This entry is part of the Miami Migration Short Essay Contest. The program, created by Cátedra Vargas Llosa, was designed to engage young people in South Florida in the art of writing while reflecting on their migration experiences.

When people talk about migration, it usually sounds like something distant, something that happens to other people. For me, it’s not just a story, it’s the foundation of my life.

I was too young to understand what was really happening, absorbing the shift only through the hurried packing, the hushed adult voices, and the strange, quiet finality of the closing door. Everything changed the moment we left. I didn’t register the geopolitical reasons, only the feeling of a sudden, rootless transition. What started as something simple ended up shaping everything I grew up to know, leaving me with a unique sense of belonging that is always half here and half somewhere else.

I didn’t really understand what was happening when we left. I was eight, my sister was five, and all I cared about was the fact that I could only bring one plushie with me, my favorite bear, the one my grandpa had given me. This bear became the tiny, tangible weight of everything I was leaving behind. I thought we were going on some long vacation, maybe just a trip somewhere nice, because that’s what my parents had gently, perhaps heartbreakingly, told us. About a week before, we had gone to Ciudad Zulia to say goodbye to my grandparents on my mom’s side, and to most of her family. I didn’t question it too much back then; I just thought it was something families did before going away, a big, celebratory farewell. We packed a few clothes, said some quiet goodbyes, and got on a plane like it was nothing, our parents insisting on keeping a smile on their faces that looked a little too wide, a little too fixed. I remember posing for pictures at the connecting airports, smiling wide, clutching that bear in my arms, genuinely excited for the ‘adventure’ ahead. It was a perfect lie that my childhood self believed completely. It never crossed my mind that I wouldn’t be going back, that the simple act of boarding that plane was actually the single biggest decision of our lives.

Adjusting to life in a new country was a lot more complicated than I expected. I didn’t know the language, not really. The only background I had was a handful of songs I could mimic the sounds of and a few TV shows I half-understood. For a while, we lived with my godfather, which made everything feel even less like it was real or permanent, as if we were just squatting in someone else’s settled life, waiting for a signal to pack up again. I remember my first Christmas there being strange but warm, everything familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. Then came school, three of them, in just two years. Every time I started to get used to one, we moved again. Each move was a reset button, forcing me to learn a new bus route, a new set of faces, and a slightly different way to hide my confusion. People thought I was Mexican until not too long ago, and at first, I didn’t even know how to correct them. Somewhere in all that moving and trying to keep up, I started losing little pieces of my culture without even noticing; the language of my home became fainter as the sound of the pavement under my feet changed yet again.

I didn’t find out the real reason we left until years later. For most of my life, I just accepted the story of it being a trip that turned permanent. One day, I asked my mom why we really left, and she told me that things in Venezuela weren’t stable at the time. At first, I thought she meant the apagones, the constant power cuts, or maybe just the general instability that I’d overheard adults whispering about when they thought I wasn’t listening.

But when I pressed a little more, she finally said that some dangerous people had gotten involved with my dad’s company and that our family had started receiving death threats. She told me in such a quiet, careful voice, like she was handing me something fragile. I could tell it wasn’t something she liked remembering. I didn’t really know what to say, part of me felt like I should’ve known, and another part of me was relieved I didn’t. In that instant, the silence of my childhood wasn’t a gap; it was a wall, built by my parents to keep the darkness out. It was strange, realizing that what I’d always thought was just a move for better opportunities had actually been about survival. It made everything, every bag we packed, every goodbye, every flight connection, suddenly feel heavier, tainted with the invisible shadow of a threat I was never supposed to know existed. That smiling picture of eight-year-old me in the airport became less about adventure and more about escape.

Looking back, everything makes a little more sense now. I understand why things happened the way they did, even if I didn’t back then. I’ve lost parts of my culture, picked up new ones along the way, and learned how to balance both without letting either disappear completely. It’s a strange kind of story to grow up with, but it’s mine, and it’s made me who I am.