I’m struggling on this journey with habits and patterns that I have created at home to manage myself and my PTSD.
If I were home right now I would be sleeping, because it’s still morning. I might go out to work at Starbucks today. I may spend time painting or drawing. I would likely sit outside at the picnic table, enjoying the last days of summer with Janelle before she goes back to work. I’d have made a coffee, and then another, and likely a third. I wouldn’t have eaten anything yet. I’d likely spend a lot of time indoors, binging Netflix or reading a novel. Possibly, I would do some household chores and rearrange the living room for the millionth time. Tomorrow I would do the same, just as this is what I did yesterday. Life became stale. I was complacent in my maximum isolation. So full of thoughts, and hopes, and desires, but not moving towards anything, just talking it in circles and writing down ideas.
This morning I had one cafe con leche and a ham and cheese sandwich. I packed my bag and I hit the road. I greeted others in kindness and compassion for our mutual journey and struggles up hills. I drank lots of water. I stopped and meditated in my surroundings, not concerned with those going past at faster speeds than I. I drank more water and ate a small muffin. I heard music and I stopped to sing along as the Guitarist played Stand By Me (Ben E. King). I encouraged myself to keep moving on the hills, but to stop, look around, and look up. I discovered that what I thought were dates were actually almonds. Who knew they grew on trees in green pods? I didn’t, nor did the three French women who showed it to me, explaining in French. I don’t speak French, but we understood each other all the same.
I found an old cistern on the top of a hill and I stopped to meditate again. Maybe someone took my picture, or they were just catching the view. Someone walked by and told me “Namaste”. I continued to meditate and breathe. When I opened my eyes everything was brighter, my sight was clearer. Even the ants on my bag didn’t ruin my day. I wondered why it is that I avoid meditating regularly. Is lack of peace such a comfortable place?
I arrived at my destination and felt as if I had not come far enough today, but I’m learning I must make myself pause, even when my body insists it can go further. I fed, cleaned, and embraced my body for its strength and resilience. I interact with others through smile and greeting, feeling akin. This is a life one cannot find binging netflix in the living room. I do believe this is a life we can find by stepping out our front door. There is no need to travel, though I highly encourage it. Seeing and experiencing other cultures gives us perspectives to grow and love better. I hope and believe that everyone can take their own journey and not only finds new ways to embrace life, but like I have on this trail, find that life is embracing you back.
Tag Archives: Choices
The Space Between Us
The woman stares off into space. The foreign language around her meshing into a blur of noises. It was like music from a new instrument. She wonders if they can tell how lost she feels. Absolutely adrift, not knowing what to do with her hands, her face, her words. Her one comfort is the movement of her feet as she walks.
Are the people who help her at her stops frustrated with her? Do they scorn her lack of French? She remembers how easily frustrated she has found herself with foreigners in her job in America. The echo of “Why don’t they just learn English?” Echoes in her own head. So many people told her she would be fine because “everyone speaks English”. She knew they were incorrect then, and she is now experiencing how untrue that statement actually is.
Do they see just how lost she feels? How hard she works to accept her deficiency. How she wishes she had spent more time learning French. Maybe this is okay though, it’s minimalist conversation, or really none. She’s silent to the world, but so loud in her head. Her soul sings a mantra about being okay. Her heart is so uncertain. There is no option to return home at this point. The only option she gives herself is to move forward.
She takes a bus and a train then finds herself at the edge of a river, lost in the sound of the ukulele she is playing. She plays and plays losing track of her anxiety, the foreignness around her, and eventually the time. She races against the clock she forgot to find the final train. She makes it on right in time and can rest her mind, assured she gets off at the end of the track, so her attention can go elsewhere. She drops into a novel and relaxes. Finally she arrives at the end of the line, where she can begin to walk.
She walks in a new spirit, her hope refilled. As she climbs the steep cobbled street she wonders where she should go. The starting place is the pilgrims office and she happens upon it. The kindness of Benedicte, a joy-filled guide, makes the woman want to cry. The pleasure of knowing that from here she will walk and discover angels. For here is the place she’s worried about getting and from here the path is laid before her, and if all else fails her… The Woman will simply Walk and Breathe.
The Path I’ve Walked
I had a lot of built up anxiety prior to getting on the plane Wednesday morning. This trip was 6 months coming and then it appeared all too quickly. It’s interesting to reflect on the path I’ve walked which led to me walking a literal path in Spain. The mindset I was in when I bought the tickets and how my world changed since, well, it feels like two different worlds.
