that strange metal cabin to eat and the guides had a whole feast prepped for us. A bunch of tours gathered on the same place at the same time, so we got to hang out with people from different countries and eat breakfast while bundled up. It was -10 Celsius outside, the coldest I’ve ever experience. I remember grabbing my cup of coffee with intention, eating every bite of my scrambled eggs and buttering a warm piece of bread before slathering Manjar (Chilean Dulce de Leche) all over it. When we finished eating it, the sunrise was minutes away from starting.

When we entered the building it was pitch black, when we came out, the morning twilight was all over the sky. One by one, the tourists came out of that box where we ate and you could see people bursting into tears because of how beautiful the landscape was. I remember tearing up, but not much. What I do know is that I laughed, cackled even. I hugged my mom and we told to each other that we could not believe we were doing this. Full winter attire, 4,300 meters over sea lever, snowing at 5 am, watching the sunrise engulf the immensity of the desert snowy ground beneath our feet. It was fucking surreal. I don’t think I’ll ever see anything like it again because they told us that it hadn't snowed in the desert for 100 years, that we were lucky.

Before the tour through the geysers started, I went to talk to our guide, a kind Argentinian dude, who was leaning against the door of the shuttle and asked him, "Dude, is there any way I can smoke a cigarette in here, like, right now?". He smiled and said, “Yes! You actually can smoke while were here in the parking lot, we just have to be sure to discard the butts so we don’t litter. But I am a smoker, I’ll smoke one with you. And, did you know that smokers usually don’t get altitude sickness because our brains and bodies are used to working with less oxygen?”. I laughed, gave him a cigarette from my pack and leaned against the shuttle next to him. We watched the sunrise blossom over the mountain range, cigarette in one hand, metal coffee cup on the other. That was 100% the best cigarette I’ve smoked in my life, it was still softly snowing, we were in the peak of a mountain in the desert, still -10 celsius, but I felt one with the world there. As the warm smoke escaped my chapped lips, I smiled for myself.

After we walked around the geysers, we were going to be able to step into the thermal natural pools that were warmed by the geysers. It was extremely cold outside, but water was I think 38/39 degrees Celsius, so I just needed the courage to get undressed because I’ve had my bathing suit under my multiple layers of winter clothes all the time.

I was hesitant, but my mom pushed me to do it and said to me “This is a one in a lifetime experience, do it”. So I did. I remember running barefoot through the remaining snow that covered the dirt around the pool and just stepping in. The warmest I’ve ever felt. That water is old, old as the desert. It is warmed by the geothermal activity of the geysers that are literally just feet away from the pool.

We stayed there until after lunch time and they took us back to the town. I remember falling asleep on the way there and waking up when we arrived. We ate lunch at the same restaurant we went to the night before and made our way to the hotel to chill for the rest of the afternoon. I assume we went back to the town to have dinner but I honestly don’t remember.
-
The next day we were going to do a long tour around an archeological site that used to be a salt mine back in the day. It was dry by then, but the local government had built a museum on the whole area, so it was like an open air museum.

We arrived at breakfast, so we ate another delicious spread the guides had prepared for the group.
We walked around, watched the flamingos and seagulls that lived there and went back to the shuttle to go to a different site.
-
That same day, we visited Laguna Cejar, Laguna Tebinquinche and Ojos del Salar, three water bodies on the area.

I don’t really remember which one is which, but on the one you could bathe, I bathed. It was very organized and had an amazing structure with bathrooms, showers and locker rooms. So I put on my bathing suit and went in, this one was colder, but I had to do it. It was absolutely magical.

Water is so salty in this pool that they advised us to not wet our hair because it would dry it out so much. So I put my hair up and hesitantly jumped in the cold, cold water. A pool of water surrounded by an immense desert. All the eye could see was sand and rocks and dry, dry land. And there I was, jumping in the biggest natural water pool in Chile. A literal oasis. We were in the middle of nowhere, but there was water. It felt mystical, connected. It felt like a place from a different world, a kinder one, where the water was clean and the people were smiling.
-
We also visited the Rainbow Valley and the Moon Valley on the same tour.

Honestly, I’ve never seen something like it. It’s still incredible to me how there are places like that on Earth. I’m a city girl so I get easily impressed by nature. But the Moon Valley was something else.
I’m a big Star Wars fan and that place is literally Tatooine. It’s not even an exaggeration. The only thing that made me realize we were not in Tatooine was the fact we have only one Sun. That’s it. Aside from that, you could not tell them apart.
It felt like we were walking on the Moon.
Same with Rainbow Valley but that one is fucking insane because the rocks surrounding the valley are multicolored. I saw greens there that I haven’t seen again. Deep reds, purples, pinks. All the colors in the world exist there. Dancing as rocks standing still. No vegetation, no moss, no trees. Rocks, thousands of miles of rocks.
We stayed there until it was night and got to see the stars like I’ve never seen them before.
I remember even feeling a bit claustrophobic because you never get to see so many starts in the city. I remember the sky, as if it was closer to us there.

That night we decided to eat at the fancy restaurant in town and had the most delicious dinner before going back to the hotel to sleep.
-
We took one tour that was a long, long drive through the mountain range and through a small town in the middle of nowhere.

This town impressed me a lot because it’s the smallest town I’ve ever been to in my life. It’s so far away from civilization, that families from the town take turns every year to live there. I will explain better: there’s 16 families from that town. Each family, lives on the town for a year, then they switch with the next family. So, every 16 years, the first family comes back.

There’s one diner in town for tourists and they only served llama meat, so my mom and I didn’t eat because we felt bad. But we also didn’t judge, because one should never judge food from native communities just because you don’t usually eat them in your colonized city!!!!

There is a beautiful, small church in the top of the only hill in town and it was opened, so we entered and said thanks while kneeling on the pew.

On that drive, we got to see alpacas, llamas and vicuñas. Vicuñas were so insanely cute, like a small, puffier llama.

They drove us all around the desert valley and we looked through the windows in awe of the world all day long.

-
The day before we were leaving and after we finished all the tours one could possibly do there, we paid a separate tour to go to the Puritana Hot Springs. It was so fucking beautiful.

The hot springs were located downhill, so the tour left us at the top of the mountain and we walked down, making our way to different temperature pools. The top one was the biggest and warmest, then, like a river, you went from one until the next one, walking down wooden platforms and choosing where to stop. I remember that the weather was amazing on that day, it was cold, but it was extremely sunny.

We were bathing in ancient grounds. Clean, virgin water flowing over rocks. People laughing. Water is hot there thanks to the subterranean volcanic activity, up to 38 degrees celsius.

Absolutely delicious and soul cleansing.

—
After that amazing trip, we went back to the hotel to make our suitcases and take the shuttle back to the airport so we could fly back to Santiago.

—

Just the day after we arrived, we decided to spend 2 days in Valparaíso and Viña del Mar.
We took a 45 minute bus from Santiago to Viña del Mar.

My mom had been there before but I haven’t so she wanted to show me around.

We arrived at Viña at like 4 pm and took a train that goes from Viña to Valparaíso in 15 minutes or something like that. Public transportation, not like a fancy train. But the great thing about it is that it goes along the coast line. It’s straight out of a movie. Being in a train but on one side of the window, there’s the sea. The Pacific. The greatness of the ocean.

I know we arrived to Valparaíso before 5 pm, went to the AirBnb and had a cup of coffee there. The apartment was absolutely gorgeous and we set out to walk around the neighborhood with no big plans.

I know that we had dinner at a cute restaurant on a terrace overlooking the bay at night. I don’t know what did we eat but an illustrator was selling magnets with her artwork on the terrace and my mom got me one that I still have in my fridge right now, 7 years later.

We slept and woke up and went out to have breakfast. I remember Valparaíso as a small town built in the ledges of a mountain. Everything’s up or down or both. Small, pebbled streets. Silly. I think it’s a silly little town. Crooked and sensible. Filled with people. We went to an old pharmacy that’s like a vintage/old timey pharmacy and the owners have kept it pretty much the same since maybe the late 1800s.

We grabbed some food and ate on the plaza at the bottom of Cerro Concepción.
We took the urban elevators, a weird lift that goes up the mountain, sort of a cable railway. Those are so fun and old. We wandered throughout the whole city by foot. Entered galleries and design stores build on edges of cliffs and ate an amazing hamburger with truffle fries for an early dinner before heading to the AirBnB again.

The next morning, we left to visit the Valparaíso Cultural Park, a big complex that houses a cafe, rehearsing rooms for local artists and a very impactful museum because it’s a museum built inside of an old jail from the dictatorship years.

I remember walking down the cell block and seeing the photos from when the building was used as a jail for political prisoners. On that moment I realized that I could not be a right-winged person. Because the inmates that spent their last days on that building where there because they were communists, opposing to the Pinochet government. The men that were tortured and killed there were just men that wanted a different president for their country. I felt the weight of the past in those hallways. The pain of injustice. Never again I would see myself as a “centrist”. I am to the left of everything, despite the fact that my Venezuelan trauma wants me to be a right-wing inclined woman.

Before we left, I remember smoking a cigarette overlooking the city one last time, before we made our way to the bus stop so we could come back home to Santiago.

Maybe a month after I took those trips with my mom I went to visit my friend M to Pichilemu, a beach town maybe 4 hours away from Santiago.

This was on early October 2019. My partner was already waiting for me in Mexico City but I was stuck in Chile. So I decided to go to the beach for a weekend.

I’ve never been the best at traveling alone, again, I’m a very scaredy person. But I made the trip because like sickly Victorian women, maybe the sea would heal me.

I got myself a bus ticket and went to the Chilean beach one last time before leaving for good.

I remember that bus drive so much. Listening to music while looking out the window, dramatic, watching the road ahead of me. Knowing I would be gone soon.

When I arrived to Pichilemu my friend M was waiting for me at the bus station, we walked to her house to leave my bag and then she went to a late shift at work, so I wandered around the fancy broad walk that had expensive restaurants and sat at a terrace to eat dinner alone until she was done with work. I think I spent at least $80 bucks for some fish and chips, a Coke and a beer. But I ate them looking at the sunset fall over the Pacific. I won’t ever forget that dinner. I was by myself, but I felt complete. I remember how crunchy the fish was, the saltiness of the batter, the amazing french fries on the side, dipped in mayonnaise because I love mayonnaise.
I remember standing and smoking a cigarette after I ate and just crying while looking at the sea. “I’ll be gone this month, I will miss you”, I whispered to the water, the sand, the rocks. The Pacific is magnificent and it is the one thing I miss about Chile.

We then went to somebody’s house to drink and I remember being stressed out because I did not wanted to go to a club that was kind of far, remember, I am a city girl. I don’t like beach towns after dark, they’re eerie and solitary.
After everyone left to the bar at maybe 2 am, we walked back to her home and went to bed.

The next day, she had to work so I set out to wander around downtown Pichilemu, the main plaza, touristic sites and at lunch, we met at the broad walk by the beach and ate a waffle with ice cream. Then we went back to her house and after getting a shower, we grabbed a couple joints and went to the beach to watch the sunset together.
I remember the piercing cold of the evening breeze, “I am here, I don’t know when I’ll see this ocean again”. I cried.

On my last day we decided to go to the forest near by. My friend knew I would love it because like I said, it really looks like the area where Twilight is set in. We don’t have forests near Caracas and the ones that are nearby are mostly tropical forests.

But this one blew my mind because I was actually inside a whole different world, a world I dreamed of visiting, the world where my favorite love story takes place.
We sang Decode while walking through it and had a wonderful time.

After the forest, we went to the beach so I could do one last plunge before I went back home.

I chickened out at first but did go in after making a fuss about it.

The water was so, so cold. But I jumped in quickly and then came out screaming.

We went back to her house so I could take a shower and get ready to catch the 6 pm bus. She walked me to the bus station and we said goodbye right then and there. 7 years later, she’s still my friend and we have talked over FaceTime a couple times but haven’t seen each other because she left the beach last year and is now traveling and working through Europe.

I miss her. She is one of the few friendships I made in Chile that really stayed with me. She’s like 8 years older than I am, which is crazy, because today I am older than she was when we first met. I love her so much. I hope to see her soon.

Another beach town I visited in Chile was Algarrobo.

We used to have a group of friends we really, really loved. They turned out to be assholes. Huge, massive, insufferable fucking cunts. Bad people.

But before their true colors showed, we went with them on a beach trip.

It feels crazy to narrate this story because we actually had the best of times together at that beach.

Some of the girls from the group rented an apartment for the weekend and I think I was the one who bought our bus tickets.

I vividly remember meeting with the group at the bus station. We sat on the parking lot, waiting for the departure time. Drank Gatorade, smoked cigarettes and laughed.
We used to laugh a lot. They seemed like good people, good friends.

So when the time arrived, we got on the bus for a couple hours and we got to the beach.

The apartment was very nice and close to a couple of beaches. We settled in on Friday afternoon and since one of our friends was a chef, he probably made us dinner. I don’t remember eating at all on that trip, but I know we did because this guy used to cook for everyone all the time.
I liked being around him because he used to take care of everything, even the dirty dishes. Women are so used to carrying the responsibility of making everyone’s food all the time, but when I was around him I never had to, he had it covered. I am sure he’s an asshole but for different reasons than everyone else on this group. He was also the only one in our group that was traveling as a single person because we all went with our partners. 9 people, 4 couples and this guy. He used to be my very, very close friend. And sometimes, I do miss him. I miss the food he used to make for us, and his wit.

We used to be a heavy drinking lot. I remember sitting on the balcony just talking and drinking until late.
I guess we went to sleep afterwards.

On Saturday, we probably ate a nice breakfast and made our way to the beach.

Chile is funny because not only the beaches are grey and cold, but you cannot drink at the beach. We were all Venezuelans, so this was strange for us. You most definitely can drink in Venezuelan beaches, in fact, is almost expected.
But I think we only packed a couple beers to sneak into the beach because we were being good.

We had to hike downhill from a huge mountain to get to the beachfront.
There was a beautiful, hidden beach when we arrived.

We sat on the sand and talked and passed a few joints around. I remember having fun.

These people were my friends, I loved them. My partner and I struggled for years to find a solid friend group and suddenly, there we were. Hanging around with a cool bunch.

We spent our day there and walked around the mountains to get to a different beach near by. Then we hiked back up to the apartment.

I remember jumping in the cold, cold water of the Pacific, laughing.

I don’t have a lot of memories from that trip because we were drunk, but I know I had a good time.

This was the only time I went to the beach with friends as an adult.

On Sunday we came back to Santiago and a couple of months after the trip, the group had a huge fallout and that was it. We never saw them again. I loathe them, ardently. But I do miss our times together once in a while.

I also visited a lake with my in-laws in Chile one time. We got there on a little train and spend the day wandering around old train tracks.

—

We used to also spend NYE at a lake town called Rapel a couple hours south from Santiago. We had lots of fun because we rented the whole cabin complex with maybe 12 families and their children and we ended up having the whole place for ourselves. My partner and I used to smoke while watching the sunset fall over the lake and stay up late to walk around the complex. I will always cherish those memories because those were the best of times.

Chile gave me a lot and these trips will forever be remembered with love.

I am sad I never really visited the southern regions because everyone says they’re so amazing and magical.

I hope I can come back someday to visit and continue to explore the country I called home for 5 years.

When I was living in Chile I went to Buenos Aires, Argentina because it’s very cheap to go there from Santiago.

—

The trip I took to Buenos Aires was the first solo trip I’ve done. Flying there was something I wanted to do because I wanted to reconnect with my cousin who spent like 3 years without speaking to me for reasons I never knew. I still don’t know why she disappeared from my life the way she did, but I wanted to take this trip so I could fix it in some way.

I was also meeting a good friend of mine that lived there and I managed to also be in the city visiting at the same time as another mutual friend, so we wanted to spend some time together.

Like I’ve said, I hate flying. So much. But one of my friends told me she would film some music videos for me while we were together there, so I packed a heavy bag with gorgeous outfits to use on those music videos.

In the end, she never filmed those videos for me. I was very disappointed because that was like half of the reason why I went there.

I don’t do well when I am alone. I’ve been with my partner for almost 13 years now and as I’ve repeated a thousand times, I’m a scaredy person. It gets worse when I am alone. But I wanted to prove myself I could do it.

There’s a funny story of me arriving at the Buenos Aires airport alone, probably at like 11 am and then, after exiting the airport, calling my mom crying to tell her that I was sitting on a bench looking at the Atlantic. “It’s been so long, mom!”, she laughed. That was not the sea, it was the Río Tigre, my mom explained to me. So we had a laugh over the phone and I set up to go to my friend’s brother’s apartment, where we were supposed to meet and get ready to shoot the music videos.

The Uber driver was chatty and I talked to him the whole way. I arrived and met with my friend on a cafe near the apartment and had the absolute-fucking-best Medialuna I’ve had in my life. I had a cappuccino and we talked for hours.
I started to notice she would not be interested in filming the videos after all. I was mad but I did not let it show.

Then, she had some things to do with her brother and I was left alone.

This is when everything started to go to shit. I was extremely scared.

I arranged to meet my old friend at her office so she would give me the keys to her apartment, where I was going to be staying for the next 2 nights. I met her, we hugged and she gave me her keys and directions on how to arrive to her place.
After that, I went to the nearby mall in Palermo and sat at a Starbucks, wondering what the fuck did I just do. Why was I alone in such a big city. It was raining.

Things looked up a little bit when I took the Subterráneo, Buenos Aires subway system. It was awesome. I love subways so much.

After a couple stations I descended the metro and walked to my friend’s place. I found it easily, since she gave me amazing directions and GoogleMaps knew where to take me.

When I opened the door I was mesmerized. I love this friend so much. In fact, we just met here in Mexico City after 8 years, a couple weeks ago.

Her apartment was small but extremely beautiful. She has always had a good job, so it was neat, organized and fully decorated. We are very alike. Sensitive, artistic, design inclined. And her apartment is the first “girl apartment” I visited in my adulthood. A cool home, filled with Polaroids and trinkets and memorabilia from her trips. I remember being so proud of having such a cool friend.
I took a shower and then proceeded to call my partner on the phone to cry because I was still very, very scared.

These two friends arrived at the same time and we ordered dinner. We put on our pajamas and had a sleepover. I remember being scared while sleeping in between the two of them. We were uncomfortable but we were happy because we were together, sleeping on the same bed like when we were teenagers.

We woke up and our mutual friend said goodbye because she was spending her last days in the city with her brother.

The owner of the apartment had to go to work, so after she left, I set out to have a fun day by myself.

I wanted to go to a far away part of the city to buy a hat from a brand that was owned by a very cool Venezuelan It girl that lived in Buenos Aires. So I walked, and took the subway. The pop-up store was far away from the station, but it was on one of the nicest areas of the city, so I enjoyed that walk very, very much.

At one point, after maybe 20 minutes of walking, I sat down at a cafe on a small plaza and had a glass of wine. I cried. Only this time, out of joy. I drank that glass of perfect wine under the 3 pm Sun, people watching and listening to music while in a strange but beautiful city. I was content.

After that, I set out to finally get to the pop-up store. I got on a lift to get to the PH because that’s where the pop-up was happening, I bought my hat and happily made my way back to Palermo to meet with my friend.

She told me our mutual friend decided to have a drink with us that night, so we met with her at some sort of patio filled with containers turned bars and mini restaurants. It was such a cool place.

Buenos Aires is a city that breathes. It’s alive. I don’t think I’ve visited a city that is so, so alive.
I had my first Cosmopolitan on that patio and I loved it. We drank for a while and then I took a taxi to another friend’s house. It was late night and this friend did not live on a pretty part of the city, but this time, for some reason, I was not scared.

I arrived at this other friend’s house and she lived in a room inside a big house that was owned by the lady that rented the room for her. We talked for hours and hours that night. She was not a close friend but she was a cool girl I knew from Caracas that was letting me crash there overnight, so I had a good time.

We went to bed probably at 4 am and woke up at 8 because she had to go to work.

I got ready and while she took a bus I waived at a taxi and he took me to Palermo again. My old friend had brought my suitcase with her to the office so I could pick it up there since I was leaving the next day.

After I picked up my suitcase and said goodbye to my friend, it was time to meet my cousin. I was nervous because as I said, we haven’t talked in more than 2 years and that was devastating to me. One of the reasons I took this trip was to force her to talk to me. It was on the I’ll-be-on-the-same-city-as-you type thing. She would have to see me.

So we met at maybe 2 pm for lunch at a near by milanesas place. We talked for a while and then she told me that she wanted to introduce her new boyfriend to me because she thought it was getting serious with him — 8 years after that night, they’re married.

We met with this guy in the middle of the the 9 de Julio Avenue, the biggest street in Buenos Aires. She took my picture on the BA sign, next to the obelisk.

To put everything in context, this was my last day in Buenos Aires. A Sunday. I was leaving on the 6 am flight on Monday morning. And I didn’t have a place to sleep that night.

My cousin used to live at a some sort of convent, where nuns rented rooms to students and young immigrant women, but not only did they not allow visitors - because they would’ve probably allowed me to stay since it was only one night and I was a girl and my cousin lived there - but the thing is, that place was extremely far away from everything, including the airport. So we said we would figure it out.

My cousin and her boyfriend wanted to show me around the Centro, near 9 de Julio and the obelisk.
So we walked, for hours. All afternoon.

But, Buenos Aires was awake.

My cousin and her boyfriend took me to the comic book stores, a thousand libraries and cool shops. My cousin wanted to take me to Bond Street Gallery, a punk inspired mini mall where they sold alternative fashion clothing and housed a bunch of tattoo parlors.

We walked around the whole gallery and took pictures. I bought some alfajores to take back home to my partner, my friends and my mom as gifts.

After going to the Bond Street Gallery, we went to El Ateneo at maybe like 7 pm.

El Ateneo is a bookstore built inside an old theatre. It has a cafe that operates on the stage.
It’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve gone to in my entire life. I remember stepping in and crying out of pure joy. I was there, laughing, holding hands with my cousin who used to be my best friend. We were okay. I was alive.

After we walked the entirety of that place, we went out to eat at a ramen place my cousin and her boyfriend liked very much.

But when we started walking, it began to rain. It was a rainstorm like no other. The streets were flooded and we were maybe 35 minutes away on foot. So we ran. With my suitcase and heavy backpack in our hands. We ran for a long time, under small roofs to cover ourselves.

I remember stopping on a big street at one point and just laughing underneath the rain. We were soaked but I don’t think we have been as happy together until that same moment.

When we arrived we had to remove our clothes in the ramen restaurant’s bathroom before sitting down to eat because we were wet from head to toe. We dried our bras in the hand dryer machine on the bathroom. Then, we ate the most delicious ramen I’ve had in my live. The warmth from the broth removed the cold from our bodies, we were okay again.

I was starting to worry because it was probably 9 pm at night and I still had nowhere to sleep.

We were figuring out how to get to her room at the convent but if I went to sleep there, I would need to leave for the airport at 2 am because it was so far away from the airport. Also, she would need to sneak me in because curfew was at 10 pm and if she broke the curfew she should not arrive with another person.
But my cousin’s boyfriend said to us, “Wait, why don’t we go to the pub and then to a boliche? So at 3 am you can leave for the airport and that’s it. You’ll sleep on the flight, right?”. I was very surprised because the idea of going out for drinks until 3 am in the morning on a Sunday was impossible in Chile. Not in Buenos Aires though.

So we agreed on doing that, we finished our ramen and when the rain stopped, we walked to an Irish pub next to Corrientes Avenue. It was a classic Irish pub and I remember having a Guinness. We sat at a table on the sidewalk and talked from 10 pm to 1 am. The pub closed at 1:30 am, so after he gracefully paid the bill, we walked to a near by boliche that was open until 4 pm.

A “boliche” is what they call pool bars in Buenos Aires. I think they call all cheap bars that way. This one was mad.

It was very small, red lights all over, dark. It was filled with people, cumbia blasting on the speakers. You could smoke inside, something I loved. We walked in and settled at a small table, where the waitress served us the coldest 1Lt Brahma beer in small glasses. We drank for a couple hours. I danced with the dolls. For some reason, every single one of the waitresses was a trans woman. I was so happy. All these beautiful women were serving me beer and spinning me around the tables to the beat of the cumbias. I was still wet from the rain, exhausted after three days of non-stop walking and drinking.

Then, it was time to call a cab. My cousin’s boyfriend paid our bill again and stopped a taxi on the street for me. He loaded my suitcase into the car and I hugged my cousin. We said goodbye. We haven’t seen each other since then. It’s been 8 years. I miss her so much.

I got on the cab and we made our way to the airport. What started as a difficult trip, filled with tears and fear of the unknown, turned out to be an actually fun couple of days. It was a wild, tiring visit, but I got to walk the streets of a new city, to hug old friends, to reconnect with my cousin.

In hindsight, I had the time of my life. I’d love to go back to Buenos Aires someday. More grown, more confident about myself. Because that city is alive, chaotic, scary, just like me.

I traveled to Lima, Perú with my partner and our chef friend.

We had the intention of going there to invest in some blank t-shirts and hoodies to start a brand in Santiago. But buying blanks in Santiago is very expensive. I have a good friend that lives in Lima and she’s a fashion designer. So when we thought that maybe Lima was the closest option to get these clothes, I sent her a message.

She’s one of the coolest people I know and if you’re reading this, you should follow her on her foodie IG account: Caótica Lab.

So I spoke with her on the phone and she told me that we could of course buy cheap blanks in Lima, so we got three tickets and went to Lima.

Since I was traveling with two men, I made a whole schedule for the trip. Because of course we would have time to walk through the city and have fun getting to know a new place, but we were mostly there to get the clothing.

We were staying for 4 nights and 5 days but the AirBnB I wanted to rent (because it was cheap and in a great location) was only available for three nights. We rented it either way, so we could arrive at a comfy location and get settled before tackling our real mission.

My friend Lucía gave us all the information we needed for the trip and we arrived at the AirBnB at maybe 1 pm. So we settled in, went to a near by restaurant to have lunch and came back to the apartment.

The apartment was much more beautiful than we expected it to be.

It was a lovely, two story apartment in San Isidro, a very posh neighborhood in Lima.
Pristine white walls, the gorgeous stairs pictures above, a big kitchen with a big kitchen island and all the appliances, natural light flooding the whole place. The second floor was only the master bedroom, so my partner and I settled upstairs and our friend settled on the sofa, a big, comfy sofa where he ended up sleeping those three nights.

On that first night, Lucía and her partner went to have dinner with us at our place and gave us all the directions and tips we needed to get to know the city and tackle our very intense mission: buying clothes by the bulk in Gamarra.

—

We slept extremely well and woke up at 6 am the next morning so we could go to Gamarra as early as possible. We took the subway, but I think it was more of a train than a subway because I remember tracks with open sky above, to be honest, I’m not sure.

We arrived at the Gamarra subway station and our quest officially started.

Gamarra is the craziest place I’ve visited in my life. Endless streets filled with clothing stores and clothing factories. All handmade on the spot. We were not prepared for the immensity of that place. It was overwhelming.

We walked and asked around for hours, just to get the best price for the clothing we were going to buy: 100 black short sleeve t-shirts, 100 white long sleeve t-shirts and 50 black hoodies. Premium cotton. All made to order, just for us.
We never thought about how difficult taking all those clothes back to Santiago with us would be. And we did not have money to pay for shipping. So we had to take them in suitcases and pay for the extra luggage.

At maybe 2 pm in the afternoon, after walking all morning under the sun and up and down stairs of broken down buildings filled with native Peruvian women sewing like the world depended on it, we found a supplier. They had amazing quality, good prices and they could deliver the clothes to us on time. Remember, we were only going to be in Lima for 5 days. We needed someone that could work fast. The three of us agreed on the fact that we could not leave Gamarra without paying and having the order ready to go, so we paid for it and we spent a couple hours browsing through the endless corridors and buying some cheap clothes for ourselves.

My partner bought 3 shorts and our friend got a couple t-shirts. I bought a leather fanny pack for 15 Soles, something like $4 US Dollars. I still wear that same fanny pack almost everyday. It’s my go-to when going to concerts and festivals. It’s rugged and kind of breaking down now, but it’s been 8 years since I bought it from a street vendor in Gamarra.

After we paid and bought some clothes, we just had to wait for the order to be fulfilled and delivered to our next accommodation. So before leaving Gamarra for good, we needed to eat. Out of nowhere, a glass street car that sold ceviche appeared in front of us.
We looked at each other’s eyes and told ourselves we should eat something before heading home, since it was a long subway drive.
So, under the scorching Lima sun we ate the best ceviche in the world. We were absolutely scared, because a glass cart under the afternoon sun filled with raw fish did not seem like the best idea, but it was so authentic and it smelled so fresh and lemony. We ordered and sat on small plastic stalls. I still have not had a ceviche as good as that one.

It was our most Anthony Bourdain moment, we were in the middle of the biggest street market in Perú, eating raw fish while sweating.

While we ate, were looking at a huge 30-story unfinished building with no facade.
You could see the women sewing from the sidewalk where we were sitting. Floors filled with overworked and underpaid indigenous women. No windows or glass separating them from the abyss. No walls.
Just women, working. Sewing. Like women have always done.

After we ate, we walked towards the subway but our chef friend decided it was a good idea to go to the supermarket so we would have something to prepare for dinner. We stopped at the mall outside of Gamarra’s subway station and made a huge purchase, so we went out of the supermarket carrying at least 5 or 6 heavy grocery bags.

Which was a mistake, because by that time it must have been something like 6 pm and the subway was insanely packed.
So the guys and I decided to try and walk.
We did have GoogleMaps at the time so I don’t know why the fuck we decided to do that.

We started walking.

Lima is big and has horrible urban planning. At some point on that walk, we had to cross a whole-ass-6-lane-highway on foot.

It was drizzling and we were tired and carrying heavy grocery bags, but it felt like an adventure.

When I told my friend Lucía - someone that used to visit Gamarra a lot and lived near our AirBnB - she told me we were absolutely insane. That walk was not dangerous, but it was so incredibly long. We were at least 6KMs away from the AirBnB in San Isidro.

This is the route we walked. We walked for more than an hour and a half.

—

After the Gamarra trip, we needed to get some suitcases to take the clothes to Santiago, so my friend recommended us to go to another huge market, this one was famous for selling luggage. It’s called Polvos Azules.

The next morning, we went there on the subway and managed to go in and out very quickly after buying 10 suitcases for very little money.

—

We only had one night left at our AirBnB so we went to Miraflores to try and find a hostel that had vacancy for us to stay in the last night.

We found a cheap one and payed in advance. Then, we started exploring the city.

We had to wait until the day before we left to receive the clothes at the hostel, so we had one day to be tourists.

—

We walked around Miraflores and ate the best hamburgers I’ve ever had in my entire life. This is a fact.

Miraflores was beautiful and walkable, we sat on Kennedy Park and spent the afternoon talking and petting the thousand of street cats that live inside the park.

We bought a film camera for like $8 dollars and got a film roll to document the remaining of our trip.

We visited a nearby food market and ate one of the best meals I’ve had in my life on a restaurant that was in the middle of the hallway across the fish and seafood isle.

There’s a lot of casinos in Lima and I’d never been to one so I convinced the guys to go to the one across the street from the hamburger place because I’ve always liked the idea of casinos.
It was extremely disappointing because not only the security guards did not allow me to take pictures inside, but it was more of a depressing setting with old people hitting buttons in slot machines and less of a Vegas type fun casino.

I played 10 Soles on a slot machine and made 20 soles. I played those 20 on another machine and lost them instantly.

That night, our chef friend talked with some friends of his that lived in the city and after a whole day of walking around Miraflores, we went to have a couple drinks with his friends. We had a blast. We were singing along to the music they were playing at the bar and walking at night on the street.

We went back to the AirBnB to sleep and leave that accommodation the next morning.

—

After we left, we went to the hostel to leave our luggage there and go to Barranco because I wanted to visit the Mario Testino Museum.
It was the one thing I wanted to do in Lima, not only because I love his work, but because they have a permanent collection that houses two Princess Diana dresses and I wanted to see them.

Barranco is near the coast and we took a small train to get there, it was an amazing ride. Weather was nice and fresh. We arrived at the museum and it was everything I dreamt of.

I stood there, looking at the photos Mario Testino took of Diana and looking at her dresses that were on mannequins inside of a glass box and I cried. Because she was so perfect and so good. A woman. What an amazing woman she was.

After the museum visit, we went to walk at the broad walk that overlooks the beach.

We took pictures and wandered around. We had a good time.

