Once I am committed financially by a plane ticket to CDG airport I am officially beginning my pilgrimage. It weighs so heavy and looms so large for my life and for my future.
Why am I walking? Well why do I walk anywhere? What started as a pleasant way to lose weight and enjoy the outdoors of the spring and summer morphed into forced alone time, dealing with all the issues surrounding the sudden demise of my last relationship, my own self-image, and with all the lost connections to my body and my soul. It was feeling in my own skin, feeling blisters, sore hip flexