the way

I wrote this yesterday but was too exhausted by emotions to edit and post, so here goes. 

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Day 9- 

Today I left the official Camino de Santiago de Compostela. 

Today I boarded a bus in the town of Najéra and I went to Burgos. 

Today I got off the Way. 

Today I make my own way. 

Hear me out, because I have had some realizations that poured into me like the closest thing to truth there is and I trust the way it feels to be where I am, doing what I will. 

this is not a justification 

this is a revelation 

that everything I wanted to find on this Camino I already had in me 

and what this Camino has provided me is the ability to see, again, to breathe 

my destination was not some grand cathedral hall: it was me. 

And so today I leave the official sign posted Way in order to do what I set out to do, way back in April when I decided to do this and 9 days ago when I left in the blustery rainy predawn from Roncesvalles: Make space for myself. Breathe again. Be me. Do me. Do my own thing and find my own way. 

I walked 8 days on the Camino alone and battled blisters and bruises, stanky wool socks and loud snoring men and some of the best sunrises I've seen in my life. I laughed in absolute joy when I began, and I cried from happiness in moments that caught me off guard, like the small child who waved at me from his car, yelling "BUEN CAMINO!!!" enthusiastically from the window, like flocks of bird taking off in flight from the red earth coloured, tiled roofs of these small quaint Spanish towns we pass through, like listening to exactly the right song at the lowest moment of the day and knowing deep down I will be all right. I have walked with and beside and been passed by wonderful folks from all over the world, and I have felt the intimacy of this countryside to hold grief and uncertainty and happiness and shining inspired eyes. I learned what my own pace meant, and I slowed down. I smelled the roses, everywhere. I took selfies where the joy radiated from my face because it feels so good to be alone. 

I have been alone, and I have been alone. I felt my heart beat in my chest and it was the sound that sent me to sleep every night. I breathed into time that was mine, is mine, completely, with nothing to do and nowhere to go but walk forward. I have eaten the best tomatoes in the world, and laughed about peaches that look like butts, and commiserated over blisters and peed in a field and tasted wine from a fountain and spread my arms out and took it all in. 

I have napped glorious naps and felt my body get stronger and stepped into my skin. I have wrestled heteronormative assumptions that I never imagined would be so heavy to shift, and I feebly laughed off comments in moments where I otherwise would have come out. I have passed fields of sunflowers and tasted wild blackberries and vineyard grapes and fresh picked figs.

All of this has happened, and I did not know how to write it. For seven days I struggled over how to write this. The words didn't quite work. 

And then as I walked into Logroño on the seventh day, I followed my instincts and took a room at an albergue with only 4 people and a private washroom and they even gave us towels! It felt right so I went with it; I followed what flowed and I didn't nap and I ate some awesome patatas bravas and I wrote in my journal "I feel like something is shifting". In my room, apart from the funnily snoring Spanish man, I met two American girls, Sydney from Seattle and Taylor from Connecticut. They were very kind and friendly and we saw some of the city together, had some tapas and gelato and then Taylor invited me to walk with them the next day. 

I agreed, and we set out before dawn, leaving Logroño by way of a pleasant reservoir, and walked 18-ish km to a small town called Ventosa together. Chatted about this and that, families and friends and returning from exchange and animated movies and favourite foods, telling stories about the Grand Canyon and LA and hiking and adventures. I was surprised by how different it was to walk with other people, what a different rhythm it was. Not unpleasant and totally adaptable, but decidedly not alone, even in the quiet moments. 

When we arrived in Ventosa I got a bed in the only albergue in town and after lunch I set out to write in my journal. 

And I wrote. 

And I wrote and I wrote and I wrote so many words it was as if my pen was not under my control any more, the words flowing out of me from wherever they came, some deep place that had been feeling and knowing what this was this whole time. 

I wrote how deeply the space of being alone had affected me. I had not consciously felt what that alone had been until I was not alone in walking. I wrote that I am infinitely capable and able to do what I need, what I want, right now. That in the past seven days I had not realized how much quiet I absorbed and how much I could actually hear my heart again. That what I had been searching for outside, in conversations or other people or moments or what, I had already inside of myself: the ability to fully be, fully breathe, know myself and be aware of wonder. That I am becoming, I am full of this creative space in my life where I can finally begin to know and do what I want in ways I have never known before, that I am coming out, coming alive again. 

This life force of feeling how very possible, how very present I am, can be. 

Over the course of the evening I trembled with that realization and I felt this deep peace, this ease settle into me. I don't know how else to describe it but that--an ease, a comfort, like a soothing balm, lavender or cucumber-mint, soft, a quenched thirst, a good sleep, familiar kindness after far away fear. 

And then I got real for a second with my feet. Because they have been remarkable vehicles for me so far, but I've had this swollen tender point on the inside of my left foot. It hasn't been bad enough to make me limp but it has gotten steadily worse over the last few days. On a quick google search, I figured, possibly, it could be a stress fracture (or cancer or an alien baby) or an angry tendon (not the actual diagnosis but still). And for about an hour I sat in an intense unfolding of what that could mean, (6 weeks of 'rest'), the 'end' of my Camino. 

And that's when everything really fell into place.

Because in considering having to stop my walk, I realized that there is no destination to this period of time. It was not a place I was seeking and it was not kilometres walked and counted. If anything, the destination for my Camino was to arrive at myself, my own self. And the thing is, I am already there--already was, always will be. 

With my flashlight propped under my tent of a pillow, I wrote into midnight, unable to halt my pen: 

"I feel like I am in touch with the infinite possibility that comes with being. And that every moment I live is allowed to be a reflection of that, because I can be that person, because I already am. And wonder is never really far from hand. And I think, I really do think, this was inside of me all along. That I have always been capable of knowing this, and shining, but it is a myth I tell myself that I am lesser or smaller or uglier in different places. 

       I am not lesser. I am always me."

I had to leave to know this again because so much got in the way between me and myself: moving home, post grad worries, king city smallness, tensions and anxieties and small voices that become big voices because sometimes it is easier to dislike yourself and your life, even when you don't, because to be bright and bold and happy is too much. Sometimes it is easier to believe you are too much, or not enough, rather than exactly who you need to be for this world. 

I had to leave the familiar and I had to walk, to set out with some dedicated time to encounter this. And I thought the Camino that would do this, and it has, but it was simply illuminating for me what I had all along. 

This stunned me. It was like some magmatic force that moved around me and shifted the tectonics of what my present looks like. 

I woke up in the morning, this morning, to a heart that knew what it needed to do. 

When I left the albergue, I was coated in sunrise, breathing in that rose-dawn air as my feet took me effortlessly through vineyards to the next town. Everything flowed in a way it has not yet flowed. It was something bigger and more than me, momentum, that moved me to where I am. I am in Burgos now and will recuperate for a day or two, get my foot checked out, and think. This isn't me jumping to the conclusion that I can't keep walking: this is me having found myself again. 

Because when I took my first step on the Camino, I was not just beginning a long walk. I am beginning my life, here, now, again, with all that has happened becoming rainbow clay for me to colour and stretch and shape the way I am. 

And today, when I stepped off the path, I was not ending my walk. I was going on my own way, beginning, continuing what it is that I need. 

There is no day 8 or 9-- there is just the next day I choose to live. 

I needed every second of what has come before, every struggle and resistance and rhythms and not knowing in order to get to this point where I understand that my long walk is not just the Camino de Santiago. It is literally the rest of my life. 

It begins to make sense now, how it felt while I did walk. How the cathedrals and religion felt off, the difficulty being out to others while walking, the rush and race of so many other hurried bodies. The moments I loved best were ones of total alone, of music and birds, the horizon, flowers: the wonder I have always known. 

The Camino provides, they say. 

And the Camino has provided, and it has opened me up and into my life, and it has pushed me here. 

Whether I return to the path matters not. It could be in a few days or forty years or never again, but I have found what I needed. 

I cried in my hotel room considering what it was I have done. I cried because I read my journal words out loud and everything was so much, so present, so moved by something more than me. I remembered this quote, from the book Solar Storms I finished before my walk: 

"Tears have a purpose. They are what we carry of ocean, and perhaps we must become sea, give ourselves to it, if we are to be transformed." 

This is a transformation. 

And I cried because I was worried about making this choice and moving with that kind of flow and force, but no one else's expectations or pressures get to control the direction I move now. That is exhausting. I am not quitting, I am not backing out, I am not reneging on some deal with the should-do's of society. No. I am (relatively) free. I am 22 and young and queer and messy and loud and I don't need to have my shit together and I am doing what moves me. Listening to the sound of my heart. 

And so now, 

now I get to make it up, live every, every minute, and keep going. 

Where next? No idea. 

Possibly the sea. 

And I rest assured knowing that whatever it is I will do is whatever it is I will need because it will be my choice. 

The poetry from the heading of this blog (words I foolishly posted as a reminder to not be an asshat when travelling other places knowing we can leave), now comes back in ways more poignant and home-hitting then I could have known. 

"We shall not cease from exploration/ And the end of all our exploring/ Will be to arrive where we started/ And know the place for the first time." -TS Eliot

I have arrived, am arriving, will always be.