Then, we came back to the hostel to receive the clothes from the manufacturer.

—

We arrived at the hostel and waited for the packages to arrive. They got there at like 9 pm on the night before we were flying back to Chile.

We sat on a common room at the hostel, surrounded by the tons of clothing we had bought and by strange foreigners. They helped us put all the t-shirts and hoodies in our brand new luggage we bought the day before.
It was much more heavy than we expected. We would not only have to get the extra luggage space, but we would have to pay for the overweight. But it was done.

After two hours of putting clothes inside of the suitcases, we were ready to go.

Our friend bought a rum bottle and we started drinking to celebrate the success of our trip but the hostel people got mad because we were drinking and almost kicked us out. We had to deescalate and managed to convince them to let us stay in there that last night.

We scheduled a taxi to pick us up and in the early morning, we headed to the airport.

—

We came back with twelve 50KG suitcases. It was mad.

When we arrived in Chile we didn’t know we had to declare the items we had, and while my friend and I managed to pass through customs easily without doing that, my partner did not and he got detained at the airport.

I saw him get taken away by the military next to customs but I had to act like I didn’t knew him so I made my way outside with 4 suitcases alongside my friend who had 4 more.

My friend got me a coffee while we waited and I smoked nervously on the airport’s parking lot.

20 minutes after, my partner was let go with a warning and a ticket for a fine he had to pay if he wanted to have the clothing items released from customs. We were just grateful he didn’t get deported, because we were legal in Chile, but even with an official ID and visa, you’re an immigrant. You never know.

We cried and then we laugh it off. We still had 8 full suitcases filled with clothing so we were going to be able to start our small business anyway.

Most importantly, we did it. We made it back home.

On early 2020, I went to San José, Costa Rica to get my Mexican Foreigner Visa Interview at the embassy and get the stamp on my passport so I could re-enter Mexico as a legal immigrant.

Since I entered the country as a tourist when I arrived in October 2019, I needed to go to a near by country to do an interview with the ambassador.

The lawyer’s office was used to sending foreigners to Guatemala, since it’s pretty close and you can fly in the morning, do your interview and come back at night on the same day. But, I am Venezuelan so I cannot just show up to most countries because we need a visa to enter every-fucking-country in the world aside from Turkey, Iran and China. I know, right?

So when we were investigating about which country I would be able to enter without a visa, Costa Rica showed up on the list and thankfully, my favorite aunt lives there.

The lawyers got me a plane ticket to go for four days. I was arriving on day 1, my appointment was on day 2, I had to pick up my Mexican visa on day 3, and I was coming back to Mexico on day 4.

It was going to be an easy trip. I was nervous about the interview but I was so happy I also got to stay at my aunt’s house with her and one of my cousins.

So I got to San José and my aunt picked me up from the airport with my cousin. We were so happy to be together.

We went to eat empanadas at a Venezuelan place and met with my cousin’s dad, a dude I always really liked and was very happy to casually meet on that trip. Then just went to her apartment to leave my stuff.
At some point, my aunt had to go to a different embassy to pick up a Visa she requested for an upcoming trip, so we went with her and waited in the car. I was so happy to be with my cousin because she was a teenager and most of my teenage years I spent at her house, watching her grow from a baby to a toddler.

We then went back to their house and I took a shower before going out to another Venezuelan place for dinner. I had a Patacón and we laughed and put each other up to date with our lives.

The next day, I had my appointment at the embassy but my aunt had to work. So she dropped me off and gave me instructions on how to get back to her office.

When I entered to the embassy for the interview they told me the ambassador was not available so I was going to meet with the second guy in command at the ambassador’s office. A calm, Mexican guy in a grey linen suit opened the door and I entered. It was a large room, high ceilings. The embassy was in a mid-century house. The office had a fireplace. I sat on a brown leather couch and he sat in an black Eames chair in front of me.
We chatted for no more than 15 minutes. He asked me about my life, why did I wanted to move to Mexico and I nailed every answer, so he shook my hand and said “You look like a fine, professional young lady. Leave your passport at the reception and come pick it up tomorrow, we’ll have your visa ready by 10 am. I wish you luck”.
I did my best to keep my cool and exited the building extremely fast. I remember sitting on the sidewalk and lighting a cigarette, I started to cry. I was ready. At last. I was allowed to live in the city I’ve been dreaming about for years. Mexico would finally be my home.

I walked for 15 minutes and arrived at a Starbucks near my aunt’s office and waited for them there.

After they picked me up, my aunt had a meeting for a couple hours so she dropped me and my cousin off at a mall so we could walk around and gave me a $20 dollar bill to “buy something for myself”. I got a Sloth plushie for my partner and me and my cousin had ice cream and just walked around. It felt so happy.
It’s a lot of fun talking with a teenager, they’re magical and question everything. Also I love her to death, so this felt perfect.

Maybe two hours passed until my aunt picked us up. We went to her house and decided to stay in because I had to pick up the passport in the morning.

I remember chatting with my cousin until we both fell asleep.

I don’t remember much of the next day, I just know I picked up my passport in the morning. But that last night was magical.

See, my aunt is a very spiritual person. She has been studying and practicing Buddhism for years. She’s a yoga teacher. She’s the best listener and very good at giving advice. She’s a Bach’s Flowers specialist.

And I’ve been lost for years.

On that last night, after my cousin went to sleep I entered my aunt’s room, crying.
I was afraid — I still am.

And on that moment, after she listened to me, she started some sort of ritual.
She turned off the lights and lit some candles and a Sage bundle that she proceeded to swirl around my body.
“What’s wrong?”, she asked. “Everything, everything is always wrong”, I replied.
She put her hand on the top of my head and told me a couple things I'll never forget: “First, I don’t know if you know, but it looks like you’ve never been a man in your past lives. Maybe that’s the reason you’re so sensitive, sensible, and intense. Because it seems you’ve always been a woman, and you know how people used to treat women in the past. You’ve suffered for many, many lives”. This made sense to me, I am a woman and I feel I’ve always been one. It’s something I felt in my gut while she was saying it.

Then, she also told me that I used to be so scaredy as a kid and that my youngest cousin - her youngest daughter, the one sleeping on the other room - was so similar to me that they once did a ritual so they would close her third eye because she was so connected to everything, all-seeing. She said that she knew that same thing always happened to me. “If you’re afraid of the dark, it’s because you feel the things that exist in the dark. Those are not bad things, entities, spirits, they are just there, and it stresses you out because you can’t see them, but you can feel them”. She is right. I’m scared of the dark because I feel things around me and inside of it, it’s always been like that for me.

After that, I confided in her about something that had been haunting me for years — a resentment I still keep in my gut. About a girl I knew. How the envy crawls up my neck when I hear her name.
She handed me a piece of rose quartz and told me that the only way to get rid of that sending her literal good vibes and love and my best wishes. She told me I could not fight hatred and envy with more hatred, that the only way to fight those feelings is with love.
I still haven’t managed to let go of that resentment, but it’s definitely not keeping me up at night anymore.

When I finished crying, she sat next to me on her bed and prepared me a dropper with Bach’s flowers, we talked about what I wanted to fix, what I needed to feel better and what I wanted for myself. She handed me the glass dropper and gave me the instructions on how to take them. It’s funny, but the one thing that has actually helped me with my mental health are Bach’s Flower Remedies. They do something to my brain and my heart I cannot explain, but I just feel better when I take them.

That night, I slept soundly. And when I woke up I had to leave for the airport. I waved my sleeping cousin goodbye and kissed her on the forehead. My aunt sat with me at 6 am while I smoked a cigarette and waited for my taxi.

I came back to Mexico with my Visa and I didn’t leave the country until I went back to Caracas on 2022 to empty my childhood apartment.

That trip to Caracas was horrible but necessary.
First, nobody was going to take care of my mom’s things like me. Second, it felt like a trip, not like a visit home. Because Caracas is not home anymore.

So that story goes here, even if I already wrote more than fifteen thousand words.

—

I arrived maybe at 4 pm to the Maiquetía Airport, one of the places I fear more in the world. I hate that it’s filled with military, I hate the questions the TSA people ask me when I get there. It’s the place I feel less safe in the whole world. The number one reason why I don’t even try to fly back to visit often.

My best friend from high school and her partner went to pick me up. We hadn’t seen each other in 8 years. She was 7 months pregnant. I still remember seeing her while I walked towards the exit with my luggage. I will forever remember that hug. Her hands held me so many times, and this time she was doing the same.

We got in the car and went straight to her house so I could chill for the afternoon.

I was on edge. When we arrived at her apartment I started crying. I missed my partner, I was scared of my home country, I did not want to be there. But I was.

When we arrived I remember taking a shower and getting out of the airport clothes.

—

Two of my friends were by chance living on the apartment one floor beneath my friend’s house where I was staying. That was an amazing opportunity to hang out with them because I haven’t seen H since he left Santiago a few years back and I haven’t met J IRL!!!
They were living together in Caracas and just happened to be two guys I adore and I was staying in the same building as them for a week. This is for sure one of the things that kept me sane that week, because since my host was 7 months pregnant, it was actually comfortable for the both of us for me to have a place to crash for periods of time during the day while she rested.
These two guys where the best of friends I could have asked for on that trip, I swear to God. They gave me an actual key to their apartment so I could come down every time I wanted.
We have a bunch of friends in common, so it was the perfect reunion point for my other friends living in Caracas to meet me. I got to see a bunch of my good friends in that apartment thanks to their amazing hospitality.
We cooked for each other, smoked thousands of cigarettes and joints sitting next to their living room window and the guys helped me organize my luggage before leaving. They even hosted a House of the Dragon watch party on Sunday because I was leaving on Monday. We played the at the time new Zelda game and Hollow Knight for hours on that trip.

These same group of friends helped me with their own hands to finalize the organizing of my old apartment. They took at least 40 trash bags to the bins in the apartment complex, took some books I wanted to donate and gave them away after I left.

As a thank you, I gave one book from our family library to each of them.

—

That first afternoon we stayed home. I got some weed from a friend and I went down to my friends’ apartment to smoke and talk for a while before I went to sleep.

—

On the second day, I had to start. Like I’ve said before, I only went to Venezuela to clean, empty, organize and vacate my childhood apartment.

My friend took me there in her car. I was scared. I was crying.

Now I don’t remember if my Christian neighbor was the one who gave me the keys, I honestly don’t. This was a probably traumatizing event for me so I guess I’m allowed to forget the details.

When I got the keys, I remember us going up to the twelve floor on the elevator. Opening the double doors to enter my old apartment and as walking inside, watching the city from the balcony.

I smoked a cigarette on the balcony and we started.

This task was going to take three days: day one, sorting everything out, day two putting things in boxes, and day three, taking out the trash, moving the furniture to different houses, taking everything I was traveling to Mexico with to my friend’s house, and saving two boxes of things I could not take with me in my partner’s apartment.

—

On the first day, I remember crying a lot.
I started with my mother’s old bedroom. Went through her closet. It still had some old clothes that my mom wanted to donate, so we put them in bags.
We started emptying the room. It was fast because my mom is not a hoarder and someone lived in her room for a couple years, so most of her stuff was already gone.

I remember sitting on her bed, the bed where we read all the Harry Potter books together. I took the framed paintings off the walls and took them to the living room. It was done fast.

I took this video when we finished emptying my mom’s old bedroom.
I laid on her bed and cried.

—

Then, we went into the studio/library room. It was messy. All of our books where still on the big bookshelf. And in here, a weird sensation hit me.
“This bookshelf is so much smaller than I remembered”, I said to my friend.

When one is growing up, I think memories from those year play tricks on you. In my mind, our bookshelf could be compared to an average hallway of the Trinity College Library. But it was not. It was a modest, apartment size bookshelf.

But that room housed most of my dreams as a child. The first poems I read lived on those wooden shelves. The Frida biography I read thousands of times when I was wearing my plastic corset. The Mozart biography I loved so much. The Liszt albums by the German Gramophone. Our Miguel Ríos Rock ‘n Rio CD box set. Three or four or five sets of encyclopedias.

I went through those old books, emptying the shelves one by one. Putting the ones I wanted to take with me on the side. I picked up my CDs and saved them on a separate pile.

I wrote about my CD collection here and about some of the books I took from our library here.

And at some point before lunch, my friend and I finished sorting this room out. It was done, empty. The first pieces of knowledge I grabbed with my toddler hands, all in boxes and bags.
The first world I met, our library, became an empty shell.

This is me crying in front of our old bookshelf before emptying it.

This was our studio/library room.

—

We made our way to the kitchen. To see what was on the cupboards and cabinets.
I found a three piece set made out of stainless steel: a butter container, a saucer and a sugar bowl with a lid.
I kept the butter container and it’s the one I use at my house right now. My friend kept the sugar bowl and my dad kept the saucer. It’s crazy how my mom bought this set when she first married my father, and now the pieces are scattered in the houses of the people I love the most.

My friend also took a couple weird appliances and I remember laughing at maybe two very 90s kitchen utensils we never used when we lived there: an ice box made of cheap plastic and a party tray from As Seen On TV.

My first boyfriend cooked pasta for me on that kitchen. My friends and I had millions of midnight snacks over that counter. I discovered “Idaho” by Nerina Pallot sitting on that grey table in my computer while scrolling through Twitter and I have a tattoo about that song.

It took a while to empty, so after we finished, we decided it was time to call it a day. We could come back tomorrow to sort out the living room furniture and my room.

We went back to my friend’s house with some of the stuff we were keeping. I honestly don’t have a clue of what I did that night. But I guess I hanged with my friends downstairs and then went back to sleep.

—

On the second day, we had to enter my room.

I moved into that room on 2009. I used to sleep on the room that was the studio, but I wanted to go back to the other room for some reason I don’t remember.

So on that second morning, we started. Putting memories in boxes, meaningful trash in bags. Sorting through old clothes and halloween costumes.

My pregnant friend held my hand through the whole process, carrying my pain like it was hers to heal — like she used to do when we were teenagers.

It was a weird moment, having to put my whole childhood inside of plastic containers while I cried and while my friend sat there, with kind eyes and carrying her son inside of her.

She’s not in my life anymore, but nobody could’ve done that job of helping me say goodbye to my only real home. It had to be her. She also slept there, countless nights. She cried there. Celebrated her life within those walls.
She laughed so many times during that painful process. She has an infectious laugh, sometimes I hear her echo in mine.

It took us the whole day to finish my room, so maybe at like 5 pm we finished and went outside to the living room.

This is a video from when we finished emptying my room.

Underneath the white paint on the walls, are the handwritten love messages my first boyfriend wrote to me on Valentine’s Day 2010. My favorite song lyrics written with Sharpie by me on hopelessly long nights.

That room held so many memories. The only thing I can use to compare the feeling that room had, is with the emotions subtlety described in David Lowery’s “A Ghost Story”. It’s like all my past selves live there and will live there forever. Repeating themselves. My mistakes, my failures, those still live in between the fibers of the ugly brown carpet that my mom wanted to remove but never did.

—

The living room was easier to do because I just had one cabinet to empty. The black one you see on the left side of the photo I’ll attach down below.

But that cabinet held very important things from my family history. For example, my grandmother’s tableware set. I carefully packaged those plates into a box that’s now safe at one of my mother’s friend’s storage.

It also had two candle holders my mom loved, I took those with me and now they’re on my bookshelf.

My friend left before I started on the living room and picked me up a couple hours later.

We came back to her house and she cooked dinner for me. I don’t remember what, but I remember I ate while looking at her.

—

The third day was the time for us to completely vacate the apartment, so we arrived early to start putting everything I was taking on her car. Then, her partner arrived with some friends to take the black cabinet to their house because I gifted that one to them, alongside two gorgeous side tables my mom had.

Then, my friends came to help us take out the trash and to finish everything up. They brought their cars and their best attitude to help me through that hard, hard time. We hugged and laughed and browsed through the books so they could pick one they wanted.

I said goodbye to my apartment on that third day.

“The house that built me”, I wrote about my home on the first installment of this memoir here.

—

After we finished packing everything up, I had to wait for my friend’s partner to pick me up and take me to my partner’s apartment to leave a couple boxes of my stuff there.

Since I had already returned the keys to my neighbor, I had to wait in the parking lot.

This is me having a meltdown in our old parking spot.

—

When my friend’s partner picked me up, we went straight to my partner’s apartment.

His neighbor - an amazingly helpful lady - opened the doors for me and we left the boxes inside of my mother in-law’s room because no one goes there. Those boxes are still there. All of my mom’s photo albums, her first toy, my baptism dress. Everything’s there. Waiting for me to have a home of my own, so I can get those things back into my life.

She left me alone on my partner’s house and told me to let her know when she should close the doors. This was also very emotional for me, because we fell in love on that apartment. It was the place where we used to meet when we were friends, where we spent countless hours talking and getting to know each other.

His house was always a place I loved. So I spent a couple hours browsing through the CD and vinyl collection my father in-law still keeps there and called him to see if I could take a couple albums with me. I took one Elton John vinyl and Peal Jam’s “Vitalogy” CD. Those are part of my collection now and I cherish them so much.

So I wandered through that house, a house that used to house a family that is now scattered all over the world. The house where I committed to my partner. Where we met and where we said goodbye so many times.

One of the places I wanted to come back to was the service bedroom at my partner’s house because that was the room in where I first recorded a song. The first time I stepped in front of a mic was there.

After I finished groveling around, my friend picked me up and we went back to her house because I had a meeting with someone on a restaurant near by.

—

I got ready with the only set of decent clothes I took on that trip — specially for this meeting.

It was supposed to be an important meeting with the father of an extremely famous Venezuelan singer. He wanted to “mentor” me, so I was pretty excited because I thought he was very connected with the music industry and that he could actually make a difference on my music career if he vouched for me.

When I met him everything felt weird. Like if he was hanging on by the fact that his son actually made it and that would give him the credentials to start managing and supporting artists. What a fucking lie.
I immediately realized he was a conman and because of that I tried to keep that meeting as short as possibly. When we finished eating and drinking a beer, I bolted and never heard from him again.

—

That night, I walked around La Boyera with my dear friend H and bought beers for me and the guys.
A couple of my friends went to their apartment and we drank together and had a fun night.

—

The next day, my dad was picking me up to go stay with him for three days.

I haven’t seen my father for 7 years. We hugged and cried and made our way to his house in Guarenas.

When we arrived, my stepmom was waiting for me with cold beers and a hot lunch: asado negro. My favorite Venezuelan dish. My dad made it for me.

We ate and talked and they let me smoke on the living room. My dad even let me smoke a joint next to the kitchen hood at night, he was not happy but he turned the smoke extractor on so all the smell would go there and the neighbors would not talk about the smell of weed coming from my dad’s house.

I love going to my dad’s house, I’ve said that before.

That night I fell asleep next to him watching Twilight on the guest room tv.

The next morning, we were going to the lake in my dad’s housing complex so my stepmom could give her TRX class there.

After that, we came back to the house, had a nap and my cousin from Catia arrived with her daughter A. I told A’s name story on the Caracas installment here. It meant a lot to me that they visited and I got to meet my cousin’s little girl. I was searching for pictures of us that day but I can’t find them.

After they left, my dad, my stepmom and me had a late dinner and went to bed.

The next day, my dad was dropping me off at my friend’s house again because I was leaving the day after.

It’s funny I don’t have a lot of memories from those days but it’s definitely because I felt calmer there than anywhere else on the trip. I know we visited a mural in Guarenas on the last day but that’s about it.

This is a video of my dad and my stepmom in the car, on our way to visiting my uncle Freddy and my grandparents in Caracas.

—

Before he left me at my friend’s house, we went to visit my dad’s best friend, the fucking legend, my uncle Freddy. My dad and Freddy have been friends for more than 65 years. They’re best friends still.

I wanted to say hi to Freddy because he is a cool dude and because he smokes A LOT and for some reason, I’d never smoked a cigarette with him in my whole smoking life. So that was a bucket list situation for me.

Freddy’s apartment was a on a gorgeous, mid-century building in Altamira.

We arrived and I got to say hi to him. We had a couple beers and smokes and then we left.

The view from Freddy’s old apartment balcony.

—

Our last stop was my grandparent’s house.

I love my paternal grandparents. My grandmother is a cantankerous old lady but she’s always been extremely nice to me and my grandfather is literally the chillest, most patient guy to ever live. I’m not exaggerating, he actually is.
I loved hanging at their house when I was growing up so I wanted to see them even if it was for a short amount of time.

They’ve been married for more than 70 years.

It’s crazy to be an immigrant because every time you meet your family after many years is like they aged instantly.

We arrived and my grandfather opened the door.

Their house is filled with trinkets, framed photos, old furniture.

I wanted to take pictures and videos of that house so I could always remember it.

My dad, my stepmom, my grandparents and I talked for a couple hours there.

This plant was my uncle Ricardo’s. My cousins and I used to pick the little chunky leaves from it in secret because my grandmother would get mad if we did that.

Then, we left.

I hope I can come back to see my grandparents soon.

My dad left me at my friend’s house so I could finish my luggage and go to the airport the next early morning.

My friend and her partner took me to the last destination of my trip: Santa Fé.

I wanted to go to our high school but time wouldn’t allow it. So I settled for the place where I had the best of times with my friends and where I got my heart broken for the first time.

This is the walk to “El Point”, me and my friend’s gathering place during 2009/2012.

This is me crying at “El Point”.

After visiting “El Point”, my friend quickly drove me to the Santa Fé mall, a mall I used to go to a lot with my first boyfriend and where I got my heart broken for the first time.

After I sat down and cried and took pictures being dramatic in all those landmarks from my life, we went to my friend’s home so I could get ready.

—

At 6 pm, when I finished my luggage, an old crush and friend of mine that’s a tattooer went to my two good friends’ house to give me a couple tattoos. I made my own designs: a handwritten phrase by my dad that reads “I detest tattoos” and the number, floor and building letter identifier of my childhood apartment.

That Sunday night my two friends living downstairs organized a House of the Dragon watch party for me and most of my friends.

We watched the episode, smoked a couple joints and said goodbye before I went up to sleep. That was my last night in Caracas.

—

The next day, my friend and her partner took me to the airport at 4 am. We said goodbye and now we don’t speak anymore, so that goodbye weighs heavy on my mind. Because I’m not sure if I’ll ever hug her again.

I managed to get a wheelchair at the airport because my back really bothers me when I traveled and the dude that was pushing me around even took me outside after checking my luggage so I could have a smoke before entering the boarding area. I gave him a cigarette and we chatted about our broken city before he dropped me off at the TSA counter. I gave him a $20 dollar bill for a tip and waved him goodbye.

Then I just got on the plane back home.

I haven’t left Mexico since I came back from Caracas in 2022.

I know I’ve never left the American continent and I’m looking forward to my first trip to Europe - I hope sometime soon - because I have friends and family I love living there.

The world is so big. And I am so grateful I got to visit all these amazing cities and countries. Getting to know the continent that birthed me has been a true honor.

America, from North to South, I love you.

My mom had always wanted to visit and we used to travel abroad once a year for NYE, so we came here. I remember everything.

When I was on the plane going back home to Caracas, somehow I knew I would come back.

On 2006 we traveled here on vacation to spend NYE in the city.
My mom found a very good price on a cute hotel room in Reforma and got us flights because of it. Every now and then, I’ll drive past that same hotel on my way to Polanco and smile for myself.
For that little girl in this immense city.

We had to make a connection in Panama when we were coming from Caracas. We were supposed to arrive to Mexico City in the afternoon but I remember the black night sky through the airplane window. So if I’m remembering well, our flight was delayed.

We met two people on the flight: a woman from Guadalajara named J that told to my mom she had a daughter close to my age and a tall man named A.
He was a bit older than my mom, I think. He also told her he had two daughters, but that they were a bit older than me. I bet he was also - kindly - charming her. The thing they both had in common, was that they got really, really scared about a 40-something year old woman traveling alone with her 11 year old daughter. See, this was Mexico City on 2006. This was around the time that “Most Dangerous Cities in the World” list was being forwarded through email in our limited, new, small, internet world.

My mom is the least prejudiced person in the whole world. I think that’s one of her greatest virtues. I would not say my mother is fearless, but she earnestly doesn’t think people, things, beliefs, and countries can be inherently ‘evil’ or ‘bad’.
She waits to see for herself.
She taught me that public transportation is important and always safe and that one should ‘always try new stuff’. That dish on the menu you’ve never ordered before. That movie you don’t know what is it about but it has a good cover and female lead, so it “can’t be bad”. To travel to wherever you could, because there was something, somewhere, that you would enjoy.

So she was either not very informed about how dangerous the city was, or confident that we would be safe because we were only coming to museums, to stroll in parks, go to the movies “in a different country!”, try new food and spend NYE in Paseo de la Reforma.

Coming back to J and A, they were appalled that we just planned on getting on a taxi when arriving at the airport.
This is 2006: no roaming in her cellphone, no internet either. And yes, I’ve been told this was a very different city back then. They asked us what where we doing and “why would you want to come here to visit?”.

We had a bunch of leaflets and maps, and maybe some printed information we gathered before traveling. My mom used to keep notebooks with itineraries.
I remember those. Carefully curated, written by hand. A woman, imagining herself visiting the places she was writing about. I participated on writing those, of course. I love lists and itineraries — maybe because of those trips. It’s also very funny that while being absolutely dedicated to writing those schedules, she has always been very flexible. We had a plan, but if it was not feasible to enforce it, we would pivot. Stay at the hotel and watch a movie. Walk around to find a restaurant to have dinner at. Even find out via the reception or concierge where was the nearest cinema around to go to. We always went to museums and parks.

So we talked to these people during the flight. J was connecting to Guadalajara, but A assured us he would take care of us and help us find a decent taxi to get to our hotel since it was late.
My mom exchanged e-mail addresses with J, and since A lived here in Mexico City, we hopped off the plane with him. He escorted us to the baggage claim area, waited while we passed through the TSA and then, walked us to a black taxi. “It’s all paid for, don’t worry”. My mom was embarrassed that a stranger paid for our cab, but she gracefully accepted. I also bet she was flattered.
He lived in Santa Fé. Now I know that meant that we could not share the taxi because we were going to Reforma and it wouldn’t make sense. “This city is so big”, said my mom while we were in that backseat going to the hotel, late at night. I don’t remember the drive itself, but I do remember getting in the cab.
I was a skittish child, always afraid. Of everything. Of the world. Of sudden death. I was a happy child, but I know I was always scared of something impalpable. I was afraid of empty streets, the dark, of us walking alone. I still am.
I am still afraid of everything. But nothing happened to us. It never did.

Since A paid for our cab, he knew where we were staying and insisted on picking us up the next day to take us to our first stop of the trip. I don’t remember where we wanted to go.

When we arrived at the hotel we were greeted at the lobby and a bellhop helped us with our bags. I remember it was a cold night.
The location of the hotel was amazing. That hotel still exists. It has the same name: Suites Contempo.

I think it’s more of a ‘business-guy’ hotel now, but at the time, it was a semi-boutique hotel. Every floor and its hallway was inspired by a different Mexican artist. I don’t know which one we got but I know I asked to see Frida’s floor.

The hotel ended up being pretty cool. It said it included breakfast, but what my mom thought it would be a classic hotel buffet every morning, turned out to be a couple yogurt cups, coffee, tea, and mini cereal boxes. Those were a novelty for us, since they never existed in Venezuela before. Everything was perfectly laid out on the counter and the mini fridge, so we laughed about it. That was more than enough.
We spent those days eating cereal from those yogurt cups in the mornings. I still smile when I get my hands on those mini cereal boxes.

They had a Business Center in where my mom checked her emails and stayed in contact - probably via some instant messaging app - with my aunt and my grandfather in Caracas. I know it was on the top floor and had floor-to-ceiling windows, so I remember watching Paseo de la Reforma from up there. There was also a gym next to the business center. But that was basically it.

It was a small hotel. “Hotels are the place where you sleep, not where you hang” is something my mom also says a lot. She doesn’t need fancy.
Clean, comfy sheets, a TV, and a small kitchenette so we could buy snacks and some nights eat girl dinner in the room.
Is crazy to grow up, because I know now that that’s a way to save money while traveling. I never thought that my mom was doing it to be able to afford cinema and museum tickets, endless trinkets for me, taxi fares.

For me, the snacks in the hotel room at night and those girl dinners were the most magical moments. My and my mom where trying food from convenient stores and supermarkets while traveling year before “Trying out things from the 7-Eleven in Japan!” YouTube videos were a thing.

The concierge was extremely kind and helped my mom get directions to the places we wanted to go. I think she also gave us an itinerary, or helped us arrange ours. I don’t know. But I remember her explaining my mom that a check mark was called a “palomita” here in Mexico. My mom and I thought that was a cute way of saying it.

I know A picked us up from the hotel multiple times and drove us himself to most of the places we wanted to go. He was a nice man. He took us to eat at Sanborns. So he must have been a white collar worker in his 50s.
The first spoonful of the ‘Sopa Sanborns’ I had is something I will never forget. They changed the recipe since then. In 2006, the ‘Sopa Sanborns’ I had more than 4 times during the trip, had pico de gallo, avocado slices, and shredded chicken. It was stronger and tastier than the one they serve now. And I may be wrong - I will be asking my Mexican friends - but when I have it now, it’s not the same soup and I will die on that hill.

I only remember some of the interactions with him: multiple Sanborns visits for dinner, a visit to Papalote Museo del Niño, going to Coyoacán, and a small car crash/fender bender at night on his car.

—

The Sanborn dinners were amazing because we had our favorite soup and tried different items on the menu, he was paying the bill against my mom’s will - such a gentleman! - and on the final night, he got me the board game I’ve been dreaming of having for months.

This is a perfect way to explain why I’ve always felt kind of connected to this city: in Venezuela, we used to get a lot of Mexican TV. The Disney Channel broadcast I watched my whole childhood was Mexican Disney Channel. I grew up watching ZappingZone every night, and I confess that the day I crossed paths with Roger González - while I was walking with a smoothie on hand near Parque España - only a year ago, my heart stopped.
Most of the TV ads, dubbing, and programming in cable channels I had in Venezuela were Mexican. I recall being a child and watching an ad for this board game that they didn’t sell in my local toy stores. I was devastated.

That game was “Vamos de Compras”.
It was like a mall-inspired Monopoly type board game. And if you know me, it will make sense to you that I would’ve given my life for that game because I love shopping and I loved malls.
This was the ad I used to see all the time:

I started looking online content about the game and every single TikTok or video is filmed here in Mexico. We never got it in Venezuela. Here’s one of the videos I found:

@hookaehVamos de compras 😍😍 t amooo #fypシ #viral #fyp #parati #minivlog #vamosdecompras #vamosdecomprasjuego

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And this was the box:

This fucking game was so expensive. And when A saw me swoon over it at the Sanborns, he probably told the waiter to wrap it up for him and he gifted it to me when we said goodbye the last night he dropped us at our hotel. My mom was extremely embarrassed, but I swear to God I’ve never been that happy up to that point in my life. I wanted that game so much. It had credit cards instead of fake cash. Miniature escalators. The ATM was a speaker with pre-recorded instructions and a dice all together, that machine was somewhat of a Dungeon Master now that I’m thinking about it.

Every time I brought out that game to play with my friends in Caracas, I was the coolest girl in the world. No one had that game in Venezuela, only me. It made me feel really special.

—

He also took us to the Papalote Museo del Niño. I’ve always loved museums for kids, they have a special kind of wonder to them. It’s not like they’re filled with art, but I always loved to visit the interactive games and exhibitions.

(We actually had a beautiful Museo de los Niños in Caracas. I don’t even want to think of the state it is right now, but I have amazing memories of that place).

Papalote was insane. Gigantic. It still is. I was absolutely impressed by its sized, its massive installations and the unbearable amount of activities.
A and my mom were very patient with me and I got to see it in its entirety.

Funny story, but last year I went to a fucking boring advertising fair there. Since it was closed to the public and filled with white collar adults, I got to sit on the metal bridge - the one I remember crossing all those years ago - inside of the museum complex and smoke a cigarette there on a Wednesday while on the clock and smiling for myself. That felt amazing.
I was crossing that bridge again, free coffee in hand, wearing a lanyard that didn’t have my name but the name of my boss because she gave me her pass so I could go. I wanted to go to the fair just to visit the museum again. I was not very interested in the fair and since they fired me from that job, I can confidently say that I did not work at all while I was there.
I wandered around the museum, touching the walls. Recognizing its corners and wings. Tracing back my steps. The steps I took as a mesmerized 11 year old girl.

Papalote is a magical place and I hope it lives forever, so many more young girls can experience the joy I felt when I first visited.

—

A drove us to Coyoacán because “it’s too far away to take a cab!” and we wanted to go to the main plaza and to Casa Azul, Frida Kahlo’s famous museum.

I was also very ahead when it came to loving Frida Kahlo. Such a dumb flex, I know.

But in my case, was because my mom liked her work so I had a couple art books that had her biography and her paintings in my house. The thing is, I connected with her story and her artworks because I felt we were very similar after I got diagnosed with severe Scoliosis when I was ten years old.

I had to use a corset for a year when I was 11. It didn’t work. It made me feel ugly, it was painful, it was uncomfortable. The existence of Frida and her corsets, her pain, her broken body validated me. She made my experience a tad more bearable. She made my broken body possible in my eyes. In my case, there was no accident, no incurable disease, it was just bad luck. “Idiopathic” is what the doctors called it.

But every time I strapped on my corset to go to school, I felt Frida’s hands guiding my own.

So visiting her house, seeing her bed, her painting brushes, her clothing, was very important to me.

He drove us through Coyoacán’s small streets. Again, patiently. I think we ate lunch around the plaza and browsed the artesanías in the stalls of the street market. I got a “Yuyito” done in my hair. I don’t know how that’s called in English. But it is this braid thats wrapped with thread so it looks like a thin cyllinder.
I chose a purple color palette for the threads. Got to pick my own charms and sat on a stool where a hippie looking woman worked her way around the strands of my hair. The thing is, I’ve gotten those done before at the beach in Venezuela, but this one was extremely special because the end of the braid was not left just like that, but instead she put it on a small, metallic cone. I still have the metallic cone with me. Here’s a photo of it.

We also got a lamp my mom wanted to install in our apartment back home, which is another funny story because the guy that made the lamps gave it to her unassembled so we could put it in our suitcase. He kind of gave my mom a IRL tutorial on how to put it together, but remember, it was 2006. Phones didn’t record video. She sat, attentively, listened to the man explain to her how to put it together. When we got home, we spent literal years of our life trying to assemble it and we never could. The pieces were inside of some drawer in our apartment for years. At some point we gave it to a friend of my mom who’s a designer because we thought maybe she could put it together and she also couldn’t. We never saw the pieces again.

—

The last thing I remember with A was a fender bender we got into at night. Somebody hit us from behind, it was delicate and not intense at all. But I remember us parked in the middle of some street near Juárez and A opening his glovebox so he could grab a cigarette from the whole carton of smokes he kept there, and then smoking outside of the car while talking on the phone.

When I looked back to see the street from inside the car, I saw a billboard for the upcoming 2007 MTV Latin Music Awards. That edition was going to be hosted by Diego Luna.

I knew the jingle they made for the TV ad by heart. I still do. I could not find a video of it, but it was so catchy. The lyrics said something like “19, es jueves! 19, es jueves! 19 de Octubre, 19 de Octubre, 19, es jueves! No es Noviembre! No es Diciembre! Es Octubre!”. The memory is stuck in my head as I write the lyrics.

Here's a playlist I found with all the 2007 MTV Latin Music Awards Live from Palacio de los Deportes in Mexico City. It’s crazy to watch these and think that all these years later, I not only live in this city, but that I have seen my favorite band play live in that venue.

After we resolved the issue with his car, I think he left us at the hotel, gave my mom his e-mail address and drove away.

—

I know my mom kept in touch with him over e-mail for a couple years after our trip. And I think they never added each other on Facebook, so we lost touch with him.

I’ve tried multiple times to find him or his daughters online in the past decade with no success. I live here now, and I would give everything to properly thank that man for his kindness and for gifting me my favorite board game.

I hope he’s doing okay, he must be a 70-something year old man now. But I bet he would remember us.

The curious mother and her anxious daughter that wanted to get to know his city and actually did.

I don’t remember much about J because we only talked on the first flight like I said, but I think she and my mom did add each other on Facebook at some point. She was from Guadalajara so I never really looked for her. I also hope she’s okay.

There are many things I remember from that trip:

• Eating a burger we got from a street cart in the plaza in front of the Museo Nacional de Antropología. The best burger in the world.

• Going to the movies and seeing all the posters for the Mexican movies I saw ads for on TV but never arrived at our Venezuelan cinemas. I don’t remember which movie we did watch and I’ve been trying to visit the mall/cinema complex we went to for years now but I don’t know where the fuck did we go because I still haven’t found it.

• Visiting Museo Tamayo and admiring it’s eternal beauty.

• Getting on the pink taxis ONLY - by order of A and J. And watching the meter move.

• Being too scared of the CDMX Metro entrance because unfortunately there was a homeless guy on the stairs and begging my mom to take a taxi instead.

• El Zócalo’s huge Mexican flag.

• Buying a Revista Tú in a kiosk. I used to collect those magazines and they were Mexican. I’ll never forget getting one in here.

• Buying my Moderatto CD at the MixUp.

• Trying these cookies called Emperador that I used to see ads for on TV.

A advised us to not try to spend NYE at Paseo de la Reforma. It could get messy with people drinking on the street. So my mom and I stayed in the hotel because he was right, and he was going to spend it with his family. So if we went to the party on the street, we would be alone.

I have a memory of my mom’s silhouette, on the hotel bed, against the window. We said ‘Happy New Year’ to each other with the lights off and went to bed. It’s a very blurry but certainly happy memory.

We took thousands of photos but they’re all on film, because again, 2006. I think I can attach some here if my mom sends them to me on time because she probably has some on her Facebook page.

But the thing that brought me here was not any of these moments.

It happened when we were already in our seats in the flight back home, before taking off.

My mom loves Caracas, our hometown. When we got to the end of our trips, she always used to say to me “We are not sad because the trip is over, we are coming back home. I want to come back to Caracas already”.
But this time, my mom shed a tear and said to me “I don’t want to leave”.
I’ve never seen that happen before. That moment stuck with me.

Something about this city changed her, I thought there was no city in the world that could do that to my mom. She loves to travel, yes, but she loved going back home.

This time, she wanted to stay in Mexico City. So in that moment I knew I had to come back. There was something special here. A force. The wind. The time.
This is the only city that made my mom cry.

So, that is exactly why I am here now. That is the reason why I came back.

The idea of leaving Santiago de Chile came to me on December 30th, 2018. We were spending NYE with my in-laws and their friends at the beach.

Me and my partner had a job at a company that had offices in Mexico City but I never really gave it that much thought until that day.

There’s a man, somewhere in Santiago de Chile still, that remembers the exact message he received from me on that day. That man psychologically abused and humiliated me.

A story on Instagram was all it took for me to see and know that it was enough: we had to leave.

On December 31st, we went out on the street next to the beach house we were staying at to talk and vent about that IG story. I was enraged. I don’t think I’ve ever been more mad in my life. I was tired of being overlooked and ignored by a country, a city, a group of people that I thought were my real friends. So I decided to leave.

I told my partner while screaming and pacing and smoking anxiously under the hot summer night sky. I remember seeing the starts. Santiago has different stars than Caracas, I thought. It’s the Southern Hemisphere. That’s the problem.
We need to go north.

And then, I remembered: Milena lives in Mexico City. Milena is my friend since I’m 14. I’m going to call her.
I think she remembers that call, at night, December 31st:

- Hi Milena, I need to know. How hard is it for us to move to Mexico City?
- Wait, what? I mean, not that hard. If you can find a job here that helps you settle in, you’re good. You should do it. I like it here.
- Okay, mark my fucking words. See you on this new year.

I hung up the phone, turned to my partner and said “I’m not turning 24 in this God forsaken country. We’re moving to Mexico City”. Then I proceeded to drink a beer and tell him the story I wrote just before this, the one about my mom not wanting to leave Mexico City. He said that it was crazy, but that he was down.

I begged myself and God when the clock struck 12: “Please, please, I’ll do anything. I want to live in Mexico City”.

—

After that decision was made - and weirdly manifested - on that night, the next 11 months living in Santiago felt like absolute Hell.

I was waiting for a new passport, inquiring at the Mexican consulate, calling my cousin whom I haven’t seen in many years because he was also just moving here and doing all the stuff one needs to do when moving countries. The hardest was to find an apartment in Santiago that would allow me to sign a contract that only lasted for 6 to 8 months, not a whole year.
And of course I fucking found it. And we got it. So we moved there. It was intense to have to move to a new apartment knowing that I would not be living there for a year.
But I still haven’t asked at my job if they could just get me settled in Mexico, pay for Visa fees and actually give me the same job I had there in this country across the continent.

After a couple months managing to reach the goals I was set to meet at work and finishing up my passport problems, I told my boss what I wanted to do and they were surprisingly very supportive. They said yes to giving me and my partner the same job we had there in Chile, but here in Mexico.

After that, things were kind of smooth.
We moved into the apartment and lived a weird few months that were plagued by the happiness of enjoying our remaining time in the city with the friend group that we had. Trying to avoid going to bars and places at night so I would not stumble upon the other group of friends I had that pushed me emotionally to make this decision, and saving as much money as we could.

Our parents were not happy, but we managed to get a good deal with our jobs in where they were going to pay for my visa fees and even my plane ticket.

That became a problem when my visa took more time than the expected.

We managed to secure a room in a nice apartment here in Mexico. So we could start small and share an apartment with a friend of Milena, the one that helped me get that opportunity.

So, on October 1st - while I was still waiting for my visa to go through - my partner flew to Mexico by himself and I had to stay back to wait for it to be approved.

That did not happen.

So I had to stay in that horrible place I hated so much, alone, to wait. Waiting. I was living alone in an apartment I’ve already packed up. Sharing a room with boxes and emptiness.

My partner got to this city by himself. A city he was moving into because of me. He had to move into an apartment with a stranger - who turned out to be an amazing roommate and friend. He was doing okay. Wandering around the streets I so desperately wanted to walk in. Waiting for me.

On early October, the company that was managing my visa for the company realized this would take a while so they decided to fly me to Mexico City so I could wait here for the visa appointment to happen. I was stoked. They were finally taking me out of there.
They got me a plane ticket for October 24, 2019. Three weeks before my 24th birthday.

My dream was coming true: I was not turning 24 in Santiago.

The thing is, that on October 17th, just a week before flying here, shit went fucking sideways in Santiago because the Chilean Protests started.

—

The afternoon of October 17th I was working at my office in Bellavista, the neighborhood near Baquedano Metro Station in Santiago.
I used to live just 1,3KM from there, so I usually walked home down the Alameda Central. I loved that walk. I listened to music and watch the city be alive every afternoon.
But that day was different.

At 3 pm, a coworker came rushing into the office, yelling: “They’re protesting in the Metro station! We need to GO, NOW”. We all quickly packed our things and started to make our way across the street so we could walk to our houses, because the Metro was closed. After that day, I never got to say goodbye to my coworkers.

That same morning, I remember calling my partner - who was already in Mexico City like I said before. I have this vivid memory of using my Metro card and seeing the ticket price be at least 20% more expensive than the day before. When I called him I said “Dani, this shit is going down, I just paid $990 pesos on the Metro. I’m glad I’m getting there in just a week”. What I did not know is that, at 2:45 pm, shit was actually going down.

When me and my coworkers stepped out of the office, we were in the thick of it.
To put you in the map: I worked on the grey pin, next to the Chilean Rent A Car and the protest where happening in the Metro Baquedano, the big red pin.

We could see the smoke and the carnage while we walked towards there.

I’ve never seen anything like it before.

I was running alongside two of my coworkers who had a small dog they just adopted with them. We were trying to cross the street where the protest was happening so we could go home. We lived a few blocks down from there. It was not far, but we needed to cross a war zone.

I remember running, clutching to my backpack, with a vinegar rag we grabbed at the office before leaving wrapped around my mouth and nose. My eyes watering with the tear gas that was filling the air.

This was the scene:

That statue in the photo above is located on the red pin I talked pointed on the map.

People were enraged by many things that were wrong in Chile, but the trigger was the Metro ticket price.
Just like I told my partner on the phone that same morning. I was right, shit went down. Instantly.
Like when you light on fire one of those magician’s papers they use for fire tricks. Quick.

Like I said, I never had to experience that in Venezuela. I was enraged too, but only because I thought I’ve gotten away with not living through this kind of stuff when I left Caracas behind.

My whole life played in front of my eyes when I saw a tire on fire flying on top of my head. Looting. Screams.

So I ran. I split from the coworkers I was running with at some point on the road and never saw them again.

I ran to my apartment. 1.3 KM.

I remember running and calling my partner because I had my AirPods on: “Dani, I’m running. There’s riots here. I’m scared, please don’t hang up”.

He must’ve been so scared. He was here in Mexico City, waiting for me. And I was in the middle of that mess.

I arrived at my apartment after probably 15 minutes of non-stop running and crying.

I instantly started to pack my bags. After all, I was leaving Santiago in a week. I had my plane ticket for the 24th.

But I was scared because, what if those protests meant that I was not going to be able to leave?

—

The days that followed the 17th were pure madness. I honestly don’t even remember well what was I up to.

I remember my mom helping me pack up the apartment and giving her the keys so she could return them to the landlord after I left.

I remember an old friend that lived near by with some roommates staying with me on a couple nights before I left. We were close and we spent a lot of time together, so he was there for me.

But I could not tell you where did I slept the night before I took my flight here.

I was probably with my mom, because that was another insane thing that happened: She took me to the airport while the whole city was on lockdown.

Curfew was strict, military was on the streets and had checkpoints everywhere. The chaos was still on the rise.

I had an early flight, so we left my mom’s house I think at like 3 am on a taxi. She had a document that stated that she was accompanying me to the airport and I had the ticket printed, so if we got stopped at a police checkpoint while we were on our way to the airport they wouldn’t detain us for breaking the curfew.

That was the most stressful ride of my life. We got stopped a couple times but managed to get to the airport maybe like 5 hours before my flight.

Santiago’s airport was chaos. People sleeping in the middle of the hallways, hallways filled with military, cancelled flights, children crying. The remnant of the cold in the middle of the Austral Spring.

I think I tried to have breakfast but I’m severely scared of flying so I was not able to eat anything.

So, when the time came, I said goodbye to my mother at an airport again. For the second time. It felt just like when I left Caracas just 5 years before.

We hugged and she had to wait until 9 am so the curfew would be lifted and she could take a taxi home without all the hassle of being stopped in those checkpoints we passed together before.

I bid Santiago goodbye. I left the city that broke me while it was breaking.

I never looked back.

The trip to Mexico City was going to be uncomfortable, because the visa people “knew someone at Puerto Vallarta’s airport” in case I was denied entry to the country because I am a Venezuelan and that’s the type of shit that happens to Venezuelans when traveling. So I was not flying from Santiago to Mexico City.

I had to flight from Santiago to Panamá, from Panamá to Puerto Vallarta and from Puerto Vallarta I had to change terminals and get on a domestic flight to Mexico City.

They hate Venezuelans in Panamá because to be fair, there’s a lot of us there. A lot.
And while I was talking on the phone waiting to get on my Puerto Vallarta flight in Panamá, a fucking soldier came up to me and asked to see my visa. I was just doing a connection, so I didn’t need a visa. It was nerve wrecking but I managed to be condescending while I told him that he was mistaken and that I was just waiting for my flight that was taking off in 15 minutes. He backed off and I breathed.

I was lucky enough to get an upgrade because the flight was empty, I’ve never travelled on First Class before so I was stoked when they called my name and gave me an upgrade right there on the door.

I found my First Class seat and waited for the plane to take off. I’m extremely scared of airplanes and flying, but that experience made me realize that I’m just a posh girl inside a broke girl’s body because I was not so scared in First Class.

The one thing I love about flying is airplane food. So when the flight attendant brought me a huge breakfast while I was famished, I devoured everything in minutes. I remember they gave me a piece of Papaya. There’s no Papaya in Chile and I love Papaya. I cried while taking a bite out of it. I was coming back to the heat of the tropical climate, the ripe and sweet fruits, I was already feeling like I was home. I ate Papaya and for the first time in 10 years, I fell asleep on a flight.

I’m usually so scared, that I metabolize every pill I take when I fly. I’ve mixed an insane amount of stuff in the past: too much allergy medication, Valium, NyQuil Z and Valerian root pills to only be able to close my eyes for 20 minutes in 8 hours flights. On a regular day, that would kill me. But if I’m on a flight is like I drank a cup of water, medications do nothing to me when I’m up there, having an 8-hour panic attack.

—

When the flight attendant woke me up, I was in Puerto Vallarta.

Mexico, at last. After the psychological abuse, after the fear of being to far away from the world, after years of trying, after running through tear gas bombs and under flaming tires and barricades with masked men screaming. After leaving my mother again.

I was finally here.

I remember being the first one to pass through the TSA in Puerto Vallarta, scared because there was a possibility they could make me go into ‘the room’ to ask me why I was there. But the TSA agent asked me “Was the flight full?” I politely replied that it wasn’t and that because of that, they even upgraded me and I got to experience flying First Class for the first time. We laughed and she granted me entry to the country.

When I was picking up my extremely heavy suitcases, I got stopped by customs because they wanted to check my bags. I was pissed and nervous because I had a lot of weird shit inside of them, since I was moving here but I had to say I was a tourist.

The customs agent questioned me on why did I only have “one Jordan shoe” and I had to tell him that my boyfriend had the other one here in Mexico, and that since it didn’t fit on my suitcase he brought it on his. The same happened with a 10 pound sound monitor, because I brought one with me and he had brought the other one with him to “give to the friend we’re visiting”. Lies. I hate lying to airport staff but I’m Venezuelan, so you could say it comes with the passport.

He thought I had weird shit on my bags: an AKG microphone, the one Jordan shoe, books, documents. But he told me to pack my bag again and let me go.

So I walked toward the exit to change terminals and go to the domestic flights wing.

—

After I checked my bags for my flight to Mexico City, I had some time left, so I exited the airport to have a smoke outside.

When I came out, I saw the sun. White hot.

I smoked a cigarette while crying and trying to connect to the shitty wi-fi at the airport to let people know I was okay.

Then, a waitress from a restaurant in the airport’s parking lot approached me and asked me if I wanted to eat something there. I said yes.

I sat on an outside table in the blazing heat of Puerto Vallarta. Ordered a Corona and some fish tacos and laughed while I took my first sip.
“I did it. I am here.”

I finished eating and smoked another cigarette and made my way to the domestic flight.

—

It was a horrible 2 hour flight on the smallest airplane I’ve ever been in. Just two rows of two seats and it was so empty. We took off at 5 pm and flew towards the night sky.

When we started to make our way down to Mexico City it was raining. I was exhausted, scared, there was turbulence. But I was steadily doing my makeup because I love doing my makeup on airplanes. Is one of those things that help keep me sane while I feel that we’re actually going to die.

I listened to Given To Fly by Pearl Jam while staring at the Mexico City from above.

When we landed, I quickly picked up my three suitcases and stumbled my way to a taxi.

I arrived at the apartment where my partner was already waiting for me with Milena.

We hugged and talked about our life on the indoor patio while smoking a joint that was made with Skywalker OG, a weed strain that was never available in Santiago. My partner got it for me so I could smoke it on first joint in Mexico City.

I made it. I came back.

The next day, I was starting at my job. It was close to our house so we used to walk there.

It was exciting to get to know my new coworkers and the city at the same time.

October has a very nice weather in Mexico City. Everything smells like the Cempasúchil flower. And I remember being so excited that they sold Pumpkin Pie at a bakery that was on our way to work because of the season.

When I took a bite from the slice I bought, it instantly brought me back to our Thanksgiving lunch at my high school. I love Pumpkin Pie because of those lunches.

Then, just three weeks after I got here, I turned 24.

My friend Maia was also arriving in Mexico City during that month, so we celebrated at my apartment. We got sushi and a small cupcake, and my partner, our roommate, Milena and Maia sang Happy Birthday to me.

I did it. I turned 24 years old here.

Just a week after my 24th birthday and exactly a month after I got here, we went to see the rescue pets at Parque Mexico. Every weekend, shelters gather in Parque Mexico and people adopt pets there.

On November 24th, 2019 we got a cat. A small, orange rescue that had a brown and blue ribbon with a bell tied around his neck. He was sleeping on top of a tuxedo cat.
“I want that one please, the one sleeping on top of the tuxedo”.

That was the day my cat Mooncake came into my life.

I've always wanted a cat, since I had to say goodbye to the cat my mom and I had in Caracas when I went away. But we knew that we didn’t want to live in Chile forever, so getting a cat there was a no-no because traveling with animals is complicated.

So we got him and went to get cat supplies at the Petco. We bought him some food and a small house for him to sleep in. A litter box and two toys.

Since that moment, I wake up everyday with his paws on my face. The best part of my days is when he lays next to me purring.

He’s my baby, my best friend in the whole world.

Those first few months in Mexico City were extremely fun. I was hanging out with two of my oldest friends, Maia and Milena.

We knew each other since we were 15 so partying with them in the city of my dreams felt incredible.

We went out clubbing one night and they had to explain to me that people were going to offer me drugs at the club so I had to learn how to say no. We had a blast, got extremely wasted and danced until 4 am.

Here’s a photo of that day:

I am so glad to say that they’re still my friends.

—

After that, Maia used to host dinner parties at her apartment. We used to do yoga in the mornings on her rooftop and talk about our lives.

She lived here for a good couple of months and left to live on the beach when Covid started.

Milena used to also cook for us in her apartment and I spent a lot of time here with her. I say here, because I now live on that same apartment.

—

When Covid started, my partner and I were still living in the room at the apartment where we arrived to, but we were ready to move by ourselves. I was kind of nervous of sharing a house because I’m a hypochondriac and our roommate was having people over all the time. I didn’t wanted to get sick.

Milena was leaving her apartment to move elsewhere, so she arranged for us to rent it after her because it was perfect for us, in a great location and had a great price.

We moved on May 1st, 2020.

We still live here. I’m writing this on the same room Milena hosted dinner parties for all of our friends. We’ve been living here for 6 years now. I love this house.

Being an immigrant comes with having to move constantly, and after we got this place, we finally had a home.

But to say that everything was fun with friends and moving to the city of my dreams would be a lie.

Because I only got to enjoy that until Covid hit just 5 months after I got here.

I always felt very lucky to be here and not in Chile. Not only because of the protests — something that continued for at least 9 months and after Covid hit. But because the pandemic was especially hard in Chile. Chileans love an excuse to bring out the military, so with the protests and Covid, they had the perfect excuse to hold the country prisoner. My mom still lives there and her stories about Covid times were intense.

I was supposed to go to Chile to keep my visa and to go to the 2020 Lollapalooza. Of course it got cancelled so we lost our plane tickets and haven’t been there since we left.

Covid here in Mexico was lighter for me. This is a country where people work all the time and there is a lot of people that work on the streets: food vendors, artisans, artists. So of course Covid times were horrific, but the city was still moving.

I was able to keep my job at the company that brought me here until October 2020 when they started laying off people because of Covid. That was a big hit. The struggle started just a year after I arrived here.

But the stillness the world felt was different in here.

Americans started moving to Mexico City after the George Floyd assassination. I remember vividly watching that horrible video on Twitter. Worrying about my friends living in the US.

2020 was bearable. There was no clubbing, no museums, no parties, yes. But we could go out and walk around. Parks were still filled with people. You could buy food on the street stalls like always.
We had dinner parties at Maia’s and Milena’s and were seeing each other regularly.

We made a couple of Venezuelan friends at the end of 2020 and started hanging out with them. Trying to make music together to take advantage of the isolation.

On 2020 I met a Venezuelan girl through Twitter and we started hanging out every weekend because we were both very cautious about getting sick and had the same interests. I loved her so much. She became my best friend instantly. That lasted for 5 years, until 2025. When I helped her get a job at the company I was working at and somehow - I still don’t understand why - she simply stopped being my friend. But we discovered the city together. Drank coffee and gossiped. Went to all the museums in the city. Went to the movies a lot. I miss her, so much. It makes me very sad that she is not in my life anymore. But I guess that happens.
I’m just not sure why it keeps happening to me.

By 2021, maybe on February, I was already going dancing to the club I used to like. They required mask at the entrance but everyone took them off inside. I remember going to a party there on that month and just feeling alive again.

I was working odd jobs online and trying to make ends meet.
But I was happy, making music at home and living in the city I wanted.

I’ve never struggled as much as I’ve struggled here. Times have been fucking tough. I never have enough money so I depend from the help of my in-laws in more ways than I would like.

2021 was intense on that end. I had no job, the world was still fighting Covid and we were alone. We are always alone. We still are.
Our parents are not here. We’ve been living abroad for 12 years now.

I’ve always knew my mom and I were not rich but I never experience poverty and struggle as I have in Mexico City.

I didn’t went to college, so getting a job has always been an arduous task for me because I don’t have the credentials to do anything.

I’ve done a couple Marketing courses and my mom helped me pay a PR and Fashion Styling course I took online on 2020 in hopes that would help me get better job offers. It never served me for anything.
I always have to explain myself in job interviews and I have to rely on my precarious work experience to sell myself and my skills while interviewing for jobs.

And the struggle hasn’t stopped. I am currently partially employed thanks to my good friend Milena, who trusts me and gave me a job with one of her clients. I literally just invested $150 dollars I borrowed from my mom to start selling beauty products at a multi-level company that seem to work for everyone, but it’s been hard for me to recruit people.

Last year, I lost the three jobs I had.

It has not been easy.

So, to recap:

On 2020 I moved to this apartment with my partner and released my first ever song into the world. We weathered the storm of Covid here, in our tiny but comfy home. Together.

I’m not sure what I was doing on 2021 work wise, but I released my first EP. I felt so good about it. We produced, filmed and did pretty much everything ourselves in our home. And we were extremely broke and isolated.

On 2022, we distanced from a couple friends and I found a boring online job I was doing to keep myself afloat. I hated it and it paid so little but it was something. We started going out more. Meeting new people and hanging out when Covid stopped being a thing.
I started going to concerts and we were making new friends. It was hard, but it was getting better.

On the first three months of 2023, I lost two dear friends that lived in Caracas.
Around the first days of March, I found out about one of them. A dear, dear classmate of my first boyfriend passed away. I was devastated. Not only because it’s always impactful to lose a person one loves, but because we were so young.
We were barely 27 years old. We spent a lot of time together, him and I. His house was a magical place. He was always a good listener, a good friend to me and to my first boyfriend. He did magic tricks and he was so good at it too. He was always a sad kid, and that was something that seemed to weigh on me a lot because when I found out he died, I didn’t felt surprised. Nobody is supposed to die that young. He was a good kid and probably a good man. We lost touch when I moved away and it makes me so sad to think I never got a chance to tell him that I loved him so much, that I remember him always as a good friend. He listened to me when nobody would. He offered his compassion, kindness, and shoulder for me to cry on a thousand times. And he left this world probably feeling absolutely alone.

Not two days later, I found out that one of my oldest friends from childhood had also died. It was not that it hit harder for some reason, but it felt crazy because he had been in my life for so long. A group of girlfriends I had a WhatsApp group with started talking about it while I was helping my partner record and film a podcast at a hotel room with a bunch of people, and I had to hold back my tears while operating a microphone and playing it cool. Afterward, we rushed out and sat down to eat at a Casa de Toño and I couldn’t keep anything down.
This is a death I still feel in my bones.
He was the best friend of my childhood best friend, they were like brothers.
My girlfriends in the chat didn’t knew he had been my friend since I was 7 years old so they just commented on it like he was a random person we had crossed paths with at some party.
I will write about him later, because he was a man in my life that held so much importance. I remember him constantly. On every Ramadan at least, because he died just days away from the start of that period. I will forever regret not seeing him on September 2022 when I visited Caracas, because I decided to ignore his messages and not go see him because he was kinda hitting on me and I was not going to follow through on that because I have a partner. But it still breaks my heart to know that he’s not around anymore. He was so beautiful. So kind. I miss him so much.

The worst part about this is that I didn’t get the chance of going to their funerals.

I’ve missed four funerals in these past 12 years away from home: my aunt’s, my best friend’s father’s and these two, dear friends’. It’s not something I would wish to my worst enemy.
I haven’t been to a funeral in my life, and I’m so grateful about that. So grateful. But I’ve missed these four. And I should’ve been there.
To hug my best friend after her father died. To hold the sister of my childhood friend. To thank my friend’s mother for throwing all those parties for us while we were in high school, to thank her for allowing us to make the best memories we have. To be with my mother when she had to bury her sister.

Also on 2023 was the year I started working in the music industry. I will not elaborate on this because I am planning on writing a separate piece that goes through my years working on that industry. I worked at that place from January 9th 2023 until August 2025. That job was a remote job because the label is LA based. I always felt very grateful for it because I learned a lot and I got to work with a couple artists I admire.

2024 was also tough, but I had a job I loved and at the end of the year I found two extra music industry jobs. So life seemed to be getting better.
The second job I got was a label here and that lasted about 6 months, so in January 2025 I lost it as quickly as I got it.
Then, I got fired on December 2025 from my third and last industry job.

Like I said, this is as far as I’ll talk about these three years in the music industry because there’s a lot to unpack. A lot.

Mexico gave me millions of dreams. I have an apartment I like living in. A cat that I love with all my life. My partner and I have been through ups and downs, lots. But we’re still here.
I’m looking up from the keyboard and I’m watching him play 2K and take a hit from the bong.

The dream I had as a kid came true.
I met a bunch of wonderful people in this city. People that only passed through and friends that stayed and now I see weekly for our DnD sessions.

I get to work with Milena, and while she’s a very particular type of boss - and she knows what I’m talking about - she’s one of my oldest friends. Just this April, she threw a birthday get-together at a cool bar in Juárez and I got to sit there and look at her be happy. I’ve known her for more than 16 years now and I’m glad she’s picking me up tomorrow to have breakfast at McDonald’s - because I asked her!!!! She does not do that!!!! - and to get supplies for an event we’re organizing at work.

I found an amazing group of foreigners, a crowd I see once a month, and we get together to read poetry and really listen to our words. The last time I’ve read with them, there were three Venezuelan women reading including me. We are everywhere, but I feel so proud to listen to their words about our country, loud and strong, so far away from our home.

I now live in the same city as two of my cousins. Cousins I didn’t grew up with but that now see every month. I love them to death. And I am so glad we get to be adults together, even if we didn’t grew up in the same city.

I’ve gotten to know this city I loved the first time, with different eyes. Its streets still surprise me when I walk on them.
The food is wonderful. The energy is electrifying. Chaotic. Just like I am.
A mess, our mess.

I’ve cried at Plaza Río de Janeiro, danced at Salón San Luis, walked around Paseo de la Reforma and even got the chance to see Louis Tomlinson answer a question I wrote for him on a press conference. I got to thank Lucy Dacus for her music and give her a hug. I was a Soho House member without paying one dollar for two whole years and I got to sing at the first house in Latin America.
I got to see one of my favorite bands, The National, here at Palacio de los Deportes. I saw Joaquín Sabina play his last concert at Auditorio Nacional, waving goodbye to the country where his wife was born.
I went to the first night of The Eras Tour in Estadio GNP, the first ever Taylor Swift concert in Latin América.
I’ve gotten drunk at Cananea and danced to Rosa Pastel with Milena next to the jukebox.
I’ve read poetry on thousands of bars. I’ve done tons of shitty gigs and sang my songs in horrible venues for one person in the crowd. Even once I opened the bathroom door for Dulce María and had to act chill about it.

There’s not enough words I could write to summarize the almost 7 years I’ve lived in Mexico City, but I did it because of that 11 year old seeing her mom wanting to stay here.

I’ve given my heart to this city.
I feel I am home.

I doubt that I will sit and just do a summary of the 5 years I lived there.

But I know won’t forget those moment because they still hurt.

I couldn’t come up with anything, except that I’m glad that I left.

I arrived to Santiago de Chile in the freezing winter.

Those 5 years living there felt like they were a cold, long night.

These are the only things I have from Santiago aside from concert tickets and Lollapalooza bracelets.

I don’t have visible scars from the wounds I suffered there, they just weigh in my mind. Mental keloids. Tough tissue, growing, taking over the healthy parts of me. Eating me away.

Brought with me the pain the Andes mountains bestowed upon my skin.

The doubt.

The fear.

I still carry the insecurities I built for myself there.

The pain of leaving my mother alone again.

The loneliness that comes from going away for the second time in one lifetime.

Running.

I left Santiago running.

Panting.

I still haven’t recovered my breath and it’s been more than 6 years since I left.

I’ve been gone for more time than the time I spent there, and I still feel the decisions I made on Santiago’s streets curling up next to me every night before I go to bed.

I still don’t know if I have shed the bad luck I managed to find there.

And don’t get me wrong, in Santiago I felt free.

I felt loved.

But never seen.

Never heard.

Its sidewalks were pristine and I was safe, but I was unfulfilled.

I still remember the first night I slept alone in there: the fucking cold, the thin sheets of the hostel, the warmth of my tears, muted. Keeping quiet because there were 10 more people sleeping in the same room. That top bunk felt lonelier than everything that’s ever existed.

The betrayals. Plural. Thousands.

Over and over and battered and bleeding and kicked down and spat on.

The pain of becoming in streets you don’t know.

Growing pains, steady but uneven. Sometimes the knees, sometimes the ankles.

Santiago has the most beautiful sunsets. I’ve never seen anything like it.

But the Sun only burns and the Moon is too far away.

They never understood my kindness or my wit.

They do have amazing tea though, strong, flavorful, no milk, no sugar. A kettle boiling on top of every countertop.

The pacific, again, cold. Cold as the ice in the South. Cold. Too cold for my bones. Cold sand. Cold rocks. Fucking jeans and knits and Converse at the beach. Wind. Piercing.

Lakes. Fake lakes.

Snow. Too far away to touch it but close enough to be freezing because of it.

Pain. All over.

Trying.

Trying.

Trying.

Failing.

Failing.

Failing.

Failing.

Fleeing.

Long lines and nowhere else to go.

The waiting.

The cold again.

Every year.

Lacking.

Missing.

Everything is upside down there.

Understanding.

Also learning.

Small pools and beers and laughs.

Writing songs for the first time.

“Learning to fly” played live.

LSD.

Fresh cherries.

Confessions.

Pasta sauce in bags.

Cheap meat.

Steaks.

Coals.

Smoke.

Moaning cows.

Long roads.

Empty.

Expensive SUVs.

Strangers.

The cold again.

The North Face jackets.

Blurry memories.

Days repeating endlessly.

Expensive gyms I never went to.

Rap music until my head hurt.

Time.

Lost time.

Unsalvageable time.

Time I won’t get back.

Time that stayed with the mountains.

Time that was never mine.

Time.

Santiago took away my time.

Wrinkled me.

Tired me.

A poem.

The only thing my hands managed to write about that city.

“A bowl of pits”

• Yoko Ono

I don’t have anything else to say about Santiago de Chile.

Although I became a woman there. I arrived when I was 18.

I loved and I lost and I missed funerals and Christmases and birthdays.

I cried myself to sleep.

In the fucking freezing cold.

Santiago de Chile is too far away from the world.

I’m glad I left.

Caracas is a small beast. Vicious. Mad. Wet. Caracas has always felt like a woman to me.

I’ve already said a couple times that this kind-of-memoir is not very difficult to write. I romanticize my memories a lot so I don’t mind writing about the pain I’ve felt. I've even impressed myself when I realized I can write a lot of words.

I’m looking forward to talking about my high school best friend who is not my friend anymore, about my first boyfriend who obviously left me when I was young, and even about my spinal fusion surgery - something I’m pretty sure that messed me up good.

But I’m quite scared to write about the city I grew up in. Terribly scared.

I could start by saying I was born on a small hospital located in San Bernardino, a neighborhood in the Northern part of the city. That neighborhood is built at the foot of our mountain, el Ávila. I already talked about my home, that apartment was on the South East.

Caracas was founded on the 25th of July 1567. She was 428 years when I was born.

I like to think I write inspired by Jack Kerouac’s style: typing. Never stopping. Just letting the thoughts and ideas take over my keyboard.
But right now I’m not being able to do that. Which scares the shit out of me. Because my story started there.
I don’t know where I’m taking myself to these days, but to quote Hairspray, I know where I’ve been.

My earliest memory is probably one from my 3rd birthday. It was Mulan themed.
I remember the cake. I remember red balloons and how the light entered the salon where the party was at.

I also have a bunch of memories from my pre-school years. They mostly involve my first friends, my first crush, and the light entering the classroom windows. I remember a lot of those years.

The light in Caracas is special. And I know that everyone says that about their home town, but I swear I am telling the truth.

Caracas has a special kind of peach-toned light when the Golden Hour hits. I think most of the memories I have involve it’s particular light.

I remember the peach-toned sun rays from the day I lost my maternal grandmother. I was 5. And also how that same light entered through my grandmother’s bedroom window, cradling her silhouette, when she was still alive. I’ll talk about my grandmother on another installment.

That same light shone on the day I lost my virginity. Its reflection on the blonde hair of my first boyfriend. On his fair, soft skin. His adolescent, rosy cheeks matching the sun that was warming up his mother’s bedroom.

My long walks through Los Palos Grandes, listening to the Arctic Monkeys, are colored by the same hue.

Caracas has the Sun. It’s lovingly held by the mountain that surround our lives in the city. That mountain is our North Star.

Caracas is a valley, and I was lucky enough to grow up in a neighborhood that was built on one of the mountains. My apartment had the best view of the city. I’ve written about it before here. This is also truth. Everyone said it when they visited: “What an amazing view of the city you guys have! What a privilege!”. They were right.
The moment you stepped into our living room, the city would greet you. The glass doors of the balcony allowed every visitor to see the whole valley. Highs and lows. That pink light grazing the hardwood dinner table.

Caracas is a beast, sleeping soundly under a worrisome Moon and waking up to a pink Sun.

The sky turns into a strong blue color when it’s December. Deep. It looks like the Ocean. People always talk about it. “That December blue”, they said. I hope they still say it.

We also don’t have seasons. We have Dry Season and Rainy Season. Caracas is wet for half of the year and unquenchable for the other half.
Never too warm, never too cold.
There was one year where a cold front passed by and I remember waking up to go to school and it was freezing. Temperature dropped to 11 degrees Celsius and people where out literally wearing parkas and scarfs. I remember wearing my white parka to walk to the car at 6:40 am in the morning thinking the world was going to end. I’ve never been so cold in my life before.

I’m noticing I’m writing “we” a lot, and I don’t live there. I left Caracas 12 years ago.

I don’t know how to continue. This has never happened to me before. Never.
Usually, words exist in my mind and reach my fingertips in seconds if they don’t escape my mind first.

But Caracas, Caracas, Caracas.
Caracas is the monster that lived under my bed.
The lover that lied to me until I came back.
Caracas is my mother. Caracas broke every single bone in my body.

Maybe I will not be able to finish this one. Maybe I’ll just be a rambling covered in tears and sculpted as bad Twitter poetry.

I’m struggling. Her streets flash inside my eyelids and I’m starting to cry.

I don’t know what to say. So I’ll probably do a chronological retelling of my life.

I was born on November 18th, 1995. In San Bernardino, Caracas.

I was raised at El Naranjal, Los Samanes neighborhood, Baruta county, Miranda State. I lived there since 1996 until 2014 when I moved to Santiago de Chile. 18 years. I never moved.

I went to pre school in Club Hípico, a neighborhood close to my house.

I went to primary school in Cumbres de Curumo, a different neighborhood that was a bit further away but also close to El Naranjal. From 2002 until 2008.

My mom and dad are divorced since I’m 3, I think. It never really mattered to me. My dad was always there and he’s a nice guy. He’s married to his amazing wife, a woman that I’ve not only considered family since forever, but that gave me a different Caracas in ways she probably doesn’t know. She gave me another family - her family - when she married my dad. A stepsister. Three cousins. A couple sets of adults that I think of as aunts and uncles. She has always been there for me.

My dad and his wife lived in Catia for many years, until they moved to a satellite city called Guarenas when I was a teenager. I never cared much for Guarenas, but as I grew up it grew on me. My dad’s apartment has always been a place where I’m treated like a princess. My dad cooks the meals I want, he makes my bed, he watches with me the movies I want to watch when I’m there. I didn’t always loved going to my dad’s house, but looking back now, his apartments have always been one of those safe places where I felt at home. I spent more time in Catia than in Guarenas because I think they moved when I was like 15 and I left the country 4 years later.

So I guess that I started going to Catia when I was in 2nd grade or so, and then to Guarenas when I was halfway through high school.

I went to high school at San Luis, a neighborhood in El Cafetal. El Cafetal is a place with a big avenue that connects different neighborhoods. From 2008 until 2013.

I started university in 2013 at UCV - Universidad Central de Venezuela. My mom’s alma mater. The campus is far away from my apartment, on a neighborhood called Los Chaguaramos. I went there for two months, then I saved my spot for 99 years and left. Yes. You can do that at the UCV. I literally have a piece of paper that says I can restart and re-enroll whenever I want to at the start of a semester for the next 99 years. This is not a joke or an exaggeration. I don’t know where that piece of paper is, but I have it on my document folder. I’m an immigrant, of course I have a folder with all my IDs.

I had a couple odd jobs before I left the country.
One in El Cafetal, at Centro Comercial Plaza Las Américas, working as a clerk at a baby gym that was owned by a friend’s mom.
Another one at my aunt and uncle’s hair salon that was at a mall in Los Próceres.
The one that I stayed in until I left - and where I learned to wait tables and to really work - was at Centro Comercial El Sambil. The biggest mall in Caracas, in Chacao.
I also worked one time as a bartender for a week at a hotel in the official historical downtown of the city. And at a free food station during Christmas where we were serving free Christmas food that was payed by the local government.

But then, I left.

I think the best way to do this would be to break down my life on every neighborhood I spent time on.

I’ll start with home.

El Naranjal, like I said, is in Los Samanes. A middle class neighborhood next to a big barrio called Barrio Las Minas. We call low-income localities ‘barrios’. Someone from a ‘barrio’ is basically from the slums or the projects. I’m trying to be as PC as possible but it’s the truth. So I’ll be referring to the impoverished parts of the city as barrio/barrios from now on.

El Naranjal was right next to some pretty fancy apartment buildings and also next to Barrio Las Minas. It feels almost like a portal, a door. If you crossed it towards the barrio, you needed to be careful. If you went the opposite way, people had pools in their buildings and expensive cars.
I was in the middle. And that weirdly represents exactly my socioeconomic status.
I’ve always been in the middle.
I went to Disney like 4 times when I was a child, yes, but my mom always struggled. My dad has never been close to rich. I was perceived as an middle class girl because I’m well read, I went exclusively to private schools and I travelled abroad once a year. But I was probably more of a working class girl.
El Naranjal is the perfect analogy for that. I had neighbors who were dirt poor and neighbors who were doctors and lawyers and had a fair amount of money.

As I grew up, I realized that El Naranjal was more of a project than I wanted to admit. I never felt ashamed of living there, but at some point it got dangerous. They were actually mugging people inside of the complex.

El Naranjal consists of 6 apartment buildings all built together in a huge complex with a big center square and businesses working on a micro-strip mall beneath that main plaza. Each building has 23 floors, each floor has 6 apartments.
It is huge. It is definitely something very resembling to what you would call "The Projects".
You can see those 6 towers from all over the city. I use to look for them while looking over the horizon on every balcony I visited. They were always there. Obelisks. Cluttered. Housing thousands of families just like mine.

El Naranjal had a big community of kids that played all over the place. Skaters, soccer aficionados, baseball fans, kids running around. Like it’s supposed to happen. I never really made friends there. As a young child, I was shy. But I remember seeing the kids play. A bunch of them. They were also tinted by that pink light. That light reflected on the small fountain at the plaza. I played soccer there once and got hit and never went down again.
I also skated down a ramp there and broke my wrist. A neighbor help me and told my mom to take me to get some X-Rays the next day.

—

My mom used to get pain medication injections from our next door neighbor. An amazing, cool, intelligent, and absolute diva called L.
L smoked Marlboro Lights. She’s originally from Uruguay but worked for the European Union and lived in Caracas for probably 40 years.
I could see her bedroom window from my balcony, she kept it open and smoke came out of there all the time.
Her apartment was right next to mine. She and my mom where friends.
I have a lot of memories of L’s apartment, not only because it was very cool and my mom used to hang there a lot, but because we use to watch elections at her house.
See, there were 13 mayor elections in Venezuela from 1999 until 2013. We spent a lot of time at L’s house. I remember us leaving our doors open, so I could go from L’s apartment to mine without locking myself in or out. And L smoked a lot. So my mom, her son, and another neighbor called G, used to watch the elections together at L’s house. G was also a very cool lady, she was rough and kind, and had three boys that were older than me. I don’t know if this will ever reach him, but the older of G’s sons is now very famous. I think he also lives here in Mexico City, which is crazy. And what’s even more insane, is that he also lived in Santiago de Chile for a time, just like me. We have moved together by chance.
We both came from the same building, same city. We grew up 3 floors away from each other. I think he’s like 8 years older than me.

L’s apartment had thousands of books. The pink golden light entered through her golden window frames, mixing with the smoke coming from her full ashtrays.

—

Another neighbor that was a big part of my life was P. She was a single mom and lived on the third floor. She was also very involved in the community of the church she went to. P was extremely hardworking and my mom’s coworker for years.

She had a son and I hated him, but we ended up spending a lot of time together. He loved soccer and in a very weird and in not-the-best way, he was proud of his German heritage. I hope it’s self explanatory when I say that. I noticed right away. He was rebellious and made his mom’s life a living hell. A mad, violent, redheaded boy. He was the first person to ever show porn to me. I remember the name of the video: “Marcela y Marcelo putas argentinas”. She had a huge bush. I was very shocked by the whole affair but I was never traumatized by it.

P lived with her son, her aunt and her mother. Her aunt was a very old lady, I was always afraid of her. But her mom was an actual angel on earth. This small, petite woman is the kindest and more selfless person I’ve ever met. She fed me thousands of time while my mom was working. She always smiled. She ardently believed in God. Their apartment smelled like flowers and old women.
The fucking redhead kid was a stupid asshole and mistreated them all the time.

When I was like 10 years old, I had a nanny that practiced the same branch of Evangelism that P and her family participated in. My nanny wanted to join a church group and since P’s church group gathered at her apartment on Wednesdays at 6 pm, my mom told me I had to be empathetic and go with my nanny to the meetings because I could not be left alone. My nanny just wanted community. I was mad, but since I had no other choice, I started going to those gatherings.
I learned a lot about Evangelism - they hate to be called that way, the called themselves ‘Christians’. But I asked my mom, “Aren’t we all Christians? Even us that are raised Catholics?”, my mom said yes. But explained to me that ‘Evangelic’ was considered by them to be a pejorative term, so I started to call them Christians.

That group of people are the kindest group of people I’ve ever encountered. Is crazy to look back and see myself as an annoyed pre-teen pouiting at their meetings, hating on a community and their reunions, in which they basically just talked about God, sang songs, and prayed together. Kids are dumb.
I never liked their vocabulary because it felt very gory to me. One of the expressions they used was “Let God bathe you in his divine blood” and I told my mom “Sorry mom, but I don’t want anyone bathing me in their blood”. She said it was okay, that we were Catholic and that I didn’t need to believe in the ways they believed, but that I had to respect their faith and their ways. They were good people.
They knew I was there because I had nowhere else to go and because my mom was making me, either way, they always treated me like one of their own. They put their hands on my forehead and prayed for me.
When I got a spinal fusion surgery, they sent flowers and again, prayed for me. One of the girls from the group that was kind of my age and some sort of friend to me, went to visit with her parents - I’m pretty sure her dad was the Pastor of that congregation.
They taught me a lot of things about the Bible, now I can recite John 3:16 by heart and I have a favorite book. Yes, of course my favorite book is Job’s.

I hated going to those meetings, but I remember them with a lot of love and I’m so grateful for that experience. Being there taught me tolerance and respect for belief, for faiths different than my own. Their unyielding kindness is something I’ve yet to see again. I hope everyone from that group is doing okay, I hope they’re happy and I hope they also remember me with love.

—

When I was 16 I met a guy on Twitter that randomly wrote to me - yes, kids, we used to meet people on Twitter - and we started chatting. It turned out that he was working as a DJ for a very famous rapper that lived in Barrio Las Minas. We started flirting online and at some point we noticed that we both lived in El Naranjal. Everyone around me told me I shouldn’t be dating a neighbor because ‘what if you stop and then you have to see him on the elevator’. But he lived on a different building inside of the complex, so that was not a problem.
I will write about him when I write about the men I’ve kissed in a later installment.
We used to hang out on the small plaza between his building and mine and smoke weed and talk. Our relationship was absolutely casual, but I remember his room a lot. His mom once made arepas for us to eat while watching Friends on his bed. She was a kind lady.
It was also very practical because he had a car and sometimes he used to give me a ride back home when rap concerts we both went to ended.
We walked a lot around El Naranjal and sit on the huge parking lot of the complex just to chat and see the stars. We even once fucked on a hill of the mountain that hugged the parking lot. I was scared that someone would see us but it was exhilarating.

I was never in love with him, but it was nice to experience a crush inside of the place I grew up in.

The pink light of the sunset blinded me, reflecting on the rearview mirror, while we were driving up the endless ramps of the parking lot.

—

I have thousands of stories from El Naranjal.

The hours I spent at the small strip center beneath the plaza because it had a Cyber Café where I used to play GTA and Vice City, the hair salon where my mom used to get her hair done, the bakery where I bought tons of pan dulce and gum, the stationary/school supplies store that saved me when I forgot to tell my mom I had to buy a ‘cartulina’ to take to school on the next day - something every latino kid will relate to.

People watching at the main plaza.
The sunset you could see from the parking lot.
Buying weed from Airé, a guy that lived in Las Minas but sold weed inside of El Naranjal’s parking lot.
Blowing my first boyfriend on the 23rd floor of my building.
Throwing water balloons of my balcony to see if they fell in the flower pots on the first floor.
Walking through the different nooks, plazas, stairs of the complex listening to music.
Breaking my wrist at the ramp going down to the mini strip center.
The long ramp that was the only way of getting into the complex, so inclined that cars used to turn off in the middle of it.
Stairs. Thousands of stairs.
People, different people every time. Everyday. And also, the same people, every time, every day.

I’m grateful I grew up there. There was always noise.
Las Minas used to be a very chill barrio, but to say I didn’t fall asleep thousands of times to the sound of gunshots would be a lie. I used to fall asleep while people where shooting each other a couple blocks away from us.

I went back home for the last time in 2022 and got to smoke a cigarette while crying in our old parking spot looking over the city.

My home. The home that raised me. The apartment my mother owned and had to sell for mere fucking change because Venezuela sucks and the country is a fucking place filled with dread and pain and destruction.

My balcony housed the pink light of the city every afternoon. That same light traveled in between the buildings of El Naranjal, covering every inch of that place.

Now, I want to write about Catia. And my eyes fill with tears because I have so many happy memories there.

Catia is also considered a barrio. But it’s so big, it has barrios inside of it.

What’s crazy about this place, is that while my mom gave me Caracas and the love I have for the city that made me, my stepmother gave me a whole different version because she and her family are from all the way across town. My stepmother gave me Catia. One of the places I love the most in the world. A place that was far away from my apartment in El Naranjal.
Two mothers appeared for me and showed me the city in its entirety.

I remember the day I first visited my dad’s apartment in Catia. It was a small, cute, two bedroom apartment in a building that only had 4 units. It was on the first floor.

I never knew the lady that used to be my dad and stepmom’s neighbor, but my stepmom’s sister used to live with her family on the second floor. That was amazing, because she had two sons and one daughter. Her daughter was my age and we grew up together. Her sons were older than us, but we spent a lot of time playing and just being around each other because of the proximity that came with living on the same building.
I love those three cousins. They’re not my cousins by blood, but I always felt like they were. We dined together, watched horror movies - which I hated but they loved to see me scared - played and watched sunsets on the rooftop. We called that the ‘Platabanda’. We gave each other tattoos with needles and ink from pens, we smoked cigarettes in secret, drank in secret, talked about grown up stuff.
Their parents were extremely hardworking. Their dad owned a hot dog and hamburger cart, that was parked in front of my stepmom’s mom’s house. It was awesome. We always ate hot dogs together.
We were kids together.

There’s this beautiful memory I have of my cousin, saying to me that she wanted to name her first daughter Ashley. That’s an American name and there’s not a bunch of girls in Caracas named Ashley. We used to talk about that when we were like 8 years old.
Probably 20 years later, she got pregnant with a girl. That girl’s name is Ashley. I gave her my childhood bed as a gift when I came back in 2022. There’s something beautiful in knowing that Ashley slept - or maybe still does - in my childhood bed.
She is so loved. She was always so wanted. Her mother knew her name since she was a little girl.

My dad’s apartment was approximately 1KM away from my stepmom’s mother’s house. I think she and her siblings grew up in that house. A big house, filled with trinkets and people. We spent a lot of time there, me and my cousins, me and my stepmom and my dad.
My stepmom’s family is big. I’ve never had a big family on either side. So I loved going there. They did barbecues and parties and just gathered to be a family on weekends. And my dad used to park his car there because his building didn’t have a parking lot.

I also grew up in that house. An open floor house, with crevices and a big roof where we were not allowed to go but used to get up there either way.

People around me used to say Catia was dangerous. But when I was there I was always safe. I liked sitting on the porch of the house with my dad and the uncles. I liked going to the store with my cousins to play at the slot machines in the bodega and then spend our gains on sodas and candy.

I was always scared walking around at night, because in that context, I was an extremely posh girl in the middle of the barrio. Everyone knew that.

But I did stuff there that every kid should do. Run around in the streets, walk to the Vereda 8 to buy Helados de Teta - a typical ice cream dessert in Venezuela.
My dad used to bring me a Parrilla Mixta plate when he walked back to his house after parking the car at his in-laws garage.

To get to his house from the garage at my stepmom’s mom’s house we had to walk across a complex called Ciudad Tablita. It was a cute walk, long hallways that housed small 3 story buildings. Projects. Kids playing with balls. Late night basketball games at the court inside. Babies running around in diapers, open doors. Drunks. Teenagers drinking in corners. It was not safe, but nothing ever happened to us.

My dad and I used to get down at Estación Pérez Bonalde when we arrived to his house on the metro. None of my posh friends had ever visited that station. I don’t remember anything about it. I know that it was one station before the last station of Line 1.
But you could see the subways cars getting parked at night from my stepsister’s room’s window. I spent hours looking at the subway cars park there. Stationed in a big subway parking lot. I don’t know how that’s called, in English or in Spanish. I just remember loving that view. Knowing I was sleeping meters away from the subway cars.

When I was a little kid, my stepmom used to take me to the mercado. The Mercado de Catia is huge. I have a postcard from a set of sketches of Caracas’ buildings that my mom gave to me years ago. That’s the only one I kept from the set because that building meant so much to me. I hated the smell of the fish and chicken section and used to either gag or hold my breath while crossing it. My stepmom used to give me some cash so I could by cheap jewelry, trinkets, candy, and underwear. I loved it there. It was crowded, cheap, filled with people and stands in the middle of the street. I remember browsing with my stepmom through the underwear stand and getting a bunch of cotton panties and white socks.

Catia means a lot to me. That was the place that showed me how privileged I was as a kid. My mom and I never lacked anything. We never had luxury items, or expensive clothes. But in Catia I saw poverty. I saw struggle. In Catia I learned what a public school was. I got to see kids with ragged uniforms, torn shoes with holes in the soles. Hand me downs.

I went to the 23 de Enero, one of the biggest housing projects in Caracas. A massive complex that failed as a social initiative and now it’s just a huge barrio.

My dad even took me once to a horrible medical center managed by the government that was free. I had a tummy ache. They prescribed Aspirin to me and sent us home. My mom was appalled when I told her my dad took me there since I had medical insurance, but I was just happy I got to see the inside of one of the famous ‘Barrio Adentro’ - that was the name of those small free clinics.

I once dated a rapper for a couple weeks that was from Casalta, another barrio near Catia. Weirdly decent dude.

There was a brothel near my dad’s building called ‘La Casa Rosada’. I remember seeing prostitutes on the streets. Drunk men outside of liquor stores. Going to get cigarettes for my dad when I was 10.

Millions of bodegas and food vendors that sold goods through their house windows, you could see their grandmothers cooking while you waited for your order.

Catia has a huge heart, that opened to me and allowed me to be a scared kid that progressively got more comfortable and felt more at home with every weekend I went there to be with my dad and my stepmom.

I know now that posh people in Caracas are taking tours through Catia. Going to the church in the main plaza, walking down the main avenue and fetishizing the poverty that surrounds that amazing place. It makes me mad.

Last time I went to Caracas, my dad told me that it was unnecessary to go there. But he took me to my stepmom's house just so I could say hi to the part of her family that still lives there. I had a beer and a smoke and we left.

In Catia I knew love, family, community. I met hardworking people, with dreams, aspirations.
In Catia we got ready to see my stepsister get married while I was texting my first boyfriend. I remember doing my makeup on my dad’s dining table.

As I grew up, Catia grew on me. I wouldn’t change my years there for anything.

The pink lights reflected on my stepmom’s glass doors cabinet at 5 pm. The glare warmed my face like the sun. Her mini wine glasses shined with the moon.

I can’t wait to come back, even if it’s just to say hello to elders that won’t remember me, to streets that forgot my teenage steps, to walls that lost the touch of my hands years ago. Catia made me laugh until my stomach hurt. Those streets welcomed me even if I was a stranger, walking across them in the middle of the night. Catia is alive. She was alive before me and she is alive today.

When I started high school, I started frequenting El Cafetal.

El Cafetal is a county or something like it. A section in the south east of Caracas.
It has a huge main street that branches out into neighborhoods: Santa Sofía - there’s a hospital there. San Luis - where my high school was. Santa Paula - where I went to some vocal therapy sessions. Santa Marta - I don’t even know what was in Santa Marta. Chuao - where one of my dearest of friends lived with her mom and her sisters. La Guairita - where I used to buy pirate DVDs. Caurimare - where I used to go to the Burger King with my friends after school. And, Plaza Las Américas - the mall where I spent most of my afternoons with my friends when I was in high school.

Every one of these neighborhoods I’m listing had distinctive things about itself.

San Luis was the one I spent the most time on because my high school was there.
My first boyfriend lived in the building right in front of our school, but somehow, he was always late.
Me and my friends used to hang before school at Da Walter’s. A pizza/café/dinner ran by Mr. Walter himself. They had the best pizza in the city. I would kill for a slice of Da Walter’s right now.
One funny thing about that place, is that since we used to go there everyday, they allowed us to pay later if we didn’t have cash with us. The day I lost my virginity, my boyfriend and I were dying of thirst after, and so went there to get a drink. I got a peach tea, Parmalat brand - my favorite drink in the world. And as I’m writing this, I don’t remember what he got. But we didn’t have money and we looked sweaty and tired, so they told us to pay later. We never did. I still owe them that money.

San Luis is built on a big hill, so walking from the main street is absolutely exhausting, but I did that thousands of times. They had workout equipment in the traffic island. And a shitty park at the end.

Da Walter’s was in a small mall. It had a gym, a pharmacy, a bookstore, a hair salon, a gym, a café, a supermarket, a tea shop, and a physical therapy place where I got most of the treatments I needed after my spinal fusion surgery.

That mall also had a big, open sky parking lot on the rooftop. It was dirty and mostly empty, so we spent hours and hours drinking, smoking, and just talking there after school.
It was across the street from our high school so it became a gathering spot for us.
I have countless memories on that mini mall’s parking lot. Crying, fighting with my boyfriend and my friends, doing indecent stuff on the stairs. Lots and lots of cigarettes watching the sunset there.
It felt like an extension of home.

We also used to walk up the mountain on a trail next to the road that had benches and workout equipment. And we used to hike up the mountain to do stuff there. I never fucked in that mountain but we did everything else.

My high school best friend used to play in the girls soccer team at the high school down the road from our high school. I spent whole afternoons watching those girls play and absolutely suck at it. I had a lot of fun hanging there, but God, they were bad.

The only time I’ve ever kissed someone under the pouring rain was outside of that soccer court. Next to a payphone. My boyfriend indulged me, and we shared a kiss that felt and looked like it was straight out of a rom-com. We were soaking wet.

We were precocious teenagers, doing all sorts of adult shit on those streets. We cried, sold weed to pay for alcohol, drank on the streets. Skins UK was on TV, we wanted that life, and to be honest, we kind of lived through it together.

I could write and talk about this place forever. San Luis is the place where I became a woman. Where I met my first love, fought my biggest fears, lost friendships, and lived my teenage years in.

The pink light caressed our giggly, blushed, teenage cheeks when I kissed my first love in every single corner of San Luis.

—

Santa Sofía was a smaller neighborhood than San Luis.
I went to the hospital that is there a couple times for checkups.

The pink light of the Sun moved between the trees covering both sides of the road.

—

Santa Paula was bigger. It was more residential than Santa Sofía.

I spent a lot of time there because one of my best friends lived there for a couple years. Their apartment was small and we always had amazing food there because her nanny was a good cook.
I think I was the first person they came out of the closet to. I remember their teary eyes saying that she was a lesbian. I’m sure they don’t mind me using the she in this context - or any context to be fair.
Their apartment was the place where I first fucked without using a condom. They allowed me and my boyfriend to sneak in their room when their mom was gone and covered for us with the nanny. I will never forget that moment.
My sweet, sweet friend N. We walked down the streets next to their building in pajamas, took photos, laughed. We were so happy there.
They listened to me for hours and hours while I cried and pined about unrequited love. We’ve had our ups and downs and we haven’t seen each other in a long time, but they are one of the people I love most in the whole world. Forever.

The pink light entered a small hallway that had a big, comfy chair in front of a window. I remember sitting there just bathing in sunlight.

I also had to go for a couple months when I was like 11 years old because I had nodules on my vocal chords and the doctor was convinced I needed vocal therapy. Martha was the name of the vocal therapist. A horrible, cruel woman. I hated her so much. I fantasized with throwing water balloons at her practice’s door and running away. She told me I couldn’t sing. She told me I spoke too loud.
She was absolutely right, but I hated her either way.

The pink light squeezed itself through the sliding glass doors of her office.

—

When I was a teenager a had a couple friends who lived in random streets that were part of El Cafetal.

My dear friend C lived in a big beautiful house with her family and I went there a couple of times for parties and to hang out. I remember the lawn in the back of her house, a gorgeous patio with a grill and outdoor sofas. I remember how the pink light covered the grass.
She was neighbors with another friend of ours, and the first time I kissed my partner was at his place. 15 years ago.
-
I briefly dated a guy that lived in a building on the main street. I never went up to his apartment but we used to sit on the plaza inside of his building complex and smoke weed and talk. I think we never kissed there. I will write about him when I write about the men I’ve kissed, because he was such a good guy. So tender.
-
There was this kiosk on the main street that was the only place in that part of the city where you could buy ice in the middle of the night. I used to always tag along with the car-owners to get ice when it ran out at parties.
-
I used to take the long road home just to spend extra time with my high school boyfriend, so we used to walk down to the bus stop on the main street and I would cross half of the city - unnecessarily - just to extend my time with him after school because he moved from the building in front of our high school to a further part of the city. I always said I didn’t wanted him to go alone, it was not that. It was the time we spent on the bus in El Cafetal’s main street traffic together. Sharing wired headphones.

I remember the pink light hitting his eyelids while an Eminem song played on his banged up Mp3 player.

—

I also spent a lot of time in Chuao for different reasons.
The main one was that one of my best friends from high school lived there. Her apartment was a happy place.
She’s the friend I painted purple to go to the Justin Bieber show with. We got along extremely well and had a lot in common.
I love her to death.
Her apartment was gorgeous, big, and beautifully decorated because her mom is one of the coolest moms I’ve ever met. She lived there with her mom and her two younger sisters. It was a house that felt like girlhood. Her mom kept candy bowls on the table and I remember her saying that “candy is the children’s happiness”. They’re also all very creative and crafty women. Her mom was a designer and my friend ended up doing the contemporary version of that. Her parties were always amazing.
She is the one that showed me 80’s movies. The Rocky Horror Picture Show, we saw laying on the floor of her living room because her mom used to take out the mattresses from all the rooms and created a huge bed for all of us girls to watch movies and eat snacks.

I remember doing my makeup countless times in their bathroom. Doing fashion shows for each other. Laughing together. All the time.

Staying there for days just to be together doing nothing.