February 13, 2019 0500 CST
I bought the tickets in a haze of sleeplessness. I was unsettled. The nightmares were creeping in on my periphery. They were alive in my mind without me even closing my eyes. I couldn’t, no wouldn’t, allow myself to sleep. The fear if entering my never ending nightmares spurred me on to practice one tool after another, but nothing calmed them, or me.
I, finally, took my mind back to the Camino de Santiago I did in October 2018. I recalled the smell of the eucalyptus trees, still wet with dew. The quiet of the rail, the only sound was the crunchy of my shoes on the path. Singing in the rain, getting caught, and being asked to keep singing. The sense of freedom and no restrictions. The lack of my story holding me back. This was what I most wanted as I looked at ticket prices.
I hoped to find those same senses by returning to the trail. Last year I used the trail to hold onto through the struggles. On this particular February morning I once again needed something to hold onto, to keep living. I wanted to escape my pain, back to the last place that I felt peace.
After February 13th
It’s not that I don’t have peace in my daily life. I’m just constantly looking for the next danger, the next repeat of my trauma. I’m always on alert. I wish I could better embrace the peace and joy that occurs in my daily life. I also have this wanderlust inside me, and perhaps that makes me restless. I’m great in a crisis or a high adrenaline event, it’s the normal where I begin to fall and fail.
So what changed, what happened since that rough February night, which made it so difficult to actually come on this trip? Just buying the tickets I had felt i found my escape, something to look forward to, hold on to. It wasn’t a foolish choice, it was quite informed of me. I lined my date’s up with when my lease ended. I found a balance in my desire to escape and my life responsibilities. Giving myself this time was important. It offered me the space to process, connect better with others, and make a healthy departure.
For almost as long as I can remember, I have had this unhealthy desire to just up and disappear, to run away from everyone. It often has strong emotional ties to shame, guilt, pain, and other dark emotions. As an adult, I began struggling with thoughts of suicide. Suicide: the ultimate disappearing act. When I think about my struggles it is hardly ever a reflection of others. It is a reflection of how I can’t stand myself, occasionally informed by the opinions of others. The thing is I can’t escape myself anymore than you can escape yourself. So my urge to disappear doesn’t work, I can’t run from myself. That was where the permanence of suicide began to feel attractive.
Luckily, for me, I was born with this little flame in my soul, called HOPE. Sometimes, I am in awe of how strong it is. It keeps me going in the darkest of times. It is what gets me to buy plane tickets so I can walk across Spain. Once the tickets were bought, life started to get a little easier. I had an egress plan. Rule #1 of combat, know your egress points. Okay, maybe not rule #1, but it’s up there for sure. It’s as if I can handle anything as long as there is an escape route.
Funny thing happened though, I made my escape plan and then began to experience a life I didn’t want to escape from. Every day wasn’t perfect, but life felt good. It felt possible. I let myself be more vulnerable. I began to accept the love others kept trying to share with me. I leaned into my art and my dream of building a non-profit. I built deeper relationships with neighbors, coworkers, customers, and friends. Instead of thinking I could go nowhere with my dreams, I just started doing it. It was as if I suddenly had nothing to loose, so why not try. To my surprise, people really supported me! I even met someone special who has made my life even better. It turned out I didn’t need to escape my life. I needed to be embracing it.
So, then I considered not going on this trip at all. I balked at the risk of leaving a good life, finally, a good life. The thing is, I had heard this call to adventure and I accepted it. My current level of comfort at home should not hinder me answering the call and stepping into the unknown. A person won’t grow well unless, from time to time, they face the unknown and seek the new knowledge and wisdom it has in store.
The beauty to this evolution is that I don’t know what I’m walking the Camino for. I am no longer escaping. I’m not appearing, like the last Camino, for myself. They’re is no record breaking, comparing, or competing. I’m simply embracing the unknown by putting one foot in front of the other, and continue to walk.
Take Heart, So Dear and Brave
Dear, brave, heart, the world is not what you expect of it.
