Buen Camino

Hello again.

This one is going to be a little different. In exactly 16 days, I will be boarding a plane to Paris, where I will begin a two-month (adventure?). For the first month, I'm walking the French route of the Camino De Santiago–one of the most ancient known pilgrimages in Spain.

400 miles, 1 backpack, a guidebook, and me. That's it.

As my departure date looms, people are trying to gauge my excitement. Family members envy the opportunity, my parents want to make sure they're not completely insane for allowing their 21 year old daughter to walk alone through a foreign country...and me?

I don't know.

Historically, pretty much everyone who walks the Camino does it for a specified reason. Lately, I've been trying to pinpoint mine. It is clearly not a secret that I'm dealing with some formidable demons in my life. If this fact is a secret to you at this point, please, sir, go and read my other posts. But that fact aside, I'd like to be candid and tell you that I'm not walking the Camino to somehow rid myself of my demons. That, I do know, because I know that only I can rid myself of the demons and walking 400 miles alone isn't going to magically erase all of the pain I've felt in the past 21 years, or prevent any more pain that I'm going to face in the future. That said, I still want my reason.

When I was hiking today at Cowell's Mountain in San Diego, I started talking to myself (as one does). I was somewhat trying to convince myself that I was excited to walk the Camino and that nerves were just diluting the endorphins. But then I realized–my current definition of "excited" was the most inappropriate representation of what I am about to do. Most things that I am "excited" about now are explicitly defined events about which I know the people and the places and I am comfortable.

The reality of the situation, though, is that I'm not comfortable. In fact, I'm pretty damn uncomfortable. But a post-card that my parents once gave me for my birthday continues to motivate me: "Life begins at the edge of your comfort zone." If I was "excited" the way I'm used to being excited, I would only be cheating myself.

I need to feel uncomfortable to grow. I need to feel uncomfortable to be kinder, to become stronger, to learn, to make mistakes, to learn from those mistakes, to overcome my fears, to find more things that make me happy. These are all things that I want, and I know that I can get there.

But I've become comfortable feeling bad for myself. I've become comfortable blaming my depression on the world. I've become comfortable hiding from what I'm afraid of. And I'm tired of it.

So.

I'm doing the Camino and I'm uncomfortable.

But that makes me very, very...

Excited.

*Disclaimer* : for those of you who would like to 'travel' the Camino with me, I will continue to use this domain and blog page to post updates of the pilgrimage. I do not yet know if these posts will be daily, but just know (@ mom, @dad, you can look here for how your little girl is feeling along the way.)

And with that, I wish you all a Buen Camino.