English.

My name is Elimer Hernandez and I will begin narrating my story is not at all simple, but I will open my heart and soul so you can understand what brought me here. When I was only 4 years old, I began my development in a school for nuns called "Mother Rafols" which belonged to the congregation of the Sisters of Charity of St. Anne, whose inspiration was to follow the teachings of detachment and life of service given by Mother Maria Rafols.

Perhaps, studying in a school with this type of vision was not at all by chance, since in the following years I would have to put into practice some of the values of service, selfless dedication and above all a great deal of empathy would be part of my life. Like any girl whose studious life begins awakened in me, the curiosity to learn how to relate, but I was not very successful in this, because unfortunately it was hard for me to have friends and at all times there has been bullying, making my first years in elementary school were memories of bad times because I did not learn to read and incidentally have to deal with some comments from my peers unhealthy, it's amazing how sometimes people even at a young age can get to hurt you.

But you also learn from the unfavorable and often this makes you understand that everything that seems inauspicious later forges your character, of course in an ideal world, bullying, misunderstandings and lack of empathy should be something that is eliminated from the map, but these imperfections remind us that we must always strive to be better.

Due to this disdain and lack of relationship with my peers, I began to isolate myself and delve deeper into what I considered of vital importance, to understand how a spiritual life like Jesus' could become a relief and with a real and concrete purpose to serve the Supreme Lord God.
Of course, do not forget that she was a child, who still played, longed and needed to be accepted. This is how in 4th grade you could say that my process of friendships began, since I met Johana and Lenny, who were my sister's friends and became my friends as well.

In this process of my life, my sister always played a decisive role, because she was my first and great friend, because although she was older than me and we were in different grades, we were always together and it was at recess to be with her and her friends, which made the school stage bearable. Because of this, I took refuge in my studies and in the level of demand for myself, I always strived to be one of the members of the honor roll, in the end I succeeded but I still had to deal with the teasing, even once they tormented my sister and me, for a long time some boys named Marcel and Henry, chasing us during all recess and calling us rotten witches, but they were also so fragile and that was what I never understood why they started with the teasing if we never did anything to them, but over the years I understood that sometimes submitting and making fun of another, was a sign of many internal torments.

Of course, you may ask, how did we get out of that situation? Well, we talked to our mother and she went and confronted Henry and Marcel asking them to respect us and they finally stopped their harassment. I think that relieved our lives a lot, the paradox of all this, is that over the years Marcel became one of the few who spoke to me in the living room and became the person who influenced me in my musical tastes, I will never forget the day he lent me the first Incubus CD and I hallucinated with such good music, From that day on we shared musical tastes and talked about bands like Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains, that's why it was hard to find out in adulthood that Marcel had committed suicide in his early twenties and I finally understood that we never know how tormented someone can be even when outwardly he looks perfectly fine.

My process was taking shape and one day I spoke to one of the superior mothers to express my desire to be a Nun, to try to serve God from that position, but she was so clear with me and told me these words: You are so young, you must make your life, finish your studies, live your own experiences and then if you still want to give yourself to the Lord you can join and go to the convent.

I will not lie to you, this discouraged me, I just thought what's wrong with me at 12 years old wanting to be a Nun, what sense does this life have if I don't live for God? But today I am grateful for those words and I realize that it was true, I still did not know anything, I was so young and inexperienced that to have taken a vow of chastity and surrender at that age, perhaps it would not have been ideal. I was growing up and as I did, more changes came into my life, such as saying goodbye to my school "Madre Rafols" I had to leave because we had moved to a new area and my parents enrolled us in a high school closer to our new home, it was not easy, I had been in that school from kindergarten to the eighth grade of high school but more than saying goodbye to an infrastructure, my heart was wrinkling because I was saying goodbye to Johana and Lenny, two good friends who had been in my life and meant a lot to me.

But well, everything is part of growth and change, my sister and I were back to being just the two of us, facing the unknown, the difference is that we were no longer children but insecure teenagers and afraid to start again in another school. I thought it was just like my other school, but it was the opposite in spite of being a school of nuns, it was less strict and instead of being an advantage it became a reason to make fun of me.

In just my first day of school I was criticized for the length of my skirt, the size of my stockings, among others, that made me feel terrible and I came home asking my mother to make a hem on my skirt, so it would be shorter, I really just wanted to fit in and not be teased again, but how do we do this, how do we fit in and become accepted? Well I never knew while I was there, my mom raising the hem of my skirt didn't change anything, I still wore my long skirt for my classmates and I was still the new girl, they started teasing me behind my back and I found out that I had nicknames like Eli macho, just because I had hairy legs and they thought that made me a man.