Expectations, are not what you believe of them. They are things which are made up. Expectations are living creatures that creep up on you from the shadows and lay out a specific path for you to follow. These creatures crawl around on many legs, with many forms, and many virtues. They strive to control the person you desire to be. Expectations as they live and breathe are movable things, they are fluid, and they can be rejected. Their master is those who create them, and their slave is those who follow them. For the person who understands what in their life they can control, they will be both master and slave. They will create the creature that lays their path.
Sometimes, people yell at you, when you do not deserve to be yelled at. These are the moments when others force their expectations upon you, and they feel you fail to deliver on their creations. They desire to be the master and the expectation their muse. As master and muse they crave a slave and creation. They desire a puppet that cowers to tone and volume of their yell. All the while, they do not realize what it is they are a slave to themselves. For not a single master is not also a slave to expectations. So stay brave, dear heart. For if you know what you control, then they cannot enslave you.
Sometimes, you take a step too far past the line of respect. No matter how brave a heart may be or how much they try a heart may fail with the best of intentions. Life is a progress, not a perfection. However, there are hearts that are not as brave and loving as you are, dear one. There are hearts full of shadows, scratching claws, and gnashing teeth. They wear masks and try to fool us. They do not have the best of intentions. They walk the line of respect looking for a foothold, for a thinning of the line, where they might cross. We must be wary and watchful for hearts such as these that shed not love and instead seek to lessen us. For a heart so brave and true, you know what you can control.
Sometimes, you cannot go back on your actions. This is a thing you can control dear one. However, you can choose new ones. You can choose to change how your body moves and if it hurts or heals yourself and others. Hindsight is often known to be the clearest form of sight, but it is not a vision which can be undone. You must find strength to make new choices on your actions. Promote a world where you can be who you are, and where others expectations are not your master. So no, you cannot change the past, but you can improve the future. By choosing the way in which you reach out and touch the world you can become even braver dear heart, this you can control.
Sometimes, an attitude gets in the way. Attitudes are controllable when we are paying attention to ourselves, dear one. Emotions and thoughts can spin us around like a top on a table which falls off the edge and clatters to the floor. They affect our actions. They affect our attitudes. We feel so spun up and out of control and wrapped in our own yo-yo yarn that we forget the way in which we can control our lives. Believe in something that you struggle to see, dear heart, your own ability. Allow that to untangle you. You choose how to show what is going on inside of you. You can determine what others see in you. Shine with vulnerability, honesty, and compassion. Let your attitude be not one of division, but one of humanity and equality. Let it be an attitude of love for yourself and others. Dear heart, this will be hard, but you are brave.
Sometimes, they love you when you do not deserve to be loved. What an odd thought, dear one. That you would think yourself unworthy of being loved by another, perchance for no other reason than because it is good and right to do so. Love is a sparrow that flies across the sky to the destination which it most desires. It is difficult for us to control the flight of a wild sparrow in search of its’ chosen destination. Being loved is not up to us, if we are loved, then we deserve to be loved. It is not a gift which once given can be given back. Though, there are times that you take love back. We control our own sparrows so full of love and the destination in which we desire them to land. Do not shy away from the multitude of sparrows in your heart waiting to soar to the farthest reaches or the coldest shores. For loving is about giving unto others, for no other reason than you desire to. Dear, brave, heart, I hope you soar.
Always, you should set your own expectation to move forward. You should look for what you truly control in your life, and that which you cannot. You should follow your dreams, dear heart. You should take to the sky and continue going until your life becomes one in which you know you are safe and loved. A bird in a storm does not give up, but takes shelter for the moment. Emotions come and go, so do people. Both can be equally overpowering. Dear heart, you know what you can control. The strength in your being with each beat of your muscles continues without thought. This is why you move forward, why you keep learning, and why you can make choices in your life.
The world can be cruel and will most definitely throw wrenches into the gears of your life. Sometimes, you may wonder how to end these wrenches in life that tear you up and sometimes stop your functions. You can’t my dear, brave, heart, you just cannot. It is as much a fact as gravity on earth. There are things in life which you can control, and this is just not one of those things. These other things which you can control will be the difference between a life where you are whole and overflowing or a life where you are less than you might desire because the wrenches took control. A life of greatness awaits you, my dear, brave, heart.
In all the things that you control, just remember the basic rules. Always, if it hurts you or another, stop, turn back, reject that direction. Otherwise be you, and expect others to be them, my dear, brave, heart. Go now, walk on, take flight, and soar. Take Heart, so dear and brave.