By Fabiana del Valle

HAVANA TIMES – Sometimes I sit on the porch of my house and watch the weary steps of passersby, the elderly woman across the street fanning herself with a piece of cardboard as she stares into space, my 72-year-old neighbor with his nearly disabled wife, who has been left alone because his daughters and grandchildren had to emigrate. Sometimes I try to think about those who are worse off, to find comfort in my small achievements, but I can’t.

It’s not the lack of electric light; that is merely the surface of the problem. The real damage takes place in the mind. The brain becomes an engine that never shuts off, endlessly calculating whether the water will come, whether the rice I made for the meal will be enough, whether the mosquitoes and the heat will let me sleep tonight.

Living this way eliminates any possibility of imagining a future and any chance of finding a moment of peace. For many, switching off mentally is a forbidden luxury. Blinking for a second can mean missing the only chance to see the lights come back on after hours of darkness.

The regime still hides behind worn-out slogans, heroic resistance, and calls for endless sacrifice. Clinging to power, it devises strategies and supposed economic openings, while remaining silent about the mental devastation caused by absolute deprivation.

The body endures, but the mind breaks. Being confined in darkness with an empty stomach is painful, but what truly brings you to your knees is psychological torture. Not knowing for certain whether there will be food the next day; watching my daughter burn with fever and having no analgesic to give her; looking at empty pharmacies while my mother’s blood pressure rises, my father-in-law’s diabetes progresses unchecked, and the cancer treatment of a friend’s mother is postponed indefinitely.

I feel myself slowly disintegrating. My youth and energy evaporate in the endless question of how to survive one more day. And I know that I am not living, that we are not living; we are merely managing misery.

This has caused an emotional fracture in me. My character has grown bitter, I have lost my motivation, and I am already immune to good news. If something good comes along, fine, but the relief is fleeting because I know that tomorrow the emptiness will return.

There is no mobility because of the lack of resources, no communication because of the lack of networks, no way to vent because the walls have ears, and you might wake up to find the local police sector chief knocking on your door with a summons to the police station, as happened to my husband a few days ago.

In short, there is no right to respond, to dissent, or to choose. Even fleeing is impossible for many, whether because they cannot afford it, because they are afraid to leave behind elderly relatives they may never see again, or as a matter of principle.

The only alternative left to me right now is the inertia of the clock—it is either that or let myself be swept away by hysteria—to wait for a little electricity, for the miracle that never comes, to hope that tomorrow when I wake up I won’t find a police officer at my door, that the elderly woman across the street might finally be able to smile, that the neighbor from the corner won’t stand in front of my porch crying over the same shortages waiting for me inside my own home.

I know I have turned into an automaton whose desires have been reduced to those brief moments when something actually works. This death of hope has happened to most of us Cubans who remain here. The spark has gone out, and skepticism has won the battle against faith.

The painful reality is that those at the helm have no desire to change course, and the cost of this experiment is borne, as always, by the weakest links in the chain: those who never signed anything, those who never made a macroeconomic decision, but who carry the full weight of the collapse on their backs. I don’t know how much more can be taken from a human being before they are completely erased, but I have already been pushed beyond my limits.

Lee más del diario de Fabiana del Valle aquí en Havana Times.