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: Healing
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.
To Begin Again
I am afraid of the fear that I have in life. I have knowledge that protects me and acts as a shield against the power of my emotions. I wonder what my purpose in this world is. I look back on my 31 years of life and see all of the travels that I have taken. I see all of the plans I have made and not accomplished. I see the potential that I held and where that potential was not experienced fully. I see the aimlessness with which I searched for something in my life. This something is undefined, unknown to me, and feels extremely important to define. As I traveled, aimless in my search, ill-defined in my value and my meaning, I accomplished a great many different things. I often wonder how. I wonder how my journey looks to others, how it compares to their journey. I have met many like me along the way. I have met beautiful people that have helped me on my travels and given direction, insight, and wisdom. I have stood at the brink of annihilation brought about by my own hands and experiences. I found stories and people and strength that brought me back to firm ground. I looked for a word to define all of this searching and unknowing. I wanted something to name myself that allowed me to experience this journey. I found it in the depths of my tragedy and wounding, I am a wanderer.
In my life I learned in many different places that I needed to have a direction, a plan, a purpose, a mission to follow. When I talk to my inner most self, my soul-self, I find myself wanting to stand on the top of a hill on a windy day and be blown about as if I was a tree. Somewhere between what I have learned from the world and what my soul-self, my inner wild woman desires I wander. I do not know where I am going, or what my purpose is. I do not have a goal in mind, at least not one that I feel the world accepts. I have felt shame over my lack of being aligned with the world around me. I have felt not enough, less than, lacking in what allows others to engage fully in life. I have tried to fake it till I make it. In the end I come back to this wandering. I wish there was a guidebook, a path to follow in being a wanderer. That’s irony though, to have a plan to be a wanderer. Tolkien says “Not all who wander are lost.” I am a wanderer, but though I do not know the answers or have a map, I am not lost.
Though there is no singular way to lay out a plan for those of us who find our true spirits to be that of a wanderer, we will still find guidance in the stories of others. We pick and choose what applies to us and we also find that things will often surprise us in how they affect our lives. It is through the stories we hear from others and inside ourselves that determine what is next. A guide is not set in stone, it is a suggestion, it is shared wisdom. It is the reminder that though we wander, we are not wandering alone.
So this is the rebirth of the Wanderers Guide Book. It started as me telling my story. I had the audacity to think that by experiencing my life and telling my story I could make a big impact on the world. What I have learned in the 3 years since I started this blog is that it is not my own story that is important. It is the stories of everyone I interact with, and what they define their journey as. So I hope that through this Guide Book I can share the beauty, the insight, and experience of individuals’ journeys. The journey’s that bring love and growth. The journey’s that shine humanity at its’ brightest and its’ darkest. So that I may continue my wandering and that others also remain courageous in their own journey.
Welcome to the Wanderers Guide Book.
I don’t know you, but I love you.
I don’t know you, but I love you.
Last year a friend of mine suicided. Honestly, we were not that close but we shared this passion and this purpose that draws me close to so many people. I attended his funeral and grieved with my friends for the red-bearded giant who loved pumpkin spice lattes in the morning and Jamison to cap the day off. More than his favorite drinks he loved serving others and having a purpose. I didn’t know him well, but loved him nonetheless.
In the last 18 months I have in some way been connected to more individuals than I can count on my hands, who have taken that last resort, that last ditch option that it’s hard to back out of except on accident. When James’ suicide took my community by storm there was an outcry on social media from so many people who were struggling with thoughts and behaviors of suicide. I moved from post to post offering my support as a trained ASIST caregiver, my friendship, and most importantly my love. Some rejected my statements or thought me foolish, one girl challenged how I could love her without knowing her. Nonetheless , I love each of them. I want to tell you why I can love each of you, without ever having met you.
This is a hard time of year for me, because it is the anniversary of how in the darkest of days in my life I was able to love someone that I didn’t even know and in the end will never truly know. I lost my baby in my first trimester. It’s statistically probable and so relatively insignificant that it occurred, in the grand scheme of things. It wasn’t a cookie cutter planned pregnancy, but none the less I found myself with child. Something I wanted my whole life. I had no idea who this life was inside me. What a good man he could be. What glass ceilings she might shatter. I didn’t need to know a thing about my baby, who I called Sharkbait, after Nemo. Just like Nemo, my baby would start out with disadvantages, but I believed he was strong, that she could conquer all. I believed that just by being I could love Sharkbait so much that it would never end.
I remember my devastation, after two weeks of hearing a heartbeat while suffering complications, to birth my almost 10 week old fetus in the dark of my room and realized I’d never hear the sound of his heart again. Sharkbait was gone and I loved him no less and maybe even so much more for the wasted potential.
When someone suicides, or simply doesn’t try in life to succeed, I find that I love them nonetheless and also so much more. Knowing this, having experienced what I have, I try each day to love every person I encounter more and more. I’m not always perfect, but I damn sure try, and no one is less off for my love.
I recall very vaguely the few days following my miscarriage where my mum flew me to where she was in Vegas at a conference, so I could be near her. It was a blaze of booze, cigarettes, and a roulette table. It was late nights sitting on a pillow in the bathroom so she wouldn’t be awoken by my sobs.
I thought I would die. I wished for it. It was a shit year full of mental health crisis from my undiagnosed PTSD (at the time) that I couldn’t acknowledge because of stigma. The same stigma that makes people not talk about suicide or miscarriage. The things that make us appear so vulnerable in its’ honesty, so we bottle them up like they don’t exist… until they boil over in the dark of night… at bar closing when we’ve had too much to drink… in whispered circles with intimate friends… in the awkward pause when someone says that I don’t know the pain of childbirth without remembering they know my hidden shame.
When I lost him I told myself the sympathetic response that we’re now taught not to say… “At least you can have more kids one day”… “ At least you’re free now from being tied down”… and the list goes on. No one told me those things, they were mine to say. Mostly other people would stutter, at a loss for words, often they still do. The empathic response I’ve been told are the ones that helped me pick up the pieces and change my own mindset. “I understand.” “Me too.” “I love you.” “I’m here for you.” The most valued response was the love I was given.
Through my own ongoing struggles with suicide post-Iraq, my miscarriage almost broke the camels back. The next year around this time I became even worse than before with my thoughts and behaviors of suicide. In the interim I’d connected to an organization that provided me the opportunity to live and serve others, I did so as a promise to the lost potential from my miscarriage. I felt I had to take on and be the potential, make my life something of value.
It wasn’t enough. The one year anniversary came and I was a mess. There were people who didn’t know my full story, and still won’t unless they read this blog. It didn’t stop those people from loving me regardless of their knowledge of me. They saved me, helped me carry what felt like an impossible burden. I still could not speak of it. Nonetheless, I was loved beyond measure.
Through multiple programs, therapies, medications, struggles with binge drinking, and not always making good decisions I have been loved regardless of how well others know me. You don’t even know what you don’t know about another person. So you have to go on faith that you love things about them you couldn’t even imagine.
We all have secret pains. We all suffer shame and guilt. We all let society and it’s stigma hold us back from the edge of living our true lives and being our true selves.
If you’ve suffered a miscarriage, have a mental health diagnosis, struggle with suicide or addiction, or even feel as if your life is happy and easy, whatever you are, whatever you do… I love you, I really do, even though I likely don’t even know you. You can take faith knowing that you are loved. You are not alone. I look for you in the street, so we can share a smile and be connected a little more. even if only for a second… because nonetheless I will always love you, the same way as after 4 years I still love my Sharkbait that never got to live, but somehow helped me find a life worth living.
Original Post on Medium.