The first time I was robbed I was on my way to M’s house. It was raining and a horrible man stopped his bike next to me and pointed a gun at my face. I still remember getting to save my iPod Touch by hiding it on the lining of my tote bag and saying to him that I had nothing on me and that I was just buying menstrual pads. He cursed me and left. When I arrived at M’s building I vomited and she was scared and worried. She held my hair and called my mom.

The closest thing I could say about M’s house is that it felt exactly like the Bennet’s or the Little Women’s house.
Girlhood in the flesh, periods, crying, yelling, pouting, exchanging clothes and shoes. Her house was a sanctuary for girls. It’s a hard place to describe because honestly I just remember the pink light coming from every direction. Her curly hair bouncing on the hallway, her bedroom with drawings on the walls.

I will say it again, we were girls together. That’s how her apartment felt like. Like a real life dollhouse. We got to be girls there.
-
Two girls that are sisters lived in the building next to M’s. I also spent a lot of time there. And while I don’t necessarily have bad memories from that beautiful place - a very well designed and decorated apartment because their mom has amazing taste and some money - I don’t think I had as much fun in there because while we were friends, I always remember them being very mean to me in many ways.
I totally get now that there were not bad intentions behind it. But they were kind of bullies. They used to make me cry for fun. I cry very easily. But they were my good, good friends for a long time. We drifted apart in our adulthood for a lot of different reasons. Mistakes I made, and I guess the fact that they never actually loved me.
I’m trying not to hold a grudge against them. I really do. But those conflicts still ache. So I’m giving myself grace.
You could see an airport from their living room window, I remember the pink light glare reflecting on airplanes taking off.
They are talented, good women. I really hope they’re happy.
-
My partner’s high school was also in Chuao. It was a shitty high school, and I had some friends studying there so I got to spend time in their courtyard and I even sneaked into one of my partner’s classes one time which is insane.

But I remember smoking a cigarette with my old friend S in a hallway at like 5 pm. I don’t even remember why was I there, but the pink light engulfed the hallway and we were talking while seeing the smoke from our cigarettes dance in the air.

—

I used to go to Caurimare to buy pirate DVDs with my mom and my dad - I wrote about those street vendors here. Pink sunsets were crazy on that big street, reflecting on every DVD cover.

And my aunt Lissette used to live near there for a while with her partner on a beautiful small house in a grassy patch on a hill. They had a Madonna poster. Cats. A big patio and chairs outside. We did a couple barbecues there. I have memories of their huge group of friends laughing and dancing there.
I will also write about my aunt later, of course she deserves 10,000 words to her name.
But the pink light was bright when they lived there.

—

Then, there was Plaza Las Américas.

Plaza Las Américas is a mall that’s on the edge of El Cafetal. That was the mall I spent most time in.
It was a weird spot, because it had an old mall kind of glued together to a new mall. “Plaza Nuevo” and “Plaza Viejo”.

Plaza Nuevo opened when I was 6. The old one has been there since the 80s.
Plaza Nuevo was a regular middle-class mall. It had a food court and hair salons and shops. Open spaces and regular stores.

But, Plaza Viejo was mystical. It was behind the new mall. They were connected by a hallway but it's still mesmerizing to me that everything changed so much when you went from one to the other.

Thanks to the design and construction materials, Plaza Viejo was stuck in time. It looked like the 80s. Old escalators and grey walls. Old hardware stores, a horrible, smelly supermarket. Craft stores.

But it had a special charm because one of the floors was dedicated to Punk, Skate and alternative culture. That was the place were Alt kids and teenagers got their clothes from. They sold brands that were unavailable in the rest of the country. I remember getting my first HotTopic t-shirt from a store there. They sold geeky shit, original gaming companies merch, a shit ton of Adventure Time’s themed items and collectibles. I loved it there.

They got tattoo parlors and weed paraphernalia shops. It was a teenager’s dream.
I got my second tattoo there, all the piercings I have and my earlobe expansions. We were friends with some of the adult shop owners, which in hindsight seems a little bit weird, but they were good folk. They talked to us, warned us about using drugs and were hippies. I hope Aldo, and Hoshi, and Camacho are all doing okay now.

We spent a lot of time there as teenagers, getting our ears pierced and then smoking cigarettes on the open sky parking lot. The pink light was strong there, heavy, covering the cars that were abandoned in those spots.

Plaza Viejo also had a movie theatre. I saw Avatar there with my first boyfriend, on that same day my mom got me my first Blackberry phone.
He kissed me under the blue light emanating from the screen and we broke up right after because I confessed to him that I kissed a different boy the night before. I can’t stand Avatar movies because of that memory. I remember the blue tears coming out of his green eyes, sitting on the corner of the screening room.
I also watched New Moon, Eclipse, Breaking Dawn pt 1 & 2, and the whole Hunger Games franchise movies there with my girlfriends. They used to go with me on the day of the premiere because they knew that meant a lot to me.

There used to be a dive bar in the Plaza Viejo parking lot called Tepeyac. It was a Mexican themed restaurant-bar and they allowed us to buy alcohol there even when we were underage. We spend a lot of time drinking there. My partner told me he wanted to be with me on the chairs outside of the bar 13 years ago.

Plaza Las Américas holds memories of my life. I’ve kissed boys on their emergency stairs, cried for love in the bus stop in front of the mall. Cured hangovers on the empanada place on the last floor. That was one of the malls that saw me grow up.
We drank and shopped and talked and laughed in those hallways. I will always love that place.

How the pink light covered our food trays at the food court. The dark entrance of the cinema. Crying on the underground parking lot in front of the bar.

@miracaracasCC Plaza Las Américas I ¿Has recorrido esta parte del CC? #plazalasamericas #elcafetal #elcafetalcaracas #venezolanosenusa🇻🇪🇺🇸 #venezuela🇻🇪⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ #fyyy #miracaracas #venezolanosenelexterior #caraqueños #caraqueñosporelmundo #caracastiktok #venezuelatiktok

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This is a video of Plaza Viejo.

Another neighborhood that was instrumental in my life was Santa Fé.

Santa Fé is also on a hill. It connects different neighborhoods like Valle Arriba, La Alameda, Santa Fé North and South.

—

My high school best friend moved to Santa Fé South when we were in 9th grade I think. That apartment was on a building that had a pool and a cabin on top of a small hill where we used to hang out.
I will describe her place when I write about her, but in that building we lived so many different things. Nights spent in the back of trucks and cars drinking and listening to music in the cul-de-sac.
I think I once fucked a guy in his car on that same street but I’m not sure if we did it or if the cops came and we never did. I forgot.

I know I kissed a guy I was dating on a bench on that same cul-de-sac. I ghosted him without knowing what ghosting was. Remember, it was 2011. That term did not exist yet.

But we had our Prom party at the event salon at my best friend’s building. Even the Mormon girl in our class had a drink that day.
I think that on that pool house bathroom that same day, was the last time my first boyfriend ever fucked me. It was uncomfortable and we were still wet from going in the pool. He smelled like chlorine.

I smoked Canadian weed on her apartment once and had the time of my fucking life.
We used to throw big parties in her apartment and that’s the one I mentioned on my last installment here.

Her house was a safe place. I remember crying in her shower.

How the pink light collided with her mom’s crystals and every inch of their living room was painted by the rainbow.

—

My friend S lived with his dad, his stepmom and his little brother on a beautiful fancy building in La Alameda - a small neighborhood just up a hill from Santa Fé.

It used to have a park in front of the building complex and a huge courtyard behind, but inside of the complex.

That apartment was amazing because my friend was usually alone and we got into all kinds of mischievous shit in there. His room was an attic. Which was extremely cool. I remember kissing him on the bed in front of the floor to ceiling window. His majestic curls all over my face. He was always a good kisser, but he was even a better friend. We never dated, but we loved each other so much. We still chat on IG often because we’re still friends. We never stopped being friends, we are just in different sides of the world.

We used to go up to the roof of the building and watch the sunset together. 7 kids sharing cigarettes and light beers. Laughing. Running across a roof. Rebellious but kind. We were always together.

Before we started going to his building and his house, we used to hang at an empty and broken basketball court that was a block away from his building.

We called it “El Point”.
I think that place and the things we lived there together as friends deserve their own text. I still don’t know where I’ll fit in this crazy and obnoxious memoir I am writing, but I’m reluctant to write about that place right now because my happiest memories where made there. El Point is the place where I kissed every single one of my friends. I even fucked my first boyfriend on the mountain there once. But again, I’ll expand about our one time cruising experience when I write about him. LOL.

But my most important friendships were made in Santa Fé. We were a family there.

We were teenagers together, wild, angsty, horny, insane. To quote the modern day poet, Charli xcx “real incestuous vibes” - and I bet Americans will be shocked of the usage of that term, because I know they don’t call it that way and for some reason, Latinos and British people do.

On those parks we said goodbye to our first two friends that left the country with their parents because of the political situation we were living in.
I will never forget those last two hugs from my two dear, dear friends. That pain will stay with me forever.
Santa Fé witnessed a bunch of kids say goodbye to their friends for the first time.

But that peach toned sun tanned our cheeks, warmed our beers, illuminated our smiles.

—

I could also talk for hours about how the mall at Santa Fé was very important in my youth. And it’s crazy I’m publishing about this today, because today are 16 years since the last time my first boyfriend left me. Right there. At the Centro Comercial Santa Fé. I will write about this later. Because it’s a horror story taken straight out of an early 2000s dramedy with Julia Roberts.

—

Santa Fé was the place that saw me at my lowest and at my best. It holds the memory of the moment where I got my heart broken for the first time. There are still pieces of me on those flower pots on the stairs to the mall. My heavy steps still appear as a shadows when it rains.
But it also holds my memories from the best times I ever shared with friends. The love we had for each other. The closeness of teenage friendships.

How an old, unused basketball court got us together in the first place.
Kids, we were kids, under the stars.
Dreaming about growing up.
We are all in different countries today, but I have a tattoo that I got in honor of that magical place we inhabited for countless nights. My own private Idaho. Where we used to point at the Orion constellation and hold hands. Three stars, bounding my memories of them. Reminding me of those times every time I look up to the night sky.

The pink sun shined for us on every sunset we shared there, over cheap wine and Chinese cigarettes.

This is endless.
I’m noticing that there’s no way I could stop writing about Caracas right now.

It is insane to try and fit a whole life in less than 10,000 words.

18 years of myself. The roads I took.

I’ll keep going.

In Chacao, I learned how to write.

The library there was offering cheap creative writing courses by a bunch of cool young adults that were writers. My teacher on that course was I. An amazing writer and my first mentor.
I think he’s very proud of me today. After all, I’m the only one of the group that’s still doing this.
He’s publishing a book of his poems this month.

I used to wait for the course to start in the plaza in front of the library listening to the Arctic Monkeys. Knee Socks.
On that plaza, I met the most beautiful girl I’ve ever laid eyes on. Her name was Mariana. She told me she was bisexual and gave me a small peck on the lips. Best day of my life — why lie.

That plaza was a gathering spot for intellectual teenagers and alternative kids. I met there my good friend Maia, and almost 16 years after that moment, she is the one that inspired me to write this memoir. Her company was doing a publishing challenge a couple months ago and that is why I started to write this.
Her long curls and bold makeup made her the coolest girl in the block. She’s always been an inspiration to me.

I also met my friend Milena there, who is now - in very weird ways - my boss. I love her to death. We’ve been friends for 17 years. Last April, when we were celebrating her birthday here in Mexico City, I saw her surrounded by her friends and people that love her. And I thought to myself that I’m the one that’s known her the longest out of everyone there, aside from her sister. I was so happy to see her so happy.

Milena and I used to take long walks around Los Palos Grandes and talk for hours. She then lived with her partner for a while and they had a very cool apartment in Chacao. It’s crazy that I’m writing this an hour and a half after having a work meeting with her. How life managed to take us to the same exact spot so many years later. She’s been my confidant, my driver, my friend, for many, many years. And this friendship started in Chacao.

I spent countless hours in Plaza Altamira, just walking around and people watching.

I used to wait for El León - a cantina - to open at 11 am so I could have a beer there listening to music and writing after I turned 18.

Chacao was cool, honest, clean, safe.

The pink light covered the streets of that county like the leaves begged for it. Alex Turner yelling on my headphones while I watched kids skate and bathe on that special sunlight.

Then, I think I need to talk about San Bernardino.

San Bernardino is a neighborhood that’s also up a hill. My best friend María lived there with her mom, I think her whole life.

That was a second home to me. They taught me a lot.
And I know I could probably get hate for reasons that only someone that could hate on me for this would understand. But she and her mother gave me a home for years.
I learned a lot from them. A special kind of tolerance I call it. They taught me things that I would have never learned as a kid from the posh areas of the city and I will forever be grateful for that.

María shared her life with me. Her friends. Her thoughts. Her mother. Her aunt. Her pain. She has been the undeniable constant in my life. We’ve had our problems - and we for sure still do. But I don’t think I love a friend more than I love her. I thought I did, but as I’ve grown and had to look my old friendships with perspective, I also think nobody loves me like she does.

It’s fucking unfair to only dedicate a section of this to her, her house, her dog Negrito, and her mother. They held space for my madness like nobody ever did.

I am a terrible friend and I don’t even remember how we first met right now. When she reads this, she’ll hold it over my head and say something to me. I know she will. Because that’s what we do. We call each other out.

María has fed me and dried my tears more times than I can count. And it’s crazy that I have almost no physical memento from her to write about. So her neighborhood is the medium I’m using.

But it’ll never be enough. Never.

It doesn’t matter how precise my description of how the pink light entered the hollowed tiles of her kitchen. There’s not enough words in any language to describe the unconditional love she’s given me for years. No thanks for the food her nanny made us. Not even the story of when she took me to her grandmother’s town in the countryside and how we ran through the biggest rain pour I’ve seen in my life.

María showed me a side of Caracas I never knew that was there. San Bernardino was just the beginning of that discovery.

I would not be the person I am right now without her undying roughness and incomparable love.

She is the pink sun.

—

The last neighborhood I’ll write about specifically is Concresa.

Concresa was important in my life since I was a small child because my mom used to work there.
I saw the first Harry Potter movie at the Concresa cinema. A hideous but big complex in an even more horrible and sad mall. A mall forgotten by time. Left behind. It actually gave Backrooms vibes most of the times.

Concresa is a small neighborhood with two malls connected to each other: Plaza Humboldt and CC Concresa. Both extremely lame. Humboldt had a cyber cafe, my mom’s office, a bowling alley, a supermarket and a small cinema complex.
And CC Concresa had some ugly clothing stores, a Subway, a Wendy’s, a juice store, a sports bar, some banks and the big cinema complex.

—

My favorite cousin, her mom and her two sisters lived in a huge apartment complex next to both of those malls and a smaller one called La Pirámide.

That apartment was one of the places I called home, so many times. When I escaped from home at 14, she was the aunt I called to pick me up from Santa Fé because I didn’t wanted to sleep on a rooftop with my boyfriend. She picked me up and took me to her house. Talked to my mom.
She always took care of me as if I was her own daughter. She still does it. She recommended a very intense movie to me when I called her in despair a year ago, I won’t tell which movie it was because I would give myself away. But she knows me. And they always lived near Concresa. Even their first apartment was there. The apartment where I watched my little cousins grow. Where my cousin and I played with Barbies.

My aunt taught me so much. And her house was always safe. We were safe to be there. To drink there. She knew we smoked and never said anything to us.

She even hosted my Quinceañera at her apartment because my mom would not allow a party with alcohol. So naturally, she bought us 5 rum bottles and a shit ton of beers and mixers and I was puking and sleeping in my cousin’s bed at 10 pm.
It was fucking awesome.

We were teenagers there. We have an amazing picture of my cousin, her best friend and me, boobs out, wearing long skirts, sitting on my cousin’s bedroom floor, drunk as fuck just the three of us. She was playing Apocalyptica on the Cello and her friend and I were singing Nothing Else Matters. We were so happy and reckless, but in there, we were always safe.

The pink light entered the windows of my aunt’s living room, shining on her Buddha statues, her crystals, her small mirrored wind pipes. Her house was a sanctuary. The first time I stayed awake all night was there. The pink light also shined in the morning, I thought to myself while smoking a cigarette with my cousin’s boyfriend with our hands hanging from the windowsill.

—

Concresa was also home to a cul-de-sac we called ‘La Cuadra’. My cousin’s first long-term boyfriend lived there, and all of his friends lived on the buildings inside of that small street.

I spent countless nights just hanging and drinking there with those boys. I fell in love with one of them, it was rocky, uncomfortable, and messy. He never really loved me, but he was kind and he had soft hands. I’ll also talk about him when I write about men.

I learned a lot about men at La Cuadra. They were like 8 guys there that were friends since they were little boys. They played soccer together. They became men together. They were absolutely horrible men. There’s only one of those dudes I would meet to have a beer with today. But those experiences also taught me a lot.
One of them sexually harassed me and all the others did was laugh. I remember sleeping - absolutely consensually - with one of them and everyone making fun of me because he was dirt poor.
My cousin’s boyfriend was my best friend, for years. He really knew me. He protected me. He never tried to sleep with me or anything because he was like 7 years older than me. Even when he and my cousin broke up, she stopped talking to me and he stuck right by my side when shit went down. He stood by me on many similar occasions. Until he didn’t. And to write a phrase that will only be understandable for myself, he exploded, like a Supernova.

I learned about bad, selfish, trashy men in there. Men that were walking alone through life. With no fathers, single mothers struggling to keep them healthy and to pay for their education. Misogynistic men. Abusive. Uneducated.

Like I said, there’s only one or two of those men that I would go to see today. I remember them fondly. But I won’t ever forget their mistakes.

The pink light hit every afternoon, and you could see it reflecting on the thousands of windows of the buildings surrounding that small street we inhabited together for years.

My mom took the time to show me the whole of our city. Nobody loves Caracas more than my mom.

I’ve walked every inch of my home town:

• Walked drunk at 6 pm in heels through Av Baralt to meet my friend María

• Raved in millionaire’s houses in La Lagunita

• Threw parties in Cumbres de Curumo

• Got stopped by the cops in the middle of the Autopista Prados del Este

• Ate hot dogs in Plaza Venezuela

• Bought trinkets at Boulevard Sabana Grande

• Tendered a bar at in a hotel in el Centro, right next to the Capitolio metro station

• Worked at the biggest mall in the city, El Sambil

• Walked alongside highways where I shouldn’t

• Tasted cocaine with the tip of my tongue from the finger of an unhoused street vendor in Bellas Artes

• Cried at the Parque del Este

• Cruised in Santa Fé

• Skated at La Cota Mil

• Visited the 23 de Enero, Casalta, Petare, Caño Amarillo

• I saw the building that was made for El Sistema raise from the ground up

• Went inside thousands of bars, pubs, and clubs with a fake ID at 16

• Put my head out of the windows of cars driven by drunk teenagers

• Got lost in La Unión when looking to go eat cachapas

• Kissed a lot of boys in corners, dance floors, small apartments

• Watched the city from Valle Arriba

• Used the subway more times than every single one of my friends - except María

• Got robbed three times

• Spent almost every summer walking through El Tolón and there, someone asked me to take a picture with them once because I was Facebook famous - yeah, I know, right?

• I cried listening to The Pretty Reckless inside of the mall San Ignacio’s Farmatodo

• The last time I ever saw my first love was in Centro Plaza. We used to hang there a lot when we were young

• The first time he held my hand was at Centro Lido’s cinema complex

• I went to the camp at Parque del Este for at least 7 years so I know every inch of that park

• My mom took me to every-single-museum in the city

• I went to AA meetings at a church near my home and nobody ever found out

Caracas is a small beast.

Vicious.

Mad.

Wet.

Caracas has always felt like a woman to me.

But what I want to write about today is about how I feel God in me when I’m in a crowd. Because concerts are the only places where I actually feel the presence of God. So keep that in mind while you read this one.

GOD IS A GIRL IN A CROWD

I think my first concert was Belinda’s Fiesta En La Azotea at El Poliedro in Caracas. I was 9 years old. My mom took me. December 5th, 2004.
I loved Belinda so much, she was iconic, fashionable and absolutely cool.
Her set design was beautiful but simple: a rooftop. Filled with dancers, lights, and prop trash bins.

20 years later, on September 7th 2024, I saw her live again when she made a surprise appearance at ARRE Festival in Mexico City. Running from one stage to another when I found out that she was the surprise act was exhilarating. Sweating, sprinting toward a crowded stage with a drink in my hand, aching feet. And there she was on a mechanical bull. I cried. Belinda was the first pop star I loved. That was a full circle moment. I live in Mexico City, like I dreamt for years and she was singing here.
I was seeing her again, this time, closer, older.
But in that moment I was the same 9 year old girl. I lived my dream again. And I don’t know her new songs, I don’t follow her career. But I was a girl in a crowd. God was within me.

I don’t have the Fiesta en la Azotea ticket stub, but I have the ARRE Festival one:

The second concert I went to, was the Hilary Duff concert. April 10th, 2005.
My uncle was an executive at one of the companies that was sponsoring the show so he gave us tickets. I went to that show with my two cousins, their friends and my aunts. I remember some things about it: We got there in a shuttle and they gave us a goodie bag from the company - something that if you know me, you know meant a lot to me. It had a keychain, a lanyard, a fanny pack, plastic bracelets. We had VIP tickets, something my mom was never able to afford. I was extremely happy. We entered through the company doors and had tickets for free meals and drinks. My cousins were teenagers but they didn’t drink yet. I remember wanting the plastic cup they served whisky in. My cousin ordered one whisky, emptied it in the closest bin and gave the cup to me. I had that cup for years.
The concert was at the baseball stadium. That’s probably the first time I’ve seen so many people at the same place, together because of the same thing. It was a Hilary Duff concert but she had her sister as an opener and there were a bunch of acts from Venezuela playing first. It was a very long show. I remember falling asleep in the shuttle back home. I don’t remember how I got home, but I imagine my mom picked me up where the shuttle left us. It was a magical day. God was inside my goodie bag, keeping me company while I slept, a tired child after a long show.

The third concert I went to was the Floricienta Cast concert, also at El Poliedro in Caracas. May 28th 2006.
I remember that one so much. The whole cast from the series singing the songs I loved so much. I remember I took the series’ sticker album to the concert. It had some stickers that were Scratch-and-Smell. I held it tight to my chest for the whole show. God was the screaming girls sitting next to us.

I vividly remember when My Chemical Romance went to Caracas. It was a rock concert, and I was 12. My mom said no. I don’t know if she said no because it would be unsafe for us to go or if it was because she couldn’t afford the tickets.
I was pissed off because they used to be my favorite band when I was a tween. I missed it.
I finally saw them live on my 27th birthday here in Mexico in 2022 at Corona Capital. My mom got me the ticket as a birthday gift. I forgave her for not taking me in Caracas when I was twelve. Then, this year on February 13th, I saw them again, I went alone and bought my ticket with my own money. I had the time of my fucking life. I don’t have the ticket stub for the 2026 show because it was a digital ticket, something I obviously hate so much. But I have the Corona Capital 2022 one, the day I turned 27 years old and got to see one of my favorite bands for the first time. God was on the tears I shed when I listened to Helena live for the first time.

Another huge concert I went to in Caracas, was Justin Bieber’s Never Say Never tour.
My mom stood with me on a queue in the middle of the street for 9 hours, just to get the tickets with a special discount. She got me my ticket, and three or four more because my dear Mavi’s mom was going to take us and her sisters. I don’t remember if her youngest sister went, but I know that her mom is a fucking angel because taking four girls to a Justin Bieber concert is a very hardcore job to take on with such grace. She’s a cool mom so it was not surprising, but it’s still something I’m very grateful for.
Before the show, my friend wanted me to paint her whole body in purple paint. Of course I thought that was a very good idea. So I slathered purple paint all over her arms, legs and neck, and we got in the car. We were 16. It was chaos when we got there. Girls everywhere. Moms everywhere. Dads everywhere. Laughter. Tears of joy.
She sweated so much that all her clothes were stained with purple paint. She got paint in her eyes and on the car seats, her mom didn’t mind. It did not matter.
I remember holding her purple hands, staining mine.
I remember us being girls together. A sea of screaming girls, crying, dancing, singing along.
God was there, stained with purple paint in between me and my friend Mavi’s hand.

El Poliedro is the only big concert venue in Caracas aside from stadiums, I think it fits twelve thousand people. It’s probably a wreck today.
In Caracas, we never got the big tours when I was growing up. And my mom did not have a lot of money, so I missed a bunch of concerts I wanted to go to because of that.

I also went to see Romeo Santos in Caracas al El Poliedro. I loved Aventura. And I got free tickets thanks to a source I will not reveal because I’m not proud of it and because I could get in trouble if I write anything about her online. I managed to get those tickets because the girl that sourced them for us, was told by a close friend of mine that I wanted to go, and they just wanted to have fun and laugh at me crying in a bachata concert. She has always been a very generous person, that’s all I will say.
We got there on a huge SUV and the security guys called us “Personalities”, we laughed and I remember feeling important.
I’ll always be grateful to that girl for that experience. I got absolutely wasted and there’s a video of me crying to “Solo Por Un Beso” while holding - and drinking - two huge beers. God was on the smile in my friend’s María face, a place I usually find him, because she’s been with me through everything. But maybe, this was the first time I saw God in her love for me.

That same year, my best friend María’s mom got us first row tickets at El Poliedro to see a Cirque du Soleil show. It was fucking mesmerizing and my first time at a front row for anything. It was not a concert, but I also remember feeling God there. Feeling extremely lucky and privileged. Grateful to witness something so magnificent. My mom has always wanted to go to one of those shows and she’s never been because they are too expensive. I hope I can take her to one someday soon.

One of the best concerts I went in Caracas was Cultura Profetica’s show. I’m not a big reggae fan, but that band was very popular when I was growing up and a bunch of my friends were going so I went with them. I remember people were pissed of because the concert was a Bob Marley tribute and the setlist only included three or four songs from the band. I was stoned out of my mind, laying on the floor of the venue with my head resting on the lap of a boy I liked and surrounded by my friends in the sunset. I had fun. I was happy. God was smiling at me while that cute boy passed me a freshly rolled joint and the band played Redemption Song.

I think the most important concert I went to in Caracas was the NACH show because it was the first concert I attended alone.
Nobody wanted to go with me and it was the day before my 17th birthday, so my friends decided to wait for me at my friend Daniela’s apartment, and I would go there after the show to celebrate with them.
I got to the venue on a taxi, probably in secret because my mom never allowed me to take cabs by myself. I had a orthopedic boot because I sprained my ankle the week before, but I kept saying it was fine because I would “be able to kick people with it and get to the front” and “hide a blunt for me to smoke when the clock hits 12”, and I did exactly that.
When I arrived, I bumped into a couple of acquaintances and friends of friends and we queued together. We smoked a lot of weed and laughed and waited for the doors to open. I was nervous but I felt alive, grown. One of those friends told me that they could give me a ride to my friend’s house after the show if we met at the exit. I felt better when he offered to do that, safer. But I went in alone. They bought beers but I was underage and could not get the bartenders to sell me one. So I got a water bottle and started to kick my way to the front.
There were like three rappers playing before NACH: 420 and 389, Rial Guawankó and Lil’ Supa. I liked them all, I knew all their songs. 420 literally went into the stage with a bong. People were booing Rial Guawankó and when Lil’ Supa came out to scold the audience for it, everyone stopped instantly. Then, he got on stage and gave a very decent show. He’s a very good rapper and he’s very good at live shows.
When the opening acts ended, NACH stepped in. Everyone in the crowd started pushing towards the stage - rap concerts can be overwhelming - but I remember feeling alive like never before. I stood still. Kicking with my orthopedic boot and singing my lungs out. The clock in my phone struck twelve. I got my blunt out and smoked it. I was 17. I was there, surrounded by a sea of screaming men, laughing. High out of my mind. Happy. Complete. Music was God. God was there.
The show ended and I got in that random friend’s car and they took me to my best friend’s apartment and that was it. One of the best nights of my life.

I have this lanyard from is the Festival Nuevas Bandas 2013. This is a special memory, because I had two groups of friends competing at the show. I think they still do this festival/contest in Venezuela which makes me very happy.
I had a beautiful group of friends that had a band called Del Pez. They were so good.
A very famous rap group called Soires Naes was also competing at the festival. They were also very fucking good. I loved both groups but I remember this edition of the festival being very relevant because I don’t think they’ve allowed a rap group to compete there before Soires Naes. See, hip-hop was growing a lot during those years in Venezuela, and Soires was not a “new band”, but they qualified for the contest and gave an amazing live show. I remember kissing one of the rappers from the group in the middle of the crowd. He was a hideous man and of course he was considerably older than me. But I felt powerful and important because he liked me.
(I do need to sit down and write about my "groupie" years in Caracas, but that will be it’s own text. It’s too long and a very complicated story of a couple crazy years of my youth).
So, on this Nuevas Bandas edition I had a bunch of friends I loved competing for the title of “Best New Band”.
Soires Naes didn’t get past the first part of the elimination, but I remember knowing my friends from Del Pez were going to win.
They fucking did. I remember hugging a girlfriend called Martha with such joy pouring down my face. When they announced the band as the winner, our whole grouped shrieked in excitement. They won. Our friends won. One of the most important things an indie band could win at the moment in Venezuela.
I know that our whole group of friends ran to the stage and that I ended up dancing to OKills with Martha while they played after the winner announcement in the stage. I can’t remember how we even got to the stage, but there we were. Laughing. Hugging the guys, our friends, the winners. I remember their happiness as if it was my own. That’s the first moment I felt proud of an achievement that was not my own. I was so proud of them. I still am. They’re all wonderful men today, not one of them have been cancelled or called out for something improper. They were always good boys, respectful, hard working, amazing friends, and even better musicians. They won something they deserved, and I will never forget following their whole career as a band in Caracas. This is one of my happiest memories as a teen.
I keep the lanyard from the festival and it’s all rugged and dirty, but it holds the love I had for my friends and their music.
God was dancing with me and all my friends on that stage.

The last shows I have ticket stubs/bracelets from Venezuela are the Canserbero Es Épico Tour and the ONECHOT Fundraiser concert from when ONECHOT got shot and the whole hip-hop community came together to help pay his hospital bills.

The Canserbero show was at a small auditorium in Caracas. Looking back, it doesn’t even make sense because it was so small and he could’ve sold out a much bigger venue even back then.
But I remember his voice. The lights on during the whole show because this was not a rap music friendly venue. Men. All of them. Their baseball caps. Their ripped jean shorts. The DC shoes. The tattoos. I remember feeling like the only girl in an avalanche of men and taking all of their joy in.
Canserbero was electric, strong, magical, and sensitive at the same time. I remember going with an old friend, the one who taught me everything I know about rap music from Venezuela. I wonder where he is right now. He was an absolute-fucking-asshole, but I loved him so much. He was like a brother to me. I don’t miss him, but I miss this moment when we felt like family. I miss the camaraderie we had when it came to rap music. His voice rapping next to me along Canserbero’s deep voice on the venue speakers. I remember this day so much. It was an amazing afternoon for both of us and I do hope he also chooses to remember this concert with love. God was in between our seats, banging his neck.

Then I have the ONECHOT Fundraiser wristband. I don’t remember much about this concert so I had to look it up and I found the flyer for the event.
It was a show with a bunch of cool rappers getting together to play at a popular bar to raise funds and help ONECHOT with his medical bills after he got shot in the head and survived.
I know I met NK Profeta at this event and I also remember I was kind of dating one of the rappers’ DJ so I probably didn’t even pay for the ticket. I remember smoking a cigarette with a friend on the balcony of the bar but that’s all I got. I was a heavy drinker so that’s why I don’t have a clue about this.
But this was my wristband:

And this is the flyer for the event:

Like I said, I will properly write about the rap and indie rock concerts I went to in Caracas later. Because those years were wild, crazy, and at times, unnecessary. But they happened. They taught me a lot. And those stories deserve their own space.
God was with me on every small concert, on every shitty venue. I was never alone, because if I had been, I would not be telling this story right now.

I left Caracas in 2014 and moved with my partner to Santiago de Chile.
Santiago is famous for hosting Lollapalooza.

Talking about the four years I went to Lollapalooza Chile it’s like its own little section of this installment. I have thousands of stories and that festival gave me the opportunity to see most of my favorite artists live.