But I was not discouraged, my sister was always there for me and at recess she and I were there to support each other, although I felt that the world became complicated when after a year of being there, my sister did not pass the grade and so that she would not live the mockery of repeating a school year, they changed her to a parasystem, leaving me completely alone, I remember that my world turned black and I felt so bad. How could this be possible, would I be able to resist the mockery without my sister and me to support us? Well, I had no choice but to accept this reality, but in spite of that, many days instead of enjoying recess, I would lock myself in one of the cubicles in the bathroom just waiting for recess to end, I even ate in the bathroom to avoid the loneliness I felt and the fear of being teased, sometimes the suffering and the fear of being the center of ridicule generate so much anxiety that without realizing it, you submit yourself to unimaginable situations, because I never really thought in my life of eating in a cubicle in the bathroom just to avoid having to deal with the bulling.

Despite not having the support of my sister, and the separation I felt when I found myself alone without her, I finally managed in 4th year of high school to have friends, with whom I had many things in common, both rock and eccentric musical tastes, as in the libertarian and anarchist way of thinking. I must say, I have always been a lover of punk rock and its libertarian thoughts, of course in such a globalized society to be an anarchist is almost impossible, although having friends comforted my spirit, I always felt an emotional emptiness as a kind of need that was not filled with anything, The two years left to finish high school and having that group of friends made me feel safe and I managed to graduate from high school with mention in accounting, I felt that great satisfaction of being victorious for so many years of not knowing how to deal with the bulling at last that was over.

This is how, after graduating, I was selected for an interview process to enter the Central University of Venezuela better known as UCV, I was full of excitement and of course panic because in reality I had never been interviewed and this step in my life would be fundamental, the day of the interview came and I can tell you with total certainty that I still remember the feeling I felt was a mixture of uncertainty and a little pessimism, in reality I have never been one of the most cheerful people. After going through this process, I felt that I had not made it but after a month, they published the results and I had been selected for the School of Philosophy, woooow to say that I was excited, perplexed and somehow bewildered is an understatement.
So this part of my life I call university, to say university, usually comes with concerns such as what do we want to achieve, is knowledge everything or perhaps the road we travel to obtain it, is even more important? So many questions lie and are reformulated in our minds and more when we study philosophy. Well, I tried to take it calmly, I tried to see the good in every obstacle and I learned that unfortunately Philosophy as such is only focused on Western Philosophy studies, at least in the UCV it was like that, so I think we only have a part of the story, we are incomplete in terms of philosophical knowledge because we are not only composed by the West but also Eastern philosophy is fundamental for the growth of our being.

That is why, in my incessant search, I concentrated on understanding transcendental concepts such as what is being and non-being, the Platonic theory of transmutation of souls expounded by Plato and if the Discourse of the method understood by René Descartes is really a method to find the truth. With all these things going around in my head and with only 20 years old, everything got complicated when my favorite aunt was hospitalized due to a fracture in her femur. Believe me, only people who have ever had a relative or have been the protagonist of a fracture in their lower limbs, will understand the chain reaction that this causes, in terms of the degradation of their own health.

Without thinking about it, things got complicated and for many years I was going back and forth between my university life and taking care of my aunt in the hospital or at home, this depended on her circumstances, since after being operated on and fitted with a prosthesis, years later she fell again and fractured her hip. Therefore, it begins which I will call "Learning to value the true meaning of health".

How can I forget, my aunt lived with my family and I at home, for about 1 year waiting for a hip prosthesis, since we did not have the money to afford such an operation, you will not believe it but it is not so easy to raise a few hundred dollars when it comes to prosthesis, the costs are incredibly high, well those years of helping my mother to take care of my aunt, when I still barely understood my own life process, made me understand that things never go as we imagine. I would define life as an up and down, that is to say, sometimes we are on top living to the fullest and other not so good moments that make us feel low.

But what an important lesson I learned from my beloved aunt, for her every day despite being in a bed lying down for hundreds of days, she lived the hope and longing to be better and better, never in all the time she was in bed, she showed a bad attitude, depression or any symptom of nonconformity .... However, there was always a nostalgia in me, I think I was drowning in frustration of not having the money to help her, but incredibly one day we were able to get government aid and my aunt was finally operated!!!, it is too much to try to explain the joy, excitement and even desire to vomit, yes desire to vomit because it seems unbelievable but when you live an emotion of this caliber!!! You have no idea how to deal with this feeling that overwhelms you and even your body somehow resents it.

