To wake up one morning in Venezuela

You wake up one morning in Venezuela. But the day doesn’t start with an alarm — it starts with anxiety. The minimum wage is only a few dollars a month. That’s not enough to cover basic food. For many families, a salary alone isn’t enough to survive. You go to the grocery store. Sometimes shelves are full, sometimes they’re not. The real problem isn’t availability — it’s purchasing power. People don’t buy what they need, they buy what they can afford that day. Prices change fast. Sometimes even within the same day. That’s why many stores don’t show price tags. You go to the bank. There are long lines. But the money you withdraw loses value almost immediately. So people spend it right away or convert it to dollars. Medicine is hard to find. Especially for chronic patients. Many rely on relatives abroad or informal markets. And this is happening while over 8 million Venezuelans have left the country. So this isn’t just an economic crisis. It’s what daily life looks like when inflation becomes permanent.