The first time I did LSD was at Lollapalooza 2016. My first year attending the festival.
I went with my partner and two girl friends. I no longer speak to any of them. One of them just disappeared from our lives and with the other one I had a huge problem in regards of some common acquaintances, so we stopped being friends. But they were there. We shared that moment together. Excitement, wonder, the heat, the getting ready. In fact, that’s the only time I’ve used harm-reduction in my favor, because I was on antibiotics but I wanted to do drugs, so I called a friend that was a doctor and asked him if I would die. He responded gracefully, doing his job and telling me to be careful, stay hydrated and to don’t over do it. He never told me to stop, he taught me how to be responsible and hold myself accountable and that is exactly what I did.
The 2016 line up was insane.
I got to listen to Wonderwall live for the first time, thanks to the awfully boring show of Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds. I remember holding my partner’s hand in the sunset, sitting on the grass, crying. There he was, singing the song I sang with my musician friends a thousand times. He sang Don’t Look Back In Anger, Champagne Supernova, Half The World Away. I cried. It was absolutely “biblical”, in Liam’s words.
We also got to see Florence + The Machine which remains one of the most amazing live shows I’ve ever seen. Mind-blowing, ethereal, magical in every way.
I remember dancing to Mumford & Sons’ The Cave while the LSD was coursing through my veins, tears of joy, again, my voice alongside thousand of voices. “So come out of your cave walking on your hands and see the world hanging upside down”. We were alive.
We saw Marina and I did the whole Heartbreaker choreography.
We cried to Brittany Howard’s glorious voice and show alongside Alabama Shakes.
I laughed, danced, and hugged with strangers during the Of Monsters and Men set.
We smoked a joint with the people next to us during the Tame Impala concert while we repeated that “we can’t believe it’s just ONE guy”.
We saw Jack Ü’s show which is still the best electronic music concert I’ve ever been to in my fucking life. Absolutely insane. What a couple of seasoned, talented, and amazing musicians and DJs Diplo and Skrillex are. That one was outstanding.

But my most important memory from that year, was getting to see Eminem. He’s my absolute favorite. There’s no way to describe how much his music has impacted me since I was a teenager discovering hip-hop. His words live inside of my skin, they’ve held me when I’ve been close to falling into the void. His sobriety is an inspiration for my own. I hold Eminem’s music in the most special place in my heart. And he NEVER plays live. Never. Like, he’s probably one of the most successful musicians to ever exist and at the same time he’s never being famous for his tours. It was rare. Eminem closing a big festival in Latin America.
I knew all his songs by heart. Every single one of them.
The moment he stepped on the stage and the Won’t Back Down beat started I felt like God himself was lifting me up from the ground. My favorite musician, singing all the songs I raised myself with.
I remember the people around me watching me lose my mind. 3 AM, Business, Down To Business, Evil Deeds. Every-fucking-hit. Perfectly performed. Live band. Strobe lights. I remember how the tears felt when they fell in my chest. The aching of my knees, the jumping. The sore throat.
I have funny anecdote about this concert because when he did a small pause to drink water and change his jacket, Royce da 5’9” stepped out and I lost my fucking mind. But nobody in the crowd knew who he was. Nobody had listened to their joint album, Bad Meets Evil. IMO, one of the best duo rap albums to ever be made.
When Eminem re-entered the stage they started singing Fast Lane. I’ve never screamed lyrics so loud in my life again. Nobody knew them. Everyone around us was looking at me as if I was singing the words in an unknown language, a private joke. “You morons think that I'm a genius, really I belong inside a dang insane asylum, cleanin', try them trailer parks”. I looked at my partner and remember him being so happy for me. He told me “One of your favorite songs!” while he laughed with me about how impossible it was that this was actually happening to me. I cried while writing this, because I’ve never felt like this again. I was the only one among the crowd that was singing along to this song. God was inside my throat, under my feet, crawling inside of my broken spine.
I was God, right then and there. I will never forget that moment.

On 2017 I got to see The Strokes and I’m literally just a woman, so I’ve been in love with Julian Casablancas since I’m 15 years old. I bumped into my boss at the time during their set and she hugged me and said “He’s actually there!”.
I also got to see G-Eazy’s show, which I will say is one of the best fucking concerts I’ve been to in my whole life. His energy was insane, amazing band, even better voice. He’s so tall and hot and we had so much fun.
I remember walking past a small stage while The 1975 was playing Somebody Else. I liked them but I didn’t stayed for their set and it will always be one of my biggest regrets because I love their music so much. I’ve listened to them since Chocolate, thanks to my friend Mavi - who I mentioned in the bit about the Justin Bieber concert - because I guess she was obsessed with Matty when we were in senior year and their first EP had just been released. But I was not a big listener in 2017, so I kinda missed their show. But I remember the huge pink box on the stage. It made me smile. “I know who they are, they’re so cool”.
Look at me know, box tattoo on my wrist.
I also went to Melanie Martinez and that was a fucking beautiful concert with an amazing production design.
Cage The Elephant will always be one of my favorite bands and I remember losing my voice after they played In One Ear.
That weekend ended with a Metallica show, I remember walking towards the subway station to go home while they played Nothing Else Matters, they waved us goodbye. It felt legendary to witness their music live.

2018 is one that feels bittersweet, because we got to see Mac Miller just months before he died.
It’s insane that I didn’t go to The National set when they've been one of my favorite band for almost 15 years now. I didn’t even remember they played that year and just found out while doing research for this piece. On Friday, we saw Pearl Jam. Which is even crazier because the first time I listened to The National was also the first time I listened to Vitalogy, and I’ve always talked about both bands and that night I discovered them because they are connected in my story. I talked about it on my last piece here.
The next day we went to Chance The Rapper’s set and there was a problem with the set times and nobody was understanding what he was singing and it was a shitty fucking show, we were disappointed because we loved his music so much.
Anderson Paak’s show was out of this world, so amazing and virtuous and overall happy.
We finished the second day watching Red Hot Chilli Peppers which was absolutely fun and iconic. I wrote my first poem on a concert on that show. I still have it on my phone. I usually write poetry while I’m at concerts, it’s a thing I’ve been doing for a couple years now. That started that year.
On the last day of 2018’s edition, we got to see Metronomy which I remember so much because my friend Magaly and me were hugging and crying in excitement.
Lana del Rey’s show was so amazing, that I was pissed that she was not a headliner. A woman. A strong, lovely, decisive woman giving a show that was out of this world. Still one of the best shows I’ve been to in my life. I can’t wait to see her again.
Khalid was beautiful and I felt so free and young and alive when he sang Location.
Wiz Khalifa’s show was a mess but we smoked a joint while singing Young, Wild and Free and that’s a memory I will always carry with joy.
The Killers closed the festival and of course I love them with my life. Listening to Mr Brightside live is an experience I will never forget. God was in my tears when I sang along the verses of that legendary song.

But the real highlight of that year for me, was Mac Miller. He sang Diablo, my favorite song. A weird song. Not suitable for a festival setlist. He didn’t care. I cried so much. I miss him, every day. I have a 2009 tattoo because of his 2009 song. He feels like a friend at my house, a friend we lost too soon. I am so grateful I got to see him before he passed. His memory will always stay with me.
God took him, too soon. But he was right there with him on the stage.

Lollapalooza 2019 was the last edition of the festival I attended before I moved to Mexico City.
Greta Van Fleet, Kendrick Lamar, Lenny Kravitz. But Snow Patrol was my favorite from that Friday. Getting to hear Chasing Cars live was transformative. A song that will live forever in my blood.
That day, we missed Bring Me The Horizon to go see a horrible performance by Paloma Mami and C Tangana, something I’ll never forgive myself for.
But on Sunday, the last day, I had the best of times. I got to see Rosalía play El Mal Querer entirely, a show so intimate, so magical, so feminine. She is an eternal diva.
I also got to see a boy I’ve fucked years before play live with Caramelos de Cianuro, probably the band that I’ve seen play live more times ever. I think I’ve seen them in concert more than 12 times. I went to every show they did in Caracas and I saw them twice in Santiago counting this festival performance. But it was surreal seeing a boy I used to fuck, play guitar at a Lollapalooza stage for a legendary band from my country. I was so proud of him.
We also saw St Vincent be an absolute fucking boss.
And again, I remember walking by The 1975’s set, this time, they were playing Love It If We Made It. I can’t believe I didn’t stay to watch them, again, I literally have a Box tattoo.
The last concert I ever saw at a Lolapalooza after going there for four years straight, was Arctic Monkeys. Mesmerizing. A dream come true. Tears all over my face while Alex Turner gracefully forgot the lyrics to every single song while wearing a pristine black suit.

The times I went to that festival were formative, magical, insane. Tired and with blisters on my feet, I danced to the songs that made me who I am today. Running from one stage to another, mascara falling down my cheeks, millions of festival themed outfits and late nights after the festival walking miles just to get to a subway station to get home. I wouldn’t change these memories for anything.

God was walking by my side, keeping me safe and sound until I got home after twelve hours of listening to live music.

These are my bracelets from those four years:

I not only went to Lollapalooza in Santiago de Chile when I lived there.
I got to see a bunch of cool artists in many different venues.

Incubus. One of my favorite bands. I’ve been wanting to see them for ages and tickets were fairly cheap so I went with two dear friends that are also fans. We had a blast, we cried, hugged, and I got to listen to Drive live. My ugliest tattoo is about that song, it says “Drive to Idaho”. That song helped me move, decide to not sit still, grow. It has been with me for decades now. I hate that tattoo but I cherish it because it tells the story about a very specific period of my life. I was lost, this song helped me find a way to move forward.
I heard God in the Aqueous Transmission intro.

Thirty Seconds to Mars was a wild one because I got the ticket for free, an hour before the show started. I remember doing my makeup very quickly in the bathroom and hopping on the subway to get there in time. Someone had a cousin working on radio and they got a bunch of tickets because the promoter never announced or did anything to advertise the show, so it was fucking empty. I’ve never been to a show that empty. They were telling the nosebleed section ticket holders to get down so the general pit wouldn’t look that bad. We were probably 2,000 people in a venue for 12,000. I literally saw Jared Leto and the band from like 5 meters away. I remember the gold thread from his Gucci embroidered robe. His perfect fucking face. We were moshing and hugging strangers. From Yesterday came with confetti and it bathed us on thin colored paper that felt like the softest rain.
I felt God on the elbows that landed on my ribs.

I bought tickets to see Radiohead at an electronic music festival featuring four more artists. But I wanted to see them. Thom fucking Yorke. I went with my partner and a couple friends. I don’t remember literally anything from that show. I remember getting our seats, buying a zero-proof beer and then, blank. I don’t remember anything. I’ve never experienced “concert amnesia” before and thank God I’ve never experienced it again. But I don’t remember a single thing from that day. Nothing.

My father in-law is a very cool dude and he took me and my partner to a couple concerts when we were all living in Chile together. I will also properly write about him and the wonderful relationship he and I have because we both love music and films and concerts and physical media.
In Santiago, he took us a David Bowie tribute concert because he knows I love Bowie and he was a fan of Adrian Belew who was leading that tribute tour.
We had such a good time together. It was on a beautiful, small theatre in Providencia. After the show, he knew I wanted an official merch t-shirt from the tour so he got it for me. I’m really fond of him and I remember that day perfectly because he was laughing at me crying so hard when they played Heroes. I love Bowie and this was the closest I got to see him live. His music, played by his closest friends. A celebration of his life.
This time, God was not there, but the Starman was.

A very special concert I went to in Santiago was Joaquín Sabina’s show with my mom. I’ve written about Sabina’s connection to my life and my mom. My childhood sounds like his raspy voice. I have a tattoo of one of my favorite songs of him on my butt, it says Crisis.
Getting to see him live and sing his songs with my mom was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. We will always have that moment. When he sang Princesa - a song my mom sang for me when I was a small baby - we hugged. We cried together. I don’t think we’ve ever been that happy together. His songs are our songs, the songs that helped my mom raise me.
God was there, hiding inside of my mother’s teary eyes.
He was watching me through her eyes as if I was the most important thing he ever created.
Because if there’s anyone that loves me more than God does, is my mom.

A very crazy concert that I got to see with my partner and a group of horrible men that used to be our friends was Mos Def/Yasiin Bey show. It was a small festival on an old theatre. He was the headliner, but we also got to see Rels B, Bejo and NACH.
Of course I was excited to see NACH again because I loved him. Bejo gave a very amazing show and Rels B surprised us all with his stage partner because he brought a soprano to accompany him on his set. All of them gave amazing shows. But the cherry on top was definitely Mos Def’s show. It was a beautiful performance, intimate and precise. He speaks in a low voice and everyone was calm and concentrating on his words. I cried when he sang No Hay Nada Más, my favorite song of his and his only song in Spanish. God was with him on stage, I heard God it in the “La calle, el pueblo, las fincas y centros”. God sang along Yasiin.

The Lil’ Supa and Jonas Sanche concert at Club Subterráneo was extremely cool. A very standard rap show by two very good rappers.
I don’t feel the same way about them now, because rappers from Venezuela and Chile abused me, emotionally, physically, psychologically. But my rage and my trauma cannot erase the feeling of listening to Supa rapping Luz, my favorite song of his. SERIO is an outstanding album. I wrote a very long piece about it back then because I felt - and still feel - that that album should’ve won all the awards in the world. My emotions regarding his scene and his context, will not stop me from thinking that. It’s a good fucking hip-hop album, and I’ll cherish the love I felt for it when it came out and that I got to see the album played live.
God was with me, while I recited every single line he sang, my fist on the air.

After living 5 years in Chile, I moved to Mexico City. And we get almost every single big tour here.
Mexico City is a beast, wild and chaotic. This city called my name for years so when time was right, I made the move.
Weirdly, these streets have always felt like home. The grimy sidewalks, the noise, the crowded metro.
Chile was far away from everything, but here in Mexico, I feel connected to the world. The world is happening here right in front of my eyes.

Everyone comes to play in Mexico City and I never thought I would be so lucky to go to almost every single concert I wanted with zero effort.

I arrived here on November 2019. So the first couple months I had no money and no friends. So, no concerts.
Then, the pandemic hit.

Of course those were a rough couple years.
But on my 27th birthday, my mom gifted me the Corona Capital ticket so I could go see MCR for the first time like I said at the beginning of this text.

I went with friends but I mostly walked around the festival alone. In Chile, you get to smoke weed without cops chasing you, I didn’t knew that. So I went into Corona Capital with 3 huge joints hidden inside of menstrual pads package - a thing I’ve done to get joints inside venues since I’m 15 years old.

I remember walking in the sunset to get to the Mitski set, smoking a joint and admiring the people, while I had my noise cancellation headphones on, listening to Taylor Swift. I was nervous. I’ve never been to a festival by myself before and it can be overwhelming. Not a single cop caught me. But when I met my Mexican friends they told me that the cops would definitely take me out of the festival if they caught me, so I hid them well inside of my jean shorts. I was already high, so it was not that bad. I wept so hard when she sang Class of 2013 and First Love/Late Spring. I was anxious, but I was happy.
Then, I went to see Kacey Musgraves. I was supposed to see her twice on 2020: once here in Mexico City and once in Lollapalooza Chile because I had a trip to go there on March 2020, that of course, got cancelled.
Kacey’s show was everything I dreamed. She was magical. I love country music, so singing along to Golden Hour with a bunch of gay men around me, hugging and crying felt like heaven on earth.
After that show, I had to wait for the MCR set to start. It was my 27th birthday, and birthdays are days where I usually cry and question everything I’ve done with my life. So I did that while trying to eat a cold pizza slice with a beer. I managed to bite it three times and then, I just chain smoked cigarettes for a while.

I brought a change of clothes with me, because for Kacey’s show I had a whole cowgirl outfit on and after that one, I changed in a port-a-potty into a MCR goth themed outfit. I even had a black veil I clipped on my fringe.
I remember sitting on the grass when the set started. Immediately started crying. This was my dream, the band I loved for so many years. Helena live. Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge was the first CD I ever got. I did it. I celebrated myself for all the pain, the fear, all of my quirky, difficult life.
God was with me, sitting right by my side while everyone sang along to The Black Parade.

On the next day, I was only going to the festival to see Paramore.
I missed a Paramore concert in Caracas because I didn’t have money for the ticket. That concert happened on March 4th, 2011. I was so sad because I love Paramore and I knew they were going to play Decode. Of course Twilight is my whole life.
I arrived to the festival on November 19th 2022 on the subway. Just in time for the Paramore set.
I got myself a beer and stood far away from the stage where I could see the band but where it would not be too crowded.
They started. This is Why. I cheered. Laughed standing by myself. I could not believe I was there. I felt the pain of missing their Caracas show erasing itself from my spine.
Brick by Boring Brick. Jumping, screaming, getting myself wet with the beer falling down the edge of my full glass.
Then, it happened. Decode. I felt every heartbreak in my skin all over again. Bella’s pain in the chest. Edward leaving. My first boyfriend breaking up with me in the middle of the mall we used to go to the movies at. My teenage years waving at me from the rare-view mirror.
God was on every sip of that cold beer. He was clenching a thirst I’ve been carrying for 11 years.
When Hailey sat on a stool, I knew they were going to play my favorite song, Misguided Ghosts. I was standing alone in a crowd, crying while hysterically laughing at the fact that this was actually happening to me.
After the show ended, I walked to the subway to get back home while Arctic Monkeys was playing. I told myself “I already saw Alex Turner forget the lyrics to their songs while looking hot in a suit, I want to go home now”. So I put on my headphones, waved AM goodbye and that was it. A magical fucking night. A dream I dreamt when I was a teenager. For myself.
God took me to the subway station by the hand.

On 2023, I found out that Ethel Cain was coming to Mexico City to play at Ceremonia Festival. My partner bought us tickets because he knows I love her to death.
So we went only to see her. It was fun to get to the festival minutes before her set, watch her live and then go home even when the headliner was Travis Scott, who’s music we really enjoy, but we didn’t want to go through all the hassle of that big show because people go crazy and my partner does not enjoy chaotic crowds.
Ethel’s show was a religious experience. Her songs brought back memories of my old life, my home, my first love. Her words encase so many of the feeling I hold dear to my heart. Thoroughfare live is one of those moments that engraved itself on my brain. We got to be very close to the stage because it was a small stage in the festival and of course the crowd was very well behaved and kind with each other.
I remember giving my partner all my things and just dancing with my eyes closed during American Teenager. I also remember crying about my first love while she sang A House in Nebraska, about the unrequited love I’ve experienced, the emotional abuse, the pain of loving at an early age.
This time, God was on the stage. God is a trans woman singing her lungs out for a crying, worshipping crowd.

2023 was a difficult year for me. But The Eras Tour happened.

The Eras Tour. Oh. My. God.

I could sit in here and write 10,000 more words just about The Eras Tour.
I don’t think God knew what a big moment that would be for every single one of the women and girls that went to see Taylor on that tour.

Talking about my outfit, or about getting to listen to most of my favorite Taylor songs live seems too superficial.
Long Live. Love Story. All Too Well 10-minute version. Illicit Affairs. Sweet Nothing.
The songs that raised me, us, every girl that was there.
The dream of one of the most ambitious women to ever walk the earth come to life.
Imagine listening to a 4 hour setlist accompanied by 64,000 female voices. In unison.

God is a girl in a crowd. God is a girl in a crowd. God is a girl in a crowd. There were 64,000 Gods singing at the same time. God was us.

I honestly don’t have anything else to say.
That memory will stay with me until the day that I die.
That was one of the best days of my life.

On 2024, things started to be better.
I got a new job at a record label and one of my coworkers was kind enough to invite me to see my one of my favorite bands live. The National. I’ve written about what their music means to me I think in two of my previous installments of this memoir series. I don’t think I’ll ever stop writing about their lyrics.
The National’s concert was the first concert I ever went to as a Press correspondent.
I had to record 30 second videos of their most famous songs, so the friend that got me the ticket could edit a video for the IG account he runs that’s focused on concerts and fan-related content.
My current boss at the time - an amazing fucking dude - went with me, so we drove on his car to the venue for two hours because of the Mexico City traffic. We talked the whole time, about his past girlfriends, the city, our shared love for music. He pointed at every single historic landmark as we passed them by. He let me smoke in the car and I took my head out the window when we were on the highway singing along to Chappell Roan. He ended up being not only an amazing boss, but an even better listener. A kind man that I’m glad I got to have in my life for a little more than a year.
He dropped me off at the Media Center so I could get my Press wristband and ticket while he went to park the car.
I remember getting to the booth, giving the clerk my ID and getting the wristband and ticket in return.
My first PRESS wristband ever. To see my favorite band in concert. In a venue I’ve always dreamt of going. I was shaking. Nervous. Excited. I don’t think I’ll ever feel that way again. I belonged.
God was handed to me in a form of a wristband. I wore him around my skinny wrist for two whole hours.

They played every single song I love.
I was crying so much while singing along to Fake Empire, that my boss came to me and gave me a big hug and said “I’ve never seen someone so excited for a show ever, you’re so happy, nobody is having more fun than you”. He was right. I knew every single lyric.
When they sang Conversation 16 I remembered my friend’s late mom’s car where I listened to that song for the first time. Today, that friend is married. Living in Germany. Her mom is gone. And her brother’s CD of High Violet changed my life. I was the same 15 year old girl discovering the band in a hot summer night inside of a car. I made it.
Matt jumped off the stage and I could only think about the poor dude that was throwing meters of cable so he could continue singing. Bryce makes my favorite soundtracks ever. Aaron produced my favorite Taylor Swift’s songs.
A bunch of old men were singing, hugging, screaming in excitement. I was happy. Complete.
God was sweating on my chest, laughing in disbelief.
I missed About Today - which is the second song I ever heard from the band, and one of my favorites - because my ride wanted to leave the venue early to avoid the traffic. It’s okay. I have no doubt I’ll see them again someday.
But that October 10th 2024 is one of those days where I felt I was one with God, with the world, with the crowd. I was myself.

After I started a job at a record label here in Mexico City, my dear friend Pepe came into my life.
He’s a very hardworking man, and he runs and IG account that posts about concerts, fan events and music in general. It’s called Fansait and everyone should RUN to follow them right now.
His work is incredible. He grew a substantial following in a year and it reflects his dedication to share valuable information about fans and their favorite artists and bands. Thanks to Pepe and his team, I’ve been able to go to two Corona Capital editions, two Vive Latino editions and countless other concerts. He knows I love live music and including me and my partner on his team has been a blessing I won’t ever be able to repay.
There’s no words in the world that would summarize how grateful I am to be his friend. He was the one that gifted me The National concert tickets. Thanks to Fansait, I had an amazing conversation with Lucy Dacus, was able to interview Warpaint, Porter Robinson, bbno$, Victoria Canal and many more amazing artists I admire so much.
If I’m writing about the concerts I’ve been to, Pepe is the mastermind behind my so-called luck. It was not luck. It was his kindness, his openness to being a friend, to share his opportunity to go to shows and to do it not only with me, but with thousands of fans he’s been able to give the same gift he’s giving me: free tickets to report, document and have fun while seeing live music.
The wonderful Fansait team, includes not only him, but Rulo and Jairo. Two guys that have become my dear friends and my number one concert-going partners.
Without them, I wouldn’t have felt God so many times. Without them, my Mexico City concert going experience would have not been as wide, expansive, amazing. They’ve made my dreams come true, over and over and over again. God is inside these three dudes that I met while trying to work in the music industry. They are the best thing to come out from my three years as an industry worker.
I could go on for hours naming and describing the amazing experiences I’ve gone through with this team.
12 hours under scorching heat but doing what we all love most: talking about music. About fans.

We’ve worked at Corona Capital, Ceremonia, Vive Latino.

To stop this extremely long rambling about the concerts I’ve been to in Mexico City, I will share a list of all the concerts I’ve been to since I’ve been reporting with them:

• Every act I wanted to see at Corona Capital 2024 and 2025: Cage The Elephant, St Vincent, The Beaches, Warpaint, American Football, Travis, The Blaze, Queens of the Stone Age, New Order, Jack White, Victoria Canal, Foo Fighters, Franz Ferdinand, Lucy Dacus, Vampire Weekend, Aurora, Of Monsters and Men, Jerry Cantrell, Men I Trust, TV on the Radio, Jessie Reyes

• Every act I wanted to see at Vive Latino 2025 and 2026: Zoé, Belanova, John Fogerty, FUCKING Keane!!!!!!!!!!!!

• Every act I wanted to see at Ceremonia 2025: The Dare, A.G. Cook and my favorite, Charli XCX (I could write a long paper about how her BRAT show is the best concert I’ve been to in my life)

• Lorde

• Mitski

• FKA Twigs

• The Lumineers

• The Libertines

• Hozier

• Phoenix (If I would write about this one specifically, I would tell the story of how I ended up at the mosh pit while Mr Mars aka Romy Coppola’s father, crowd-surfed on top of my head to the point where I had his belly button at 30 cm away from my face!!!!!!!!!)

In conclusion, my Fansait friends have helped me get as close to God a possible. They’ve made me the girl in the crowd countless times.
Thanks to them, I’ve been right next to God.

I’m close to 10,000 words and I should stop.
But I have to mention some of the big concerts I’ve been here in Mexico aside from festivals:

Olivia Rodrigo was a fabulous experience. It was really amazing to hear her say that the Mexico City show at Estadio GNP was “the biggest show of her career” and being there to witness that huge moment for her. Seeing little girls and teenagers so happy was restorative for the soul. Femininity is a beautiful place to inhabit. I went to the concert without makeup and I was sad for multiple reasons on the day of the concert, so I cried my eyes out. I experienced the heartbreak I felt years ago through her songs. I thought it was a pretty short show to play at such a big venue, but it was cool. I went with a friend that I somehow lost along the way on this past year. I miss her so much. But I’ll hold dear to the memory of us hugging when Olivia played Driver’s License. I thank her for 4 amazing years of friendship and I wish her the absolute best.
God was on every giggle of a little girl holding her mother’s hand. He was laughing with us about being almost 30 years old. We were girls together right then and there.

Oasis, on the other hand, changed my fucking life. I’ve always loved the band. I love Liam Gallagher so much. I know most of their songs and I’ve listened to them constantly for more than 15 years. I vividly remember reading about their breakup in Twitter when I was in 8th grade and stopping in the hallway of my high school to cry about it.
I never thought I would see them play together. And I did.
That was one of the reasons why I wanted to go to the Oasis Live 25 show here in Mexico, but my main reason to go was - in all honesty - because I wanted to witness 64,000 men cry and hug and laugh and share something together at the same time. Men don’t have a lot of stuff going on for themselves. Women have a lot. I had that experience with The Eras Tour, with Olivia Rodrigo’s concert, with Chappell Roan at Corona Capital 2025. Just last week when I watched Lorde live, I experience women coming together all over again.
But men? Men have sports. Usually they only have one friend. Not all of them have great relationships with their fathers. But men have Oasis.
God was chanting the words of Don’t Look Back In Anger with 64,000 men. I saw him on their grins, on the tears they allowed themselves to shed in front of their friends.
God turned his back during the Poznan with all of us.
He was on every hug the guys gave to the strangers next to them, tipping his bucket hat while chugging on a cold beer.

This year I went to see MCR in concert again and I went alone. It was an indescribable experience to be alone in a venue that fits 64,000 people. They gave a fucking incredible show. I laughed, danced, sang, and cried for myself. I helped a scared and overwhelmed teenager that was standing behind me and gifted her a cigarette so they could chill the fuck out. I’ve been that scared teenager, but I’m grown now.
God was next to me. I was again, a girl in a crowd.

There’s a good portion of concerts I’ve been to thanks to working on the music industry.
I practically organized by myself Gaby Moreno’s show in Mexico City at a record store. Sat with my hero on the greenroom, watched her sign her vinyl and handwritten setlist for me, scribbling my name on the shiny surface of the cover.
Listening to her angelic voice sing the songs I somehow helped put out into the world.
God was in every step I took that night. Steps I took for myself that happened to help my workplace and one of the artists I admire the most.

An old boss of mine took me to a Miranda! concert here.
Miranda! used to be one of my late aunt’s favorite bands. I know all of their songs because of her. I had so much fun watching their crowd be close together, dancing, enjoying happiness. God is in the spirit of my aunt, in the pieces of her I carry with me everyday. On the tattoo I have on my back of a little girl that reminds me of her.

I got to work at two Auditorio Nacional shows: Carla Morrison's and Lila Down's.

Carla’s was my first and I never got to talk to her because she’s a very private person. But I also got to take pictures and video with my phone and have clearance alongside a bunch of professional photographers that were… all dudes. So that felt amazing.
Her soundcheck is one of these moments I will never forget because she was inviting Denisse Guerrero to the stage and nobody knew about it. Belanova was one of the bands that I listen to a lot when I was a young girl. I never got to see them play live before they disbanded. And suddenly, there she was. In pristine black jeans and perfect makeup, doing her soundcheck just 6 feet away from me. Standing on the legendary stage that is the Auditorio Nacional. When I listened to her voice so close to me, singing Rosa Pastel - their most iconic song - I started crying. It felt like divine intervention. I never questioned myself why was I there because I always knew I belonged there, but it felt magical, perfect.
When she stepped on the stage mid show and they played that song as a duet, the crowd went wild. It was nothing short of mystical. The magnificent screams from 12,000 people.
At the end of the show, when Carla shouted out all my coworkers from the label I was working at, I felt proud.
God was on my trembling hands, holding my phone up high so I could get a good shot of her on the stage.

Lila Downs’ show at the Auditorio Nacional was different because for some reason, I played a bigger role in the production. I was in there to do the same thing I did at Carla’s: shooting social media content for the label. But somehow I ended up sewing the microphone packs to Lila’s beautiful gowns just minutes before she went on stage. That was exhilarating. Her assistant shouted and asked if anyone knew how to sew and I responded. They handed me these gorgeous, expensive dresses made specially for Maestra Lila’s performance by Benito Santos - an extremely famous Mexican designer known for making gowns for the contestants at Miss Mexico beauty pageant. I could not believe someone believed in me - or needed me - enough to allow me to pass a needle through such pieces of art, handcrafted with patience, care, and expertise. So I did it. I sewed on the elastic where they were going to hang the mic packs. They held. They didn’t fall off mid performance. I spent the whole concert watching her to see if the packs were moving around. They were not. I did an excellent job. My mom taught me well. She told me when I was little that every girl should know how to sew and mend. That it helps you to get out of trouble if you can thread a needle with your bare fingers.
God was guiding my hand while I was sewing the elastic on Madame Lila’s dresses.
God was my mom in the crowd.
I got to take my mom to see that show on that night. She didn’t knew when she was sitting watching the show, but her teachings were put to good use that night.
After I bid my mom goodbye because I had to wrap it up with the team, I re entered the greenroom and ended up drinking mezcal with an entourage of legends of Mexican music. At some point, we closed the greenroom’s doors and a coworker asked me for a lighter because he knew I had one. I got close to a guy that was holding an unlit joint and he passed it to me and asked me to light it. I froze. We were on the most legendary Mexican venue backstage and obviously, you can’t smoke in there. But I was among the most achieved Mexican musicians to ever live. My coworker winked at me and said “If you’re going to do this with a group of people, it might as well be this group of people”. So I lit up that joint, and passed it to the bearded man that handed it to me in the first place. It turned out that he was also a fucking legend, I will refrain of saying his name but honestly? It couldn’t get more legen-fucking-dary than him. I took two puffs and stepped outside to have a smoke by myself and sit down with everything that happened on that amazing night.

I also witnessed Paloma Morphy’s electric raise to fame. Extremely well deserved and backed by the most amazing team of industry workers. People that I consider my friends. We saw her absolutely nail her first solo show at Lunario, one of the most important venues of this crazy city. Celebrated her Best New Artist Grammy win at last year’s Latin Grammy’s. I wish her and the amazing team that works with her nothing but the absolute best. May all their dreams come true.
She’s going play in Japan, just announced her first US tour, and she’s playing ACL and Lollapalooza. Her lyrics are extremely good.
God goes with her and her wacky style and sweet, strong voice.
I saw God shining on the watery eyes of my friends after months of the hard work that took to get her there.

I passed the 10,000 word mark, so this is officially the longest text I’ve written in my life.
If I wrote 7 more of these, I would have a decent book in my hands.

Music gave me a lot. It continues to do so with every new song from an indie artist I find while scrolling on TikTok, or when I feel alive in the middle of a mosh pit.

I will probably keep going to more concerts than I can count, and I surely forgot to mention a lot of the ones I’ve been to.

There’s nothing like live music. No feeling in the world will ever match the sensation of being surrounded by people that are there because of the same reason as you are. It’s the reason why churches are still a thing. God is the people, together. Temples filled with fans.

God is a girl in a crowd. God is a girl in a crowd. God is a girl in a crowd.

But today, I’m writing about my music collection.

My CD and vinyl collection is the smallest one, compared to the grotesque amount of DVDs and books I own.
It’s a special bunch, because I managed to recover a few of my CDs when I went back to Caracas to pack up my apartment.

These are all the CDs I own:

All the Joaquín Sabina CDs I own were my mom’s. She loves him. I love him. His songs taught me how to write in Spanish, I will always recognize that. I was lucky enough to go to a concert he did in Santiago with my mom. That’s an experience I will never forget. All the songs we sang, the words we learned together. Our memories smell like his cigarettes and his jokes.
His music was the most listened to during car rides with my mom. They were usually very inappropriate. He’s vulgar and explicit. My mom used to explain to me what his lyrics meant. I remember specifically her explanation about his song “Ahora Qué”, “It’s a song about the right kind of love” - she said to me. “Ahora que, sin saber, hemos sabido, querernos, como es debido, sin querernos todavía”.
“La Del Pirata Cojo” used to be one of my favorites. I could even say that I learned about the professions with that song. I also learned what a prostitute was because of that song which is pretty funny.
Last year I also manage to go to one of his shows of the last tour he’s doing. He’s getting old. He’s an long time smoker and a heavy drinker. He’s 77 years old and he’s had a rock and roll life, so I’m very grateful to have experience his shows before he’s not able to play them anymore.
I also remember the explanation about “19 Días y 500 Noches”, “When you break up with someone, nights feel harder than days”, said my mom.
He also loves México and it was wonderful to go to his show at the legendary Auditorio National last year, where he felt at home, received and cherished by ten thousand people singing in unison.
My mom loves Almodóvar and through Sabina’s music I asked her to watch one of his movies so I could understand what being a ‘Chica Almodóvar’ meant. It’s funny that Almodóvar just did an interview in which he said he’s not very fond of that song or how the usage of the term is applied to the lyrics, “… Había un poquito de mala leche debajo, que el - Sabina - diría que es ‘critica social’ pero que a mí no me hizo ni puñetera gracia”. That Almodóvar interview was a bit controversial for a bunch of different things, but this phrase stuck with me. Because I love the work of both of them. And being a ‘Chica Almodóvar’ has and probably will always be a dream of mine.

I also have the Moderatto “Hits From Hell CD” my mom bought me the first time I came to Mexico City to visit on December 2007. That trip moved me to the point that years later I decided to move here. And it’s funny how I worked for a whole year on a huge record label here and everyone knew the vocalist, Jay de la Cueva, but I’ve never been able to tell him how his music with that band actually was instrumental for me deciding to live here. I wanted to be in the same city as Moderatto. I knew most of their songs by heart and I was never able to watch them play live. I’ve even crossed paths with Jay in busy streets, but I’m not fond of just coming up to artists and talk them about ‘how they changed me’, I have too much respect for privacy and hatred for unwanted conversations. So I’ve never met him. But I really hope that I will someday, so I can thank him for bringing rock and roll into my 11 year old self. I always joke about how I live here solely because of Moderatto, and I don’t think it’s that much of a joke. And if someone reading this can take this message to Jay de la Cueva it would be fucking awesome.

In the picture above you can see that I have a few movie soundtracks: Hairspray, HSM1, 2 and 3, Cruel Intentions, Tommy by The Who, Mamma Mia! and Love Actually. The music from movies I love. Those were fun to sing in the car with my mom. I know almost every single lyric of those songs.
Musicals are very important to me, as I said on my last piece about movies. So these are very special.
I recovered my HSM soundtracks when I went back to Caracas and I was so happy that those were not lost in the years I was not there.

I have a Justin Bieber “Believe” album that I got on a Secret Santa one December in high school because of course I am a Belieber.
I have an crazy anecdote about his concert in Caracas in which I painted one of my best friends’ body in purple paint for the concert and then we showed up on a picture in the paper on the next day. I’ll tell that one when I write about concerts. But with Justin I’ve always felt like we’ve grown together. Obviously I thought his Coachella 2026 performance was outstanding.

There’s also a very random CD by Nerina Pallot in my collection that my friend José Alejandro got for me when I was 16. The album is called “Fires” and it has one of my favorite songs in the world, “Idaho”. I found that song on Twitter, she did a performance of that song in Abbey Road and that video was retweeted by an acquaintance called Gustavo.
I remember scrolling down my Twitter feed and stopping to watch that video. It absolutely changed my life. My second tattoo is a composition between that song and “Drive” by Incubus. It reads ‘Drive to Idaho’. It is a horribly made tattoo and it’s all fucked up right now, because I got it on July 23rd 2011 so it’ll be 15 years old this year. Got it the day Amy Winehouse died. I was devastated, so I got a music related tattoo while I cried in the hallways of a mall in Caracas called Plaza Las Américas.
“Idaho” has always felt like a song you listen to when you need to find yourself. “My hands are on the wheel so I'm driving to Idaho, 'cause I hear it's mighty pretty...”. It’s a song I keep close to my heart at all times.
I hope I get to Boise someday so I can stare at Lake Pend Oreille while I dramatically cry.

The Ramones’ Anthology box set, Them Crooked Vultures CD and the Pearl Jam’s “Vitalogy” CD, were gifts from my father in-law’s collection that is in Caracas. He loves music and physical media and we’ve always bonded over that, so when I found these three amazing records that I love catching dust on his old apartment when I visited Caracas to pack my own shit, I called him and asked him if I could take these home with me, of course he said yes because he knows that if someone was going to cherish them as much as he did when he got them, it was going to be me.
I’ve always loved The Ramones because I love their mess. I first learned about Them Crooked Vultures through my very good friend Fonsi, who told me I didn’t wrote about him when I wrote about my high school experience, so, here you go my friend, see you soon.
And “Vitalogy” was a record I first listened to with my good friend Eliette.
We were on a beach trip with her mom, who is no longer with us today. It was a hot summer night at the beach, and we wanted to gossip about boys so we went down to chat and listen to music in her mom’s car. There were two CDs in the glovebox: Pearl Jam’s “Vitalogy” and The National’s “High Violet”. She has two older brothers and I think the eldest used the car quite often, so those CDs were definitely his.
I’ve heard and loved Pearl Jam before, but that was my first time listening to The National. Looking back, I didn’t knew that the ‘Sad Dads’ would become one of my favorite bands. But my friend showed me “Conversation 16” first because it was her favorite and my mind was absolutely blown. “I’m a confident liar, had my head in the oven so you’d know where I’ll be, I’ll try to be more romantic, I wanna believe in everything you believe”. “Vitalogy” reminds me of that moment. I’ve seen both bands live and I could not be more grateful that I have. The memory of my friend’s mom will always have this story attached to it. Her daughter showed me in her car the records that belonged to one of her sons and one of those records became a huge part of my life in so many different ways. So, thank you, Maria Gracia, for taking us to the beach.

I also have this very old school CD holder/case. If you’re under 25 years old you probably haven’t ever seen one of these. But this was the one my mom and I kept in the car. The two CDs you can see in the picture are very important to me.
I was a huge Spice Girls fan. Huge. I still love Victoria like she’s my mom. I follow every single one of the girls on IG.
The other one is “Faith” by George Michael. My mom loves George Michael. She said to me once that her favorite song was “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me”, his and Elton John’s live version and that never left my mind. When he died I cried for hours.
Inside this little pouch, I have a couple Miguel Bosé albums, Eric Clapton’s “Unplugged” and Shakira’s “Fijación Oral Vol. 1”. Most of these were my mom’s but I loved these records with my life because of that.
I remember picking these records from my old apartment because their boxes were banged up or broken and I wanted to bring them with me, so when I found this old CD holder, I filled it and closed it and now, it’s here with me. Holding inside the music my mom and I loved when I was little.

This Gorillaz’ “Demon Days” copy was burned by my aunt Lissette, my mom’s sister who died 11 years ago this year. She gifted me this one when I turned 10 because it had just been released and she probably loved it. I listened to this album a lot growing up but I definitely outgrew Gorillaz mainly because I’m an Oasis girl and I don’t fuck with Damon Albarn at all. It’s a very important part of my collection because it has my late aunt’s handwriting on the CD. I called her “mi tía loca” and she dedicated it to “la niñita loca”, which is very endearing now that I really think about it. She gave it to me because I got a Discman as a gift when I was 9 and I always had it on me. She gave a bunch of these type of burned CDs to me, she was a very cool woman and she was very tech-inclined and knew how to do stuff like this.
So I also learned.

When I got my first laptop on 2008, my mom still had a car that had a CD slot and not an USB to play music from and iPod or MP3 player, so I had to burn a lot of CDs to listen to in the car.

I had millions. My mom used to get me the empties by the box. Maybe 50, 75 empty CDs. I gave out playlists on CDs to my friends, boyfriends, cousins. I didn’t do it with Cassettes, but I definitely burned my fair share of CDs like a good millennial. I remember coming up with names for the playlists and drawing hearts and stars on the silvery, slippery surface. I loved doing that, which is funny because I don’t listen to playlists at all now with streaming services.

I don’t have anywhere to play my CDs, but they live in my bookshelf, accompanying my DVDs and stacked alongside my books. These records are a part of me.

I also have a few vinyl I love:

The only Kanye record I have is “Ye”. It was the first thing I bought when I arrived to Mexico City. It cost me ten dollars. Kanye was the artist that I listened to the most when I got here. His music - to me - sounds like using the Mexico City metro for the first time.

The Elton John “Live in Australia” was also a gift from my father in-law because I found it while digging for things at his house and I love Elton because my mom loves Elton so I brought it with me.

The CCR one I picked up at my usual street vendor and I can’t believe I saw John Fogerty live just two months ago. I’ve always been a huge Credence fan, so I really love this one.

Juan Gabriel’s live performance from Palacio de Bellas Artes was a legendary find and I was stoked I only paid one dollar for it.

I also got a couple Mozart’s, Beethoven’s 5th and Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” from my local street vendors for no more than two bucks each.
My favorite from the classical ones I have is the Lizst one because he’s my favorite composer ever.
I listened to a lot of classical music growing up because my mom loves it and she took me to tons of concerts played by El Sistema Nacional de Orquestas de Venezuela when I was growing up. She tells the story about how I used to peacefully fall asleep and she had to wake me up constantly because I snore very loud since I was a child.

The Rolling Stone’s “Honky Tonk Women” was an amazing find for three dollars and it has that wacky design I loved when I first saw it on the dirty tarp on the sidewalk. As Bob Dylan says, they’re the ‘British bad boys’ and I love their music so much.

These three movie soundtracks made me so excited when I spot them at a random garage sale around my house.
My Fair Lady is one of my favorite movies ever. The 1989 Batman movie soundtrack is fucking great and it was in mint condition, so I also got that one from the bin. And the last one is a compilation of songs from movies, it has “Singing In The Rain”, “Blue Skies”, “Over The Rainbow”, “Unchained Melody” and many more iconic songs from movies played by a guy named Iván Casanova y sus Conjuntos.

I first listened to Gaby Moreno’s voice in Hugh Laurie’s album “Didn’t It Rain”. She sings a beautiful rendition of “The Weed Smoker’s Dream” while he plays the piano, but she’s uncredited in the album. Her voice was a ghost.
My dad is a huge fan of Dr. House and I also love the series, so naturally when I found out Hugh Laurie was a singer and piano player, I downloaded both his albums to my iTunes. “Let Them Talk” was a very important song to me at a weird time of my life, and I continued listening to Hugh’s music for a while.
I also was a big weed smoker - I’m not anymore, huzzah! - so that title caught my eye. When I played it, I was surprised to listen to a woman’s voice. It was not Hugh singing so I listened more carefully this time. Her name was nowhere to be found. I remember doing a big Google deep dive to find who was the woman singing on that song I loved so much.
My voice is perfect for blues, I’m a contralto and I can go pretty-fucking-low. So I fell in love with this song instantly. Lyrics are fun and her voice sounded gritty and commanding.
At least 8 years after I found this song, I started working at a very cool indie record label based in LA called Cosmica Artists. One of the label acts was Gaby Moreno, a Guatemalan singer-songwriter, producer and musician, based in the US. I started listening to her music because of the job and one day I noticed that she was the mysterious singer in Laurie’s record. I could not believe I was working with this mystical voice. Gaby became an icon in my life. She’s a latina, living in the US and singing folk, blues and rock music. Blues is my one true love.
I love Johnny Cash, Elvis, BB King. My voice it’s perfect for those genres, but as a latina living in Latin America, singing blues was never a choice. I always felt like an outsider singing these songs by white American men. Later I learned a lot about the history of the American South thanks to an amazing online free course by the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. The music from the American South has always fascinated me and learning about the history of the place where it was born was an amazing experience.
So when Gaby’s music showed up in my life by chance, it meant a lot. I remember the first time I had to make a social media post for the label and it was something about her version of “Cucurrucucú Paloma” by Gaby. It felt like I was right where I belonged. Working for one of my idols.
These two vinyl are signed and dedicated to me by Gaby herself, at the greenroom in a record store where I organized a concert so she could play in Mexico City. I wanted to see her play live and she wanted to play here, so I talked with a bunch of people and made it happen in the most random way. The label was very grateful because we pulled it off perfectly. It was an intimate, amazing show I will never forget.
It felt like a full circle moment for me. I was sitting on the floor while she signed the albums with my name and gifted me the handwritten setlist. I love these two albums so much. I worked on the social media rollout for both of them and I felt very proud when I got to hold them in my hands.
Gaby is magical. Her voice is hauntingly beautiful and she has a spirit that illuminates the songs she sings with a special, dim but warm light.

This JDilla record is the first vinyl I ever bought. My partner and I found it like 12 years ago at a skate shop that had a vinyl bin and we instantly bought it, thinking we would also get a turntable in a couple days so we could play it.
We still don’t own a turntable. But I have this. And I’ll cherish it forever.

Mac Miller’s “Swimming in Circles” box set was something I got my partner when Mac died. We love him. We always have and probably always will. We were lucky to see him play live in a Lollapalooza in 2018, only months before he passed away tragically.
This was a way to console my partner because he was absolutely devastated. Mac always felt like a friend for us.
I have a tattoo of his song “2009” in my chest. A big one. I’ve always felt he wrote that song for me because 2009 was the year in which I became.
The box set came with a poster that we have framed and hanged in our living room wall. He’s smiling. That’s how we remember him.
We will always miss you, Mac. Forever.

Charli xcx’s “Wuthering Heights” is the only brand new vinyl I’ve bought for myself.
Like I said, I don’t have a turntable so I don’t usually splurge on newly released vinyl because it feels like an unnecessary spend.
But this record changed me.
I’ve listened to Charli since I’m 15. Of course I started thanks to “The Fault in Our Stars” because I’m a huge dork and I love John Green so much.
I’m not a big EDM/House or electronic music listener. But I do like what I call the “intelligent electronic”, where I include people like Charli, AG Cook, Justice, Daft Punk, The Dare, even NIN. I like organized chaos and Charli has always been the perfect party music for me.
I still scream “This is BRAT!” when I see something lime green. I play “Crash” when I’m showering.
I went to Charli’s “BRAT” show last year and it was one of the best concerts I’ve been to in my entire life — and I’ve been to a lot of concerts.
Wuthering Heights is one of my favorite books and the new movie adaptation made it to my Letterbox Top 4 instantly, I wrote a lengthy piece about it here.
So when I found out that Charli would be contributing songs to the movie I was stoked. She’s gritty, absurdly talented, very fucking English, and has amazing taste for everything she does. I knew I would love these songs.
And God, I did. This is now one of my favorite albums ever. It will forever be.
It encases the chaos of that doomed love with a spectacular production and even more strikingly beautiful lyrics.
I’ve always found very interesting how she is such a good songwriter and chose electronic music as her medium, because one of the things I hate from popular electronic music are usually the stupidity in most of the lyrical content in them.
I’ve met a couple bimbos that write lyrics for EDM songs that get played at horrible festivals like The Row or Tomorrowland, and they are never this fucking good. One of them even met with me and her producer to tell me “how much money can you make by creating simple EDM songs” over a Zoom call from her LA studio. I ran away as fast as I could.
This album - and generally Charli’s music - made me see that you could actually write good fucking songs using any kind of instrumental as the beat. Good lyrics don’t need a soft piano or Bob Dylan to be good. Lyrics in electronic music don’t need to be as bad as they usually are.
They can contain in their syllables the same love you find in a ballad, the same pain you find in a country song, the same feeling of freedom you find in pop music.
I got this vinyl because I love this record so much and I wanted to keep it in my bookshelf forever.

Like I said, I don’t have a lot of CDs or vinyl, and I am very sad that when I went back home I didn’t find any of the cassettes my mom used to play for me in her old car. And writing about the 80 GB I have saved on my old hard drive from my teenage years seems totally unnecessary.

Music tells a millions stories about my life. It describes how I’ve learned to love, to hate, to cry, to dance.

I don’t have a single Taylor Swift or The 1975 album I can grab and store in my bookshelf. I don’t own any Bob Dylan vinyl or any of my favorite Springsteen records.

I’ve had a complicated relationship with music for this past year since I worked in the industry for three years before. Music hurt me as much as it has healed me during my life, I will always be grateful for the songs, but I’m not sure if I’ll ever sing for people again.

In the meantime - and while I think about if releasing music again - I have Eminem’s lyrics humming in the back of my neck, Bon Iver’s melodies laying me down to dream, and Brandi Carlile’s stories holding me when I walk down busy streets.

And because I can’t afford to pay the rent next month

And because I’m bigger than I used to be and for the first time in my life my favorite jeans did not fit me

And because my teeth won’t fix themselves like they haven’t for the past 25 years

And because it’s hot and I can’t sleep when I’m hot

And because I don’t know what to write anymore

Tonight I am scared

Because I don’t know where I am

Or why

Or when will I be able to breathe again

I really need to get a DVD player.

As always, I will talk about my mom. She loves movies. But she usually pisses me off because she has a taste that’s absolutely limited for my liking. For example, she didn’t like one Guillermo del Toro movie and now she doesn’t watch his movies at all. And the problem for her is the grotesque, the blood, the violence. I know she would very much appreciate the story, the love intertwined in his monsters. But she can’t watch a monster. Her argument for “not watching movies I don’t like” is that “there’s always one I will enjoy so I won’t lose my time with the ones I won’t”. I really don’t like that about her.
My reason is very simple: John Waters. He’s always said that ‘the ugly’ is important. That the uncomfortable, gross, hideous, are also fundamental to our lives and to the world. I’m a firm believer of that. So every time a Tarantino movie comes out and it’s extremely good, I get into it with my mom over the phone because I think she has bad judgement and that she deprives herself from enjoying good movies only because she “doesn’t like violence”. She’s even totally hated extremely famous, awarded, and widely loved films because of that. She will actually not like something that is objectively good only because there’s gunshots in it.
She almost never forbid me from watching movies when I was growing up, in fact she allowed me to watch almost everything I wanted. Except violent films.

I fought her when she didn’t let me watch Pan’s Labyrinth. I remember being so mad. She had a good reason: I was going to have nightmares. And guess what, mom, I did. And I still do. I get nightmares all the time.

My story with Pan’s Labyrinth is very funny, because it involves a pirate DVD copy of the movie. My best friend from school loved horror movies, as many 11 year old girls do. I’ve never really liked them, because they give me nightmares and because in the early 2000s those used to be specially shitty. Badly written. Bland stories. Pure gore or jump-scares and hot women with big tits being murdered or haunted.
Her dad got her a copy of Pan’s Labyrinth because it had just came out and of course she was not going to be allowed in the cinema because it was Rated R. By the time her dad got it for her, my mom had already forbid me from watching it. She’s not a very stern woman, but she was with this.
But the story, the posters, the trailer, lured me in. I told my - very brave - best friend that I wanted to watch it with her. In secret. She confessed to me that she had found a mini bottle of 12-year whiskey and that, since we were 11, “we could drink it because we would be twelve in less than a year”. So we locked ourselves in her parents en-suite bathroom and tried to chug that mini bottle before watching the movie. That was the first time I ever tasted alcohol. Because my mom is also not big on alcohol, so she never gave me ‘a small sip’ of wine or beer to taste, like most of my friend’s moms did with them.
I remember my friend’s parent’s en-suite perfectly: white tile, huge bathtub, a window. We went into the bathroom with the small bottle and took a huge sip. Not only I instantly hated it, but I remember the choking. The burn. I thought I was going to die. She laughed, she was always tougher than me. I got sick immediately, so I was never drunk. After we realized we would not drink that bottle, we sat and watched the movie.
The Pale Man completely absorbed me. I’ve always wanted to tell Guillermo del Toro this story. I think he would enjoy it.
I was a girl, just like the protagonist. And the Pale Man was so beautiful, enticing, inviting. I still take my hands to my eyes when I mention that character. He’s still my favorite monster.
That movie changed me, the dark atmosphere felt like the gardens in my mind, cold but welcoming. Raining. Running in a downward spiral.

Then, I remember her not allowing me to watch Precious. “It’s too violent, Alejandra. You cannot watch it”. Joke was on her, since my high school was fucking cool and they literally made us watch it in class. My mom was not happy when I told her. Maybe she was pissed at the school. Maybe she was pissed at the fact that I told her that she was “depriving me from culture, unlike the school that wants us to know everything without censorship”.
I always told her that she censored me when I was growing up. And I guess I’ve stopped saying that but maybe because I live on my own and I’m 30 years old. But honestly, I still think that this is my least favorite part of her. Because violence is not necessary whatsoever, but it is a part of life. Blood, pain, even horror. We live a life filled with weird, unpleasant shit. Not every movie needs to be uplifting.

So we had that disagreement a lot. A lot. We still do. When Del Toro’s Frankenstein came out last year I asked if she watched it and she simply said “It doesn’t spark my curiosity”. I was pissed off. Because how can someone ignore the millions of layers behind a bloody affair? I still don’t get her.

I watched a lot of movies growing up. A lot.
This is not only thanks to my mom, who took me to the cinema at least once a week from when I was 3 years old until I was 18 and left the fucking country, but thanks to the huge pirate DVD market that existed in Caracas.
Original DVDs were expensive, and while I usually asked for one or two for Christmas, I always got at least ten every time we visited the street vendor that sold the pirate copies for cheap. My mom also hated that culture. “It’s going to kill the cinemas” or “They filmed it with a bad camera from inside the cinema! Horrific! One cannot watch a movie like that!”.
But she got me a lot of those, just because I wanted them. Just because I wanted to see them. And, because she wanted me to see the movies she watched when she was growing up.
There was even a guy that used to sit in the communal areas of my building complex and sold amazing pirate DVDs. Everyone called him Porky. He was a very fat dude, so this seemed funny and cruel. But he went along with a smile. He was very knowledgable and kind. He had great prices. He used to keep the movies in a huge black duffle bag that he walked with around the whole neighborhood. My mom always told me she didn’t understand why was he so fat because he walked a lot. I hope he’s okay.

She got me Saturday Night Fever, Grease, Dirty Dancing. My mom likes musicals. I love them too. She is into 80s musicals, because those she got to watch in the cinema when they came out. She was showing me what her cinema experience was like growing up. She also loved Woody Allen. She showed me The Purple Rose of Cairo and then I asked at school if we could watch it, they said yes, but all my classmates hated it and bullied me because it was a ‘nerdy movie’. They’re not wrong.
I loved every single one of the films she showed me and I love those movies still.

For some reason, she bought me a bunch of Hitchcock’s movies when I was like 13. I’m sure I asked for it and that she probably did it because I’m confident she’d only watched Rebecca and maybe Rope. I couldn’t say she’s seen Psycho, because again, violence. Not her thing. So she probably didn’t really know that I should have not been watching Vertigo at 13.

But we went to the movies a lot. Sometimes we went to back-to-back screenings on a Saturday afternoon, one of my favorite things to do and that I don’t do nearly as enough as I should.
We watched every single 2000s rom-com together. Every single lighthearted British film and every Monty Phyton one. A fair amount of Bond movies, which is insane because those are pretty fucking violent. Indiana Jones, because, well, Harrison Ford.

When writing this, I had to look up the plural for VHS.

I grew up on the late 90s / early 00s, so of course I owned a bunch of VHSes. Of course I had the rewinding machine that looked like a car, in a glorious transparent purple color.

I remember watching Disney’s Robin Hood a thousand times, sitting on the brown carpet of the floor of the studio, probably too close to the TV.
My childhood is a compilation of Disney animated movies in VHSes. Very stereotypical for a 30 year old in 2026. I can confirm that it was as cute, cozy, romantic, and fun as the Gen-Z think. It looked exactly how a 18 year old now would imagine it.

I also remember renting VHSes at Blockbuster before they totally switched to DVDs. This makes me feel fucking ancient.

But something that is also truth, is that scrolling on a thousand streaming apps from my bed will never compare to the feeling of renting a movie from a Blockbuster. The surprise of the new arrivals. The discounted section with plenty re-watchable movies. Renting the same movie over and over again or even renewing the renting period.

We had a huge movie rental store in Caracas called Video Color Yamin. When I’m saying huge, I’m talking Walmart-sized. Enormous. Aisles and aisles of movies to rent. I loved it there. We would spend hours just browsing for weird movies to watch.

Right when VHS was dying, my dad gave me a DVD player. “It can play every Zone!”—he yelled in excitement. I think if someone younger than 20 read this phrase, they probably will not understand what that means.

So the DVD craze started and so did the sale of pirate DVDs.
Usually when I tell people that in Caracas we used to have entirely legal stores in malls and shopping centers dedicated to selling and renting pirate DVDs, they usually don’t believe me at first. It seems crazy how an actual mall would allow a store made out of stolen IP. They paid taxes. Those were legitimate businesses. They gave me millions of worlds for cheap, thin plastic bags protecting the works of Scorcese, Kubrick, Nolan, Welles.

The first time I watched Citizen Kane, it played from a $1 pirate DVD. When I look back at it, that’s absolutely revolutionary.
In the Caracas I grew up in, we didn’t have libraries. Or if we had them, I never knew because they were decimated from budget cuts and from a government that has never given one fuck about culture.
Distribution in cinemas also sucked. We used to get movies up to a year after they were released.

The only movies I remember had the same release date than the rest of the world, were the sagas. Harry Potter, LOTR, The Hunger Games, Twilight.
The gap has closed now for what I understand. I’m so glad.

But what I mean by all this talk about the pirate DVD vendors is that they actually allowed me to experience cinema without limitations.
I watched weird movies, indie movies, big budget movies, old, new, and everything in between.

I don’t know if the owners of those stores and booths in the middle of the streets knew about film. I like to think some of them did. But the ones that didn’t and only got into that business because of the profit, gave a whole generation the opportunity of culture. Access. Physical media in the worst possible way, but films. Every film in existence. They are my heroes.

One of the things that I was most excited to find at my apartment when I went to pack everything up so my mom could sell it, was to recover some of my DVDs from my collection growing up.
I found less movies than I expected to because I guess that when you leave your home, things start to just disappear. Maybe a strange visitor stole them. Maybe my mom gave some away when she was still living in there. Maybe I gave some away when I left and I don’t remember.
But I found my Deluxe Edition of The Incredibles and brought it home to Mexico City with me. The thing is, when I was taking the pictures for this installment, I couldn’t find it. Which is very strange because I don’t lose my stuff. But it was a beautiful, metallic red box with extra content and the Jack-Jack Pixar short. My mom bought it for me at the Quito Airport Duty Free years ago. I really hope I find it.

Since I came back to Mexico with only that one and my Harry Potter 4 DVD, I decided to start building a DVD collection again.

When I found the two street vendors that sell mostly used and new DVDs alongside ugly ashtrays and trinkets, I was ecstatic. They sell every DVD for $1. They’re all original copies too. No pirates for me this time.

The film that started the small collection I have now, was the Criterion Collection Box Set of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. One of my all-time favorite movies. I paid $2,5 for it and had to hide my excitement so the guy from the stall didn’t realized he was practically giving away a treasure for free.

But there it was in all it’s glory. 3 discs. Mint condition. Laying on a dirty tarp on the dusty sidewalk next to the Metrobus Escandón. After buying that one, I found weeks later a regular Brazil DVD and I also got it. I love duplicates of things.

I simply could not stop for months.
I went there every Saturday. Not to buy movies, but to do laundry. But I would be lying if I said that suddenly, having extra cash to take to the laundromat was not a mistake. For weeks I came home with heavy bags of fresh laundry and a tote bag bursting with dusty old DVDs. $1 each. $3 the ones that have more than one disc or the Blue-Rays.

I got a bookshelf to organize them. I wrote about my “Life’s Library” last week. This is a part of that.

Movies are extremely important to me. Not just because my mom taught me to love cinema, but because as with books, I’ve raised myself to be like the characters I’ve loved.

For example, I stopped running away from the Manic-Pixie-Dream-Girl perception of me that people have. Sure, I’m quirky in many ways, I dress extremely well and I speak my mind.
And even though we have wrongly fetishized strong, authentic, and outspoken female characters throughout the years, I love to see myself in those leading ladies: Ramona Flowers, Frances Ha, Annie Hall, Summer.

I love it when I’m told I remind people of these heroines. Embracing their archetype with gratitude, because they may be flawed, yes, but they’re usually very damn cool.

So I purposely try to be like them. Even though I mostly fail at it and end up acting like Emma Morley.
I also watched a lot of TV, so try to be as much as I can like the GIRLS girls, and since I’m 30, I’m doing my best to morph into a confident and adult SATC woman.

So my collection is a very personal and meaningful piece of me. I always think about how Christopher Nolan says that we need to ‘buy physical media’ so movies don’t disappear.
Because with streaming and copyright, many movies are going away. If people stop streaming it, they don’t renew the lease and they get removed from every streaming service on earth. So we need to own them. Like with music.
This whole collection started before the recent capitalist trend of owning physical media, but I’m glad that started.
It may be a big chance for consumerism and capitalism to gain more ground in our lives, but it’s also very noble to rescue dusty DVDs from sidewalks and garage sales.

These are the movies I own.

The most meaningful pieces of my collection are the musicals.

8 Mile because I’m a hardcore Eminem fan. This is a funny story, because my love for him comes from my first boyfriend. I’m a fan of many people and things, but he showed me his music while we were dating and I could never thank him enough for it.
I even have a tattoo that’s a part of Lose Yourself and the idea for that tattoo was his. He wanted to get it. We talked about it when we were teenagers. He never did, so I got it. I don’t think he knows I have it, but I should tell him because he would probably find it funny.
Lose Yourself is also the first hip-hop song to win an Oscar.
8 Mile is a beautiful movie and Brittany Murphy is so wonderful in it. It’s also a strange musical/biopic. Very well written and extremely well directed, this fictionalized version of him is the one I think about the most. Eminem was so good in this, his acting is earnest and sharp. And God, he was so beautiful.
My tattoo reads, “And the beat goes on, da da dum da dum da da”.

All That Jazz was the first Fosse movie my mom wanted me to watch. It’s extremely violent and intense, but she loved it. I remember being mesmerized at the choreography and the depth of dance in this movie. They also smoke so many cigarettes in the movie. So. Many.
Costume design is impecable and the production design is one of the best I’ve seen. What’s amazing about this movie is that it’s still an inspiration for so many artists. I’ve seen stills from All That Jazz in countless mood-boards while working in marketing.

Music & Lyrics is just the best feel-good rom-com in the world. Drew Barrymore has always been extremely lovable and Hugh Grant has always been the perfect dumb but likable asshole. The songs on this movie are incredible. I still find myself humming to Pop! Goes My Heart every once in a while. I know all the Way Back Into Love lyrics by heart.
“I’ve been hiding all my hopes and dreams away, just in case I ever need ‘em again someday”.

Dreamgirls. How can I start to talk about this movie. What I’ve always found incredible about this movie version of the famous musical is the casting. And how someone we didn’t know at the time - Jennifer Hudson - turned out to out-shadow Queen B herself. Beyonce is always flawless, perfect. Her acting on this is huge, strong. But JHud stole my soul with her And I’m Telling You rendition. That song has always been one of my favorites thanks to JHud’s performance in the movie.
The pain. I’ve felt that pain. I’ve experienced those words. Those lyrics carried me through my first breakup. I remember doing my best to learn how to sing it, and crying my eyes out while I tried to sing it in the living room at my childhood apartment. I remember listening to it with my heart broken in a million pieces.
I can sing it fairly well now and that’s one of the things that I feel proud about.
I know every single word and I’ve felt them deep, cutting through my guts. Just like JHud.
But there’s so many good songs in this. I still sing Beyonce’s Listen when I shower. One Night Only is one of the most gut-wrenching songs to ever exist. I Am Changing lives inside my brain like a memory, rooted in my deepest pain. The ensemble performances of Family and It’s All Over are just out of this world.
Bill fucking Condon. A magician.
“I’m not living without you, I don’t wanna be free. I’m staying, I’m staying. And you, and you, and you, you’re gonna love me”.

I love Across The Universe and I’ve never been a Beatles fan. I think my current partner showed it to me when I told him I loved musicals when we first started dating. It’s sensible, tender and Jim Sturgess and Evan Rachel Wood give one of their best performances. It makes me cry and the versions of the Beatles’ songs for this movie are the only Beatles’ songs I’ve ever listened to. When I sing Let It Be, it sounds with the chorus in my head. It’s not the four British boys, its the little kid at the beginning of the song. These songs are in my mind thanks to this movie.

The Phantom Of The Opera has always been one of my favorite gothic stories and this movie is so luscious. Emmy Rossum is an angel and Gerard Butler is so intense on this.

Hair is a very special movie to me. My mom talked to me about this movie all my childhood. She really wanted me to see it and we couldn’t find it anywhere. It was not at Blockbuster, Video Color Yamin, or at the pirate movie stalls in the street. We couldn’t find it at a very specific pirate DVDs seller that used to be at the Engineering School at the Universidad Central de Venezuela. Those nerds really had the best movie selection and they didn’t have this. She spoke about this movie as it was the most amazing thing in the world, and boy, was she right.
In the 7th Grade I had a small torrent moment. I learned to download movies with Vuze, my dad taught me how. Hair was the first movie I ever illegally downloaded. I have the sweetest memory of watching this with my friends in our high school’s library. Our library teacher allowed us to watch movies there from time to time, and I still see in my mind my 5 friends and me watching this, sitting on the carpet together. They loved it. I loved it. Its a memory I’ll forever cherish because I have it thanks to my mom. This sparked an interest for the actual hippies, not the fake ones. The ones that opposed oppression, war, violence. The hippies that loved before anything else.
My mom used to have a cassette where she ‘burned’ all the songs from the movie in the 80s. The cardboard for the cassette case where she wrote the tracklist and glued a magazine cut-out from the movie promo as a cover. I’ll share that when I write about the things I have from her. It’s one of my most important pieces.
“Give me a head with hair, long, beautiful hair, shining, gleaming, steaming, flaxen waxen”.

Saturday Night Fever was also one of my favorites growing up. My mom loved it. She even had a friend at college who was a great dancer, Aberlardo. And she always told me the stories about him participating in Saturday Night Fever themed dance contests and winning. He danced with every woman. “He tired us down every time we went out dancing” is something I heard her say thousands of times. Just today, I called her while writing this to confirm this story and she said it in the same way she’s said it to me all my life. Also, John Travolta, of course she loves him.

Hairspray. Oh. My. God. The first John Waters story I ever saw. Zac Efron right out of HSM. Brittany Murphy. Michelle fucking Pfeiffer. John Travolta. The 60’s. This movie was made for me.
The craziest story about this movie is that when my mom took me to watch it in Caracas, it was Rated R and I was 13. They didn’t allowed me to see it. I remember being enraged. I knew the story, I knew that the movie was not violent or pornographic. It was badly rated. I was so mad, I yelled at the cinema clerk and told her she was an ‘ignorant asshole’, then ran away to cry at the parking lot waiting for my mom. I cried so hard. And I was traveling to the US in a couple days, so I would not get to see if before I left. Honestly, I was so sad. My first boyfriend and I wanted to see it and it had already taken a long time to release in Caracas, so this was a hard blow.
Then, when we got into the airplane, they announced that the movie they were showing was Hairspray. I don’t think I was ever as excited as I was in that moment. For my 13 year old self, it didn’t matter I was going to watch it on a shitty airplane TV because I was finally going to see it. It absolutely changed my life.
I know all the songs by heart. And this copy I have, is the one my mom gifted me for Christmas that year, 2008. I even remember figuring out she was going to give it to me, because my naughty little cousin found our Christmas gifts in the closet. It was wrapped but you could kind of see the cover art through the christmassy paper. I had to pretend I didn’t know when I opened it on Christmas, but I was so excited to own this movie that it came absolutely easy to me.
The Hairspray DVD I own is not a fancy edition, not deluxe, not Criterion quality or design. But it’s the movie I loved the most.
I sang I Can Hear The Bells in the hallways while I was falling in love for the first time. Walked drunk around strange neighbourhoods after house parties, crying and singing along to Without Love because my first boyfriend dumped me.
I watched it with him, with my best friend, with my cousins, with my mom, by myself. I watched it while happy and I danced along, I watched it while sad and I sang along.
I realized I was not a bigot while watching this movie. It taught me about love, about ugliness in people, about hate and about tolerance.
My first boyfriend and I used to hate You’re Timeless To Me and now, as an adult, I realize it’s a song that hold so much meaning. I’ve grown and I’ve learned to understand it.
“You can’t stop today”. Thank you for this story, Mr John Waters. Is one of those stories that made me who I am today.

Chicago. Ugh. What a fucking ride. I remember watching this in the cinema with my mom and I don’t get how they allowed an 8 year old in.
As I’ve continued watching this during my whole life, I find different meanings in every song. Renée Zellweger was a revelation. Catherine Zeta-Jones’ Bob will live forever. John C Reily’s Mr. Cellophane has grown on me over the years, becoming one of my favorite songs ever to listen to when I’m at a pity party for myself. The dances, the lingerie, the women. Richard Gere. Everyone was stunning and talented and hot and sad and mad. It has always made sense to me that it won Best Picture. Musicals always get ignored by major awards, but this one was impossible to not clap for. Bill Condon wrote the script for the movie and he also directed the last two Twilight Saga films, the newest - and insanely wonderful - Kiss of the Spider Woman, and the gorgeous live-action version of The Beauty and The Beast, he’s my absolute hero.
“If someone stood up in a crowd. And raised his voice up way out loud. And waved his arm. And shook his leg. You'd notice him.”

Fame. The 1980 version. I cried so much watching this and it was the source of why I’ve always wanted to go to NYC. This was it. This movie is the reason I want to see Broadway. Debbie Allen, the greatest to ever do it.

And, last but absolutely not least, Mamma Mia! This was so important to me because I watched it with my mom and she was able to sing along to her favorite ABBA songs with me during all my teenage years. My friends and I were obsessed with this movie. I have memories of doing the Dancing Queen choreography at school with all my girlfriends. We loved it. My mom loved that she could share this lyrics with me. We cried during Slipping Through My Fingers and I haven’t married yet, but I swear I will sing that song for my mom at my own wedding. I teared up writing this last phrase.
I sadly grew up to understand The Winner Takes It All.
I love ABBA thanks to this. Amanda Seyfried was unstoppable, Meryl Streep is Meryl Streep, Christine Baranski was so hot. And those three guys are the most charming men to ever graze a screen. Also, the fact that they made that movie while everyone was drunk out of their minds is probably what made this movie so magical.
The first thing I did when I turned 17 was dance drunk to Dancing Queen at my best friend’s house. I was happy.
“See that girl, watch that scene, digging the dancing queen”.

Then, there are the love stories.

Movies about love have always gotten inside of my skin. I cry with almost anything, but these movies make me feel actual pain. The one in my chest I recognize from my first heartbreak.
Aching steadily.

The Notebook.
I have two copies. The English title Blue-Ray and this lovely deluxe edition in with Spanish title.
I’ve always been a certified title translation hater. Since I’m fluent in English I’ve always felt uncomfortable with the approach most translators take when translating a movie title. This one pissed me off. Because The Notebook is simple. It doesn’t imply anything at all. Just a notebook. You won’t know what’s about until you watch the movie (or read the book). But the Spanish one, literally translates to “The Diary of a Passion”, which is unnecessarily corny.
But this movie has always been the blueprint for me.
I’ve always admired everlasting love. The waiting.
As always, I’m probably oversharing online, but what makes me happy about the time when I lost my virginity is that it felt exactly like the scene on this movie. Of course there was no fire place or a pristine sheet on the floor of a cabin, but the words, the emotion, the intention, those were the same.
I remember looking up to that person and seeing his eyes have the same exact expression as Gosling’s on that scene. That’s the memory I have.
And while no man has ever waited for me, or built me a beautiful house with his own two hands, I had that.
This is the reason why I kept a journal with all the dates from all my moments with my first boyfriend. I still have that notebook, I’ll share them when I write about him. Not to spoil it, but it’s also the reason why I’m so scared of forgetting things or getting Alzheimer's. This movie made me never want to forget, so I save things.

Saving things got me here, this movie is the reason why I’m writing about my stuff and my memories. To never forget.

This will always be the love story. Nobody has ever done it like Rachel McAddams did. Nobody.
“Read me this and I’ll come back to you”.

Love and Other Drugs. Fuck. What a movie. One of those movies people try to market as a rom-com but it’s actually the most heartbreaking, gut-wrenching love story.
It’s witty and it’s not afraid to.
Jake Gyllenhall is charming and Anne Hathaway actually became the poster girl for sad rom-com movies in the 2010s. This is one of her best works in my opinion.
Also, it sickens me how we haven’t fixed Parkinson’s, or Alzheimer’s. These deseases are unbreakable and I can’t wait to live in a world where there’s a cure to stop them.
“You meet thousands of people and none of them really touch you. And then you meet one person and your life is changed forever.”

The Holiday. Who wouldn’t want to live at Kate Winslet’s cottage?
Of course this is one of my favorite movies in the world. It has everything: Jude Law wearing glasses and crying. Kate Winslet trying to kill herself while inhaling gas from the stove. Jack Black. Cameron Diaz singing Mr. Brightside.
Hans Zimmer’s Maestro sounds as the movie starts and since then, that’s my favorite piece of him.
A story about how love can bump into you effortlessly but still shake things up in a way that feels desperate and liberating at the same time.
This movie has the best monologue in the world:
“…And then, there's another kind of love: the cruelest kind. The one that almost kills its victims. It's called unrequited love. Of that I am an expert. Most love stories are about people who fall in love with each other. But what about the rest of us? What about our stories, those of us who fall in love alone? We are the victims of the one sided affair. We are the cursed of the loved ones. We are the unloved ones, the walking wounded…”

Romeo + Juliet. Of course I own this. Of course this film would make the cut on this text. I am me. I love the Bard. I’ve read a fair share of his works, and while this story is not my favorite (Weirdly, my favorite is The Comedy of Errors), this love has been with me forever.
I think we found love in hopeless places - pun intended. I think love should weight and hurt and bleed.
There’s no way to explain what this adaptation did. With its colors, locations, costumes, Leo’s tears. The best Mercutio to ever do it in 500 years.
The church in the movie is my favorite church in the world. I try to go at least once a year. It’s crazy that I’ve always thought the chandeliers in the aisle were part of Baz’s design, but they’re not: they’re owned by the church and are still standing there. That church is one of the reasons why I love Mexico City so much. A brutalist giant in the middle of a regular residential area. It was founded on the year my dad was born, something that may mean absolutely nothing to everyone but me.
"Women may fall when there's no strength in men."

Tres Metros Sobre El Cielo. This is an obvious one. Cheesy and intense, just like me.
I read these books in Spanish and Italian. I don’t speak Italian. I was a teenager, in love, grasping for air. This gave me a chance to feel.
When I turned 17, my friends were waiting for me at my best friend’s apartment to celebrate after I went to my first concert alone, and they put on this movie when I arrived just to make me happy. Then, a bunch of drunk and high teenagers proceeded to cry for 2 hours straight in the wee hours of the night. I won’t ever forget this memory.
I will also never forget that they don’t end up together. I hate those stories. It happens too often, and it’s usually what makes them worth while.
“Siempre hay un momento en que el camino se bifurca, cada uno toma una dirección pensando que al final los caminos se volverán a unir.”

Before Sunrise. I also have two copies, one with a Spanish title and one with an English title.
This movie breaks my heart so much, that I haven’t seen the third part of the trilogy because I’m scared I won’t survive it.
This is the way I’ve fallen in love all the times that I have: conversation. I’m a basic person, because who wouldn’t? But there’s something about the intimacy between these two characters that jumps through the screen and into the crevices of my veins behind my knee. It makes me stand up, believe.
I’m still on the fence about finishing the trilogy, so I’ll have this one for now.
“I believe if there's any kind of God it wouldn't be in any of us, not you or me but just this little space in between”

Amadeus has always felt like a love story to me. A love story about a stranger that hates a genius. Envy exists within love. Jealousy is heavy, but it lays in the same place in our hearts as infatuation.
This was my favorite movie growing up. The madness. The magic. The sadness. (This is an Adventure Time quote!).
I feel like Salieri does, a lot. More than I would want to. But I do. I recognize the hate lodged in my knuckles.
“I will speak for you, Father. I speak for all mediocrities in the world. I am their champion. I am their patron saint.”

Little Miss Sunshine is also a story about love.
Every time I hate my body in the mirror I think about this movie and this little girl, comparing herself with beauty queens and standing tall either way.
Every time I want to hurt myself I think of Steve Carell sitting on a wheelchair and take a deep breath.
Every time I don’t find the right words to say I think of that iconic, unforgettable scream by Paul Dano.
Growing up hurts the knees. This movie slathered on my aching, 12 year old body and gave it comfort in it’s weirdness, it’s painful existence, it’s endless rods hiding in it’s back.
“Life is one fucking beauty contest after another.”

I have to make special mention to The Hunger Games.
Of course I devoured this book when I was a teenager. Of course I watched every single movie installment at the premiere in my city. Of course I reblogged endless Mockingjay artworks on my Tumblr page in the 2010s. Of course it radicalized me.
It still does. Suzanne’s writing is insanely good. Jennifer fucking Lawrence singing The Hanging Three in the last movie of the saga created one of my favorite songs in the world.
It’s a love story charged with loss and fear. Reckoning of injustice. Fight.
But in the end, they loved each other enough to forgive each other. And I think that’s what love is all about.
“Wanna see what I got you today? It's a mockingjay pin, to protect you. And as long as you have it, nothing bad will happen to you.”

And finally, Twilight. The love story that taught me how to love. Endlessly. Like running through a meadow.

I have an amazing story about the first time I watched this movie. I even have the ticket stub from that visit. I won’t tell it yet. This is getting too long to read and this anecdote deserves it’s own piece - again, when I talk about my first boyfriend, who’s mom dropped us off to watch it at a horrific cinema complex.
“I'd never given much though to how I would die. But dying in place of someone I love, seems like a good way to go.”

These are my movies. The movies I own and love. Movies I go back to.

I plan on keep growing this collection until I have no space left in my home. Until I have no time left to watch them for the thousand time. I plan on buying every single film I love.
It’s crazy that none of these DVDs I have, I’ve looked for or bought brand new.
I stumbled upon them. They probably belonged to someone that loved them and died, someone that moved and threw them in the trash. So I have them now. They’re mine.

I feel compelled to share my Letterbox Top 4 and profile after writing this. Of course I’d love for you to follow me in there, I try to watch a lot of movies and leave funny and weirdly emotional reviews. https://letterboxd.com/ab_lass/

Thank God for movies. They’re something special.

Have you really read all those books in your room?

Alaska laughing - Oh God no. I’ve maybe read a third of ‘em. But I’m going to read them all. I call it my Life’s Library. Every summer since I was little, I’ve gone to garage sales and bought all the books that looked interesting. So I always have something to read.

Looking For Alaska
John Green

How does one start writing about books?

I don’t actually know where this installment is going, but I know that I would not be who I am or where I am without the books I’ve read.

My mom read to me since I was born. Most of my late night childhood memories include her reading Harry Potter to me before going to sleep. And I swear to God I’ll be cursing Joanne every two lines in here. So, fuck you, Joanne. For absolutely messing up with the legacy of the story that helped my mom raise me.

As a child, I remember my mom being an avid reader. She never had a TV in her room and neither did I until I asked for it.
I had a TV on the study room at my house and I spent most of my time there growing up, so it’s not like she was prohibiting me from watching TV. But we did not watch TV before going to bed, we read.

She read every single children’s book to me. I vividly remember The Phantom Tollbooth. Which is crazy because it’s not a very known book in Latin America. I think that’s the first book that absolutely blew my mind. Milo’s adventures stayed forever in my head, distorted because of time, but when someone mentions that story I jump in to say how much it impacted me as a child. I don’t remember anything specific, I just remember that I loved it and since a friend loaned it to me, I remember crying when I had to give it back.

I always start this texts with “the beginning”, and this beginning starts with Harry Potter. Again, fuck you, Joanne.

My mom’s brother was my favorite uncle growing up. He was a cool dude with hot girlfriends that loved to hang with me and I with them because they were probably 30 year olds and looked like real cool women. I grew up with him being very present in my childhood. When I talk about him now, it feels wild because he left the country when I turned 6. So it’s not like he was there for a long time. But it feels like those years were meaningful.
When he left, he bought me a present. My maternal grandmother died that same year and I know he was devastated. Then he left. He went to live in the US with his beautiful, gorgeous, amazing wife. My aunt K.

He gifted me the first 4 books of the Harry Potter series: new paperbacks, fresh book smell. I don’t have a lot of recollection of how everything went down, but I remember him handing me a white plastic bag with the books while I was in the car with my mom in the middle of the street. They were not wrapped on fancy paper. I remember that.

I guess my mom kind of knew what the books where about, but when she started reading them out loud to me before bedtime we were going in blind.

This was in 2001. Probably just months before the first HP movie came out. In Venezuela, we used to get movies two or three months after the official release date. So my mom and I managed to read the whole first book before the movie premiered in our city.

I also don’t remember much from that first book. But when I think of those nights, I see my mom in her pijamas and me laying next to her on her bed, listening. She read every single word. Every single page.

What I do remember is going to the cinema to watch the first movie and taking my copy with me. I remember hugging that book while seated at the movies. I still take my books with me to see movie adaptations. It makes me feel connected to my 6 year old self. I hold them, close to my chest, while the title credits roll in.

I’ve concluded that because he was leaving the country - and his only niece -, he wanted to give me something nice as a parting gift. He didn’t know the impact this story would have in me, or the world. But I’ll always be grateful for that. He left, I felt it. I’ve talked about it in therapy. How he left our family to build a family of his own in a different country. He made it, he gave me my beautiful cousins and my beautiful aunt and they’re okay and they’re happy. I miss them.

He unknowingly gifted me the first story I loved. The story about The Boy Who Lived.

This is the copy my uncle gave to me in 2001. As you can see, my mom taught me to always write my name and the date in the first page of the books I own. This is my 6-year-old-self handwriting. The top corner is detached from the cover. I still have it.

This is the first book I loved.

And what a joyous feeling to have 3 more books to read after we finished.
My mom and I spent years reading this story together. When I learned how to, we took turns. Maybe it was so I could practice, maybe because she was tired.
But when I think of these books, I feel like that 6 year old girl discovering magic next to my mom.

Harry’s story raised me.
My mom used to say something very particular about Harry Potter. She said that she loved him like if he was a boy going to school with me, she cared for him like she cared for my classmates.
It’s crazy how ten years go by. From the day we started reading the first book, to the day the last HP movie was released. 2001 to 2011. Ten years. Ten years of my life. Of my mom’s life. Those were the best 10 years I ever had.

I have a ton of funny memories with these books. Again, fuck you, Joanne.
When we were reading the fourth one - the one in where shit goes sideways pretty fast - we stayed up all night. My mom was not very successful in enforcing a curfew. And I will always remember when Cedric dies because of it.
We were in bed, taking turns to read because I was older by the moment we reached that book. But it affected me so much that I ended up having diarrhea because of the nerves.
I remember sitting in the en-suite toilet in my mom’s room, both of us crying, at 2 am, while she read out loud from the bed. She never allowed me to skip school. But that night, we knew I was not going the next day. We read. All night. Cedric died. Voldemort came back. The prose trapped us, kept us in the bed with the small bedside lamp turned on while the whole world was quietly sleeping. We were crying and reading. Probably the two things my mom and I are the best at: crying and reading.

I also have an amazing anecdote about the day the last HP book was released: For the first time, we were getting a worldwide release date in Venezuela. Meaning I did not have to wait two months for the book to get there, while every child in the US and the UK already had.
The publisher participated in an event that a dude that ran a Harry Potter Fan Blog organized. He’s a very intelligent and achieved man now. Probably the first cool nerd I met. He organized a huge moment for us. Out of the love of the story. Once, again, fuck you, Joanne.
So we had a release date. And the bookstore, alongside this guy, created magic themed board games, brought in color-dyed 7Up glasses to look like potions, trivias, hosted a costume contest, hired a magician to do tricks, and probably a lot more activities I don’t remember at the moment.
The mall closed at 10 pm, but we were going to stay until midnight in the bookstore so we could be the first people in the whole country to get the final book.
That night is probably the first moment where I felt that I belonged.

February 21st 2008. Tecni-ciencias Libros. Centro Comercial San Ignacio. Caracas, Venezuela.

They gave us numbers to queue so when the clock hit midnight, we would not fight to death but calmly pay for our copy.

I was Number 12. That meant that I would be one of the first people in the country to have a copy of the translated book. My final copy. The end of an era. Which also gave way for the end of my childhood. I was 12 when this happened. Next fall, after I finished the book, I turned 13.

This is the queue number I got.

This playing card I got from the magician they hired at the event. I also saved the bookmark and temporary tattoo they gave us.

I remember walking to the car at midnight, hugging my book. Ecstatic.

These are my only copies. I’d love to have every edition available but I refuse to contribute to the destruction that Joanne’s money is causing. So these will have to do.

To keep talking about my mom, when I was 11 she gave me a copy of Little Women and said “Every girl should read this book”. So I read it. I loved it.

Maybe that’s when my love for books started.

I used to read a lot when I was a teenager.

I remember devouring One Hundred Years of Solitude at 12, just before starting high school. Because my mom thought they would ask me to read it for school at some point and encouraged me to read it during the summer.

After that, words flooded my days.

When I got my first laptop on 2008, I started illegally downloading books in PDF.
I read every Federico Moccia book. In Spanish and in Italian. I do not speak Italian.

Here’s when shit started to go sideways. I was reading about love.

As I said on the last text from this series, my high school had a library. Filled with books. I started reading in the hallways. Laying on the floor.
Read Kafka, Nabokov, Sartre. 13 years old.

Words seemed to enter every crevice of my brain and shaped me in ways I still regret sometimes.

My mom never forbid me from reading a book.

I also read a lot of poetry growing up. Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Andrés Bello, Gabriela Mistral.

Spanish. I was reading a lot in Spanish. Translations.

But everything changed when I read my first Walt Whitman poem.

I was learning English and I stumbled upon “I Sing The Body Electric” on a Tumblr post. I understood it. That was the moment when I felt myself change.

So I started to read in English and abandoned Spanish forever. I felt I’ve already read everything I needed in Spanish: García Márquez, Rulfo, Cervantes, Montero. Of course I read Don Quixote when I was 11. Like, obviously I did. I am me.

And I'm not proud about the fact that I completely stopped reading in Spanish. But I know Spanish already. It’s my native language. And as a child, I was a very good writer in Spanish. I needed to be as good in English. For that, I needed to read in English. That’s my reason. I just need to get better at this.

I picked up a Pride and Prejudice copy from my high school’s library. I never looked back.

Reading in English gave me this. The ability to write what I’m writing and almost-perfect fucking grammar.

I used to have an English dictionary in my backpack all the time. A small, pocket-sized Oxford copy that my mom got for me. “It’s not a translated edition”, said my mom. “I know, I won’t learn with Spanish translations”, I replied.

So I read.

I read every Jane Austen novel before I was 15. I learned about class, love, and English aristocracy. Her books are the reason why I love to read. The pace, the wit, the obnoxious men. Jane gifted me so much.

After her, came the Brontë Sisters. Jane Eyre. Wuthering Heights.
And I could go on about how Wuthering Heights changed my life in every possible way, but I have a very thorough piece on this subject here. The pain, the madness, the pining and longing and yearning.

The first time I read Looking for Alaska by John Green I was 14 years old.
I was deeply in love for the first time. Skins UK was on TV.
Alaska was the coolest character I’ve ever read.
And it would be a stretch to think John Green will read what I’m writing now, but if I could tell him something, I would tell him that I inadvertently raised myself to become her.

The Twilight Saga was also huge for me. I was a teenage girl. It was big for every teenage girl in the world.
It showed me a different kind of love compared to the loved described by Austen. Of course that the Mormon allegories were there, but the love was endless.

I remember finishing the last book while on a chair under the sun at a big plaza in Caracas. Plaza Altamira.
I feel the pain Bella Swan describes in New Moon every time my heart gets broken. It has happened twice. I’ve felt it twice. I recognize it as that pain she felt when he left.

I could write 10,000 words about how the Twilight Saga changed me. I won’t.

Fiction was my reality. My life mimicked the pain of the protagonists of the books I read. I basked on the emotions they experienced, searching for myself in their pain.

I left my home country after I graduated high school. And even though I traveled with my Kindle, I know I stopped reading as much as I was before.
Life, I guess. TV. Streaming. iPhones. Instagram.
World sped up so much. And I put my books down for years.

Until September 2022.

In September of 2022 I went back home to pack shit up at my house. One of the things I wanted was to reconnect with my 14 year old self because I was turning 27 that November. I was doubling in age the most exciting year I had as a teenager. And that came with picking back up the habit of reading.

Before that trip to Caracas, I watched the Looking for Alaska adaptation. It absolutely changed my life. It reminded me of who I was when I was 14: A cool girl, cigarette in hand, reading non-stop.
I realized while watching the magnificent portrayal of Alaska Young by Kristine Froseth, that I had become Alaska without noticing.

“Y'all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die” says Alaska Young.

But the thing that helped me get where I am now was the comment about her “Life’s Library”. On the quote I put at the beginning of this installment, Alaska talks about having a shit-ton of books she hasn’t read. Yet.

That was the one thing I didn’t remember from the first time reading it. So, I naturally got a copy before going to Caracas and read it on the plane. Finished. Again. 14 years after the first time. It felt transformative. It felt like I’ve always known this story, yet, it was coming back to me and intertwining itself on my fingertips.

One of the things I was going to do in Caracas was bring my books with me to Mexico City.

I was hoping to find in my house my copies of the Twilight Saga books. They were not there. I was devastated.

It was also very sad to enter the library room at my house and realizing it was never that big.
In my head, I remember growing up next to this massive bookshelf. Filled to the brim with books and enciclopedias. When I got there 8 years after I left home, what I found was a very modest piece of furniture. Sure, we had a lot of books. But it was no Trinity College.

This was my bookshelf growing up.
When I realized it was not huge, I sat on the floor and cried.

I realized that books are smaller than what they hold. Books hold the entire world. Even worlds that doesn’t exist.

When I was growing up, I felt that every possible dream was here. All the words in existence.
And in a way, they were. All the words I learned, I learned from books that sat in here. Collecting dust and alphabetically organized by my mom once a year.

But I was set on taking as many books from our home library as I could. And that’s what I did.

I had some money set aside to buy my first bookshelf as an adult when I came back from that trip.
So I packed up my suitcase with every book that I wanted from there.

I was starting my “Life’s Library”.

The most meaningful book I brought with me, ended up being related to Looking for Alaska by chance.

When I was sorting these books out, a very old copy of El General en su Laberinto by García Márquez caught my eyes. I’d just re-read Looking for Alaska and it seemed like a sign because this book is very important for the protagonist.
I saved it and took it with me on the plane. When I opened it, it had my maternal grandmother’s name in the front page.

When I asked my mom if it was hers she told me she had never read it. It was my grandma’s copy. My maternal grandmother died of a heart attack when I was 5. I miss her everyday. And suddenly, I had her book in my hands.
A book mentioned in one of my favorite books. With her name on the first page, just like my mom taught me to do. So I wrote my name beneath hers. It’s our book now. Mine and hers. It connects me to her. Our hands grazed the same page in very different times. We live together on this page still.

I went to IKEA on the same day I flew back home with my books.
25 kilograms of books: all my Harry Potter books, old books that belonged to my mom, the books I read when I was growing up.
I bought my first bookshelf. I assembled it. Filled it with the books that used to live in my childhood bookshelf. I cried. I’ve been an immigrant for almost 10 years back then and I had a bookshelf in my home for the first time.

It’s still here, next to my side of the bed. Full of toys and trinkets because those “take good care of my books”, I like to imagine.

This one pictured down below is the bookshelf I’m talking about.

After buying this bookshelf and picking up reading again, I haven’t been able to stop.

So I got another bookshelf, is this one:

After getting these two - and two more, one for my DVD collection and one for my magazines/CD/vinyl - my house feels like my house again.

It’s like the John Waters’ quote: "if you go home with someone and they don't have any books, don't fuck them".

I needed books in my house. I needed to have them. To build my “Life’s Library”.
I used to have a bookshelf at my childhood home. Now I have my books with me. They look at me from behind the bookshelf doors, smirking and yelling for me to open them. My books live inside my house, just like I do.

I haven’t read all the books I have. And I probably buy at least one book a month.

I don’t read as much as I want to, but I have them here.

For this installment I photographed all the books I own, here they are:

And there are some pieces that deserve their own explanation.

This is my copy of Blue Label/Etiqueta Azul by Eduardo Sánchez Rugeles.
This book was so important for teenagers from Caracas in the 2010s. It’s the first book that actually takes on the topic of leaving the country due to the horrific tragedy that’s been haunting my birthplace for 30 years. Is a story about a girl that goes to hell and back to get a French passport so she can leave Venezuela. It absolutely changed my life. It’s a road story. Wild, reckless. Filled with real-life situations that most people that left Venezuela have experienced. Amazing fucking book. It shaped me and validated my decision to leave like nothing ever did. Thank you, Eduardo. For your words. For giving us the first story about the pain of needing to go away. My copy is a mess, it got wet at some point and it’s all banged up, underlined and annotated. Without this book I would not be who I am.

This is a book my mom wrote. And I was so proud of her.
She wrote it with two friends and a collaborator that used to write for the El Sistema Nacional de Orquestas in Venezuela. My mom and her friends worked on this book probably for more than two years.
I remember going with her to their meetings and doodling on the architect’s table her friend Pitrelli had in his studio - the place where they met to work on this. I loved his office so much, it was very fancy and very much an architect’s workplace. And they studied in the 80’s, so they always had lots of old school metal instruments to draw laying around. Those looked like doctors’ equipment.

It was a very intense project, financed by the UN’s PNUD. The guy that gave them the budget was called Vidar. A tall, Skarsgård-looking Swede diplomat. I remember him so vividly.
We walked the construction site of this building countless times. I watched this building be born. Raise from the ground up.
This was an enormous project by El Sistema - the organization of orchestras in Venezuela. An organization that’s been teaching children from marginalized areas to play instruments for decades. Some of the best musicians in the world studied here, for free. Maestro Jose Antonio Abreu created a world for children of all ages to exist inside the music. Such project deserved a book. My mom and her friends made it happen.

I first learned about acoustics in this building. This was the first time I entered a music studio or walked on an empty amphitheater. I also got to see the organ be unveiled and got to touch the marbled keys. That organ has a special sound made just for them, it sounds like birds. When the organ player plays that key, birds sing.
It’s a church for music. But well, aren’t all churches the same thing?

This is my favorite Shakespeare comedy. It’s just a funny story. Timeless. I got this beautiful clothbound copy last year for $4 US dollars at an used books store close to my house.

These two copies of Hope Was Here by Joan Bauer have a great story.
The one on the right I stole from my high school’s library the day I graduated.
My first tattoo is a small word in my right hip, it says “Hope” in Times New Roman. It’ll be 16 years old this year. When I got it, I was heartbroken. And I read this book about a diner server named Hope on the same month I got the tattoo. I used to write “Hope was here” on every wall I could. I carved it on the mall I used to go to with friends, and I bet there’s still a carving of that phrase in my high school’s library. On the second hallway, underneath the metal bookshelf.
I stole this copy in 2013.
The one on the left, I got last year. I was browsing on the stock of a street vendor I usually buy stuff from and he had it. I froze. This is a silly, school level book. Not a masterpiece. Not a Great American Novel. And I’ve kept my old copy for years with me. So when I found a totally different copy in the middle of the street in Mexico City I bought it. It cost me $2 US dollars.
One I got when I was a teenager, the other I got as an adult.
I’m still here. Hope is still here.