Perhaps, the process of my aunt's illness was brewing, but I did not notice it and I think that's why even today I feel a huge sadness, but after my aunt's operation, the long-awaited hip replacement, my aunt returned home with her daughter and grandson, but as expected sometimes life has moments that we do not expect even in our worst nightmares. One day after my birthday I had to travel to Maracay because my aunt was hospitalized in the emergency room due to another fall but this time she had made a dent in her brain .... How much distress I felt that day, when I entered the emergency room and saw her like that, it was as if my heart had stopped and I could only feel that all that I did not understand would become a bad dream, I still remember the smell of blood, the look of the patients who were still struggling to stay conscious and the way I said to myself, try to hold on not to cry, I did not want my aunt to see me like that.

But I don't think in a million light years, I was prepared for the diagnosis, it turned out to be an ischemic stroke accompanied by several strokes prior to that ultimatum that somehow triggered my aunt to be in a vegetative state, being honest in writing this is as if somehow all the memories, came to my memory and I was overcome with nostalgia. I spent about a month and a half in that hospital, there I had experiences that surpassed me but made me stop and think, are we really at some point aware of the suffering of others, I think the situations I witnessed and the friendships I somehow forged at that time, made me open my eyes, be more empathetic and try to help everyone with as much or as little as I could.
I met sick people whose illnesses were so hard and they still smiled, I realized that diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis that are considered old-fashioned, are still present and there are people who die from them. But I do not want to highlight only the sad moments, but the solidarity that exists in the darkest moments, in the corridors of the hospitals at night when we went out to talk with the companions, in the interaction with the nurses and doctors.

In the human side that is in each one of us, in the empathy, in the good and not so good, but that ultimately makes us fragile, all that I learned and I was able to counteract it with pain, grief and frustration. A month and a half after being in that hospital, my aunt was discharged, but she did not resist I think her body and mind were tired of fighting, but I will never forget her strength, tolerance and the love she always transmitted to all of us even in her worst moments.

Dealing with the pain of the loss of someone so dear to me, was not easy, but I took refuge in my faith, since in 2012 through a boyfriend I had, I met Krishna Consciousness, this is my favorite part of the story, I will call it "The reunion of my soul with the supreme science, the mantra Hare Krisha Hare Rama". The first time I heard about Krisha, I had no idea what this name referred to, but after deepening in the name, in the form and essence of this name, I was perplexed and amazed. Krishna is the name given to the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and what is the meaning of Krishna many translate it as the blackish, imagine seeing the clouds on a cloudy day, well that color can be said to be Krishna, what amazed me about this movement known as Krishna Consciousness, was the fact that I found it inspiring, as it is about the understanding and responsibility that we must have on our daily actions and know that these bring consequences, ie; every cause has an effect, so to speak, this is what we consider karma. Karma is everything, both the good and the not so good that we live, is the result of our actions in the world. For many, karma is nothing more than a product of chance, but I am a faithful believer that in reality everything we do determines our present and at the same time the future.

However, not only do we see karma as important, but we try to understand that we should be tolerant, respectful and understanding of all living entities, as there is a fragment of Krishna in the heart of all of them. Because of this, I began to understand that being a devotee of Krishna, is more than a religion is a lifestyle, as we try to see every situation as part of a higher plan and understanding that the best way to take spirituality to another level, is to put into practice humility, tolerance and respect even without expecting it for oneself.

Everything I have learned through the Vedic scriptures such as the Bhagavadgita, Bhagavatam and the Krishna book makes me realize that beyond this material body, we must cultivate our spirit, do service, chant the maha-mantra Hare Krishna and thus fill our soul with joy, remembering that it is the soul that gives life to the body, that we are not only this body, we are spiritual souls. At this point in my life, I am still trying to be devoted, to achieve the emotional stability that sometimes costs us so much and to be a great companion for my boyfriend @naradamoon whom I thank for believing in me and encouraging me to write in Hive. I hope my story helps you in some way, if you are going through a similar situation and helps you to see the good in the small details or in the less favorable moments.

My thanks to the creators of content that make up these spaces of reconciliation, art, music, stories and own experiences that somehow generate us experiences. It is not only about understanding what others feel but to give credit for it and that is what differentiates hive from other social networks, Hive is a community created in favor of what we have to say, without restrictions, without censorship and even more important allows us to express ourselves. I apologize for my level of writing, I know there are many good writers in the hive blog community, but if I have learned anything throughout my life, is that try and try, is what can make us acquire skills in any discipline, so I will continue trying in each of my publications, to be at the height of our readers. Blessings to all!