Something from the heights.

As a result of my last trip out of my house, I want to talk about my experience living in apartmens. But I must point out that I do go out walking to nearby places, areas that are close to me and that I can go to in one or two hours by simply walking. But I haven't been driving to a farther place since my brother got sick a few months ago and I was visiting him daily as a family doctor and nurse.

Today I want to tell you about my experience about living in apartments. It’s not a criticism by any means, because I respect that as each one of us chooses how and where to live. But I want to tell you that in relation to where I like to live I prefer to live in a house.

I currently live in a house. It’s the house where my parents lived since I was 15 years old. I have been going back and forth to this house multiple times since I left at the age of 25 to continue studying at the university.

After I graduated I went to live in different cities to practice my profession, until I came back to this house after living in other places in this same city. Now I have been living in this house again for about 10 years.

But what I want to tell you is my experience living in apartments. I don't like them much, unless in visiting someone because I like the view that you have from that height and you can see the city and the surroundings from different places and times of the day… But the feeling of being so high off the ground causes me fear.

I remember an experience I had when I lived in my older sister's apartment in the city of Puerto La Cruz. I stayed and took care of her apartment while she was working and living in the city of Caracas, the capital of my country Venezuela.

When she wanted to come to this city she would come and stay in this apartment which is 8 floors above the ground. Can you imagine? Whenever the elevator was damaged, everything I had to climb. I had to leave the groceries I bought in the car and then go up with what I could. Then to repeat the process so many times with whatever products I could carry at once.

I have always been a heavy person. I went through several types of diets and would regain my normal weight and then return to gaining more. That's how I've spent my life, losing weight and gaining weight. It’s kind of a habit for me. So it means that I now struggle with the sedentary lifestyle that confinement causes me and my weight gain. Both are reversible and in due course I will regain it again.

Living on high floors with weight gain means sacrifice, having to go downstairs and upstairs several times is not that pleasant. It also doesn't mean it's good or that I'm exercising. It means having to do more weight bearing than I'm used to.

But… back to what I was saying, I was at home one day after returning from duty. I had one part of my pajamas on, the top part. My sister was at home. I think she had come home from a course and brought sushi for dinner. In a while while we were talking we felt the floor move strongly. I got dizzy. We stood still while the shaking passed and then we ran to the elevator and went down. Fearing the aftershock. I realized I was wearing only half a pair of pajamas and in our hands we carried the house and car keys. We drove around in the car until we got back an hour later, when we didn’t feel anymore shakes.

Nothing was happening. But I realized that now the problem was to get out of the car and go up the building with half my pajamas on. I was so embarassed! And just at that moment some neighbors arrive, we say good night… of course in the elevator they saw me in my pajamas. All I could do was stare at my sister’s face. They got out of the elevator on the third floor and my sister and I continued to our floor. There, I felt all the shame of being on the street in half pajamas and the people arriving didn't even notice that I was shaking. I was very embarrassed. But well, stuff happens.

While I was studying at the university I lived several times in buildings. They were not very high, but since I don't like elevators I had to go up and down as many times as necessary.

But this is a minor problem. Living in a building in an apartment on the third or fourth floor, in a city where the ground shakes every day, even for a short time and very softly. It’s a detail that is not pleasant.

Yes, on several occasions while I was living there, the earth shook. It feels like I am dizzy. I lose my balance. Then I realize that it’s shaking. The moment is over, it's just a scare. Then I run down the steps and reach the bottom floor and find several people scared by the same thing that scares me, being in a building when the ground is shaking.

It's not that I chose to live in apartments. It's that I had nowhere to live and I had to find a place to live as quickly as possible. And finding in the ads that there were rentals in buildings was a sacrifice for me. It was either live the change or stay where I couldn't live because the rent would go up.

I don't like to live in apartments and that has been my whole life.

But I'm home now… we have earthquakes here too, sometimes, and I don't run anywhere. I even felt one of the strongest tremors ever in my life while being here…