At some point today I realized I was walking slower, not because I was tired but because Christmas Eve does that to me. It pulls me inward. It narrows my attention. Every step feels like it carries something extra that I did not pack on purpose. Nostalgia arrived without drama, just quietly, like it always does when the calendar insists on meaning. I did not think about it in full sentences.
I rarely do on days like this. It was more physical than logical. A tightening in the chest. A heaviness behind the eyes. The kind of awareness that makes even familiar streets feel slightly off. I kept walking anyway. Wednesdays have taught me that stopping only makes the noise louder.
Right now being Venezuelan means living with an internal map that no longer matches reality. The country exists, of course, but the people who gave it shape are scattered. You learn to count absences without realizing it. Friends who should be here but are not. Family members whose voices now come delayed through screens.
Love stories that dissolved into geography. On Christmas Eve this becomes unavoidable. Tables grow larger as people disappear from them. Conversations shorten because there is too much to explain. Nostalgia settles in the gaps. It is not sentimental. It is factual. Twelve people gone out of twenty is not a metaphor. It is a ratio you carry in your body.
Every Wednesday walk carries its own mood, but today the walk felt like a confrontation. The city looked the same and completely different at once.
Decorations tried their best. Lights blinked with conviction. Yet behind that effort there was a thin layer of silence I could not ignore. I passed places that once meant something specific. A corner where we used to meet. A house that hosted too many Decembers to count. Memory did not ask whether I was ready. It rarely does. It simply laid those images on top of the present and waited. Walking became a negotiation between what is and what refuses to stay in the past.
On days like this people expect closure, or at least a clean narrative. I have never had that. Loss does not organize itself for our comfort. Duels do not respect holidays. They sharpen them. Christmas Eve magnifies everything that is unresolved. The dead. The gone. The relationships that ended without ceremony. There is no lesson hidden in that. No transformation arc. Just endurance. I set the table knowing it will never look the way it once did. I answer messages from other countries while pretending time zones do not hurt. Nostalgia sits beside me and does not apologize.
Maybe this is what these walks are really about. Not healing. Not moving on. Just witnessing. Allowing memory to exist without forcing it into wisdom. Today, on this Wednesday, nostalgia hit hard because it had reasons to. Because love once filled these spaces. Because belonging was real enough to leave marks. I keep walking not to escape it, but to carry it properly. Uneven. Heavy. Human. That feels honest. And honesty is the only thing that does not feel out of place on a night like this.
*All photographs and content used in this post are my own. Therefore, they have been used under my permission and are my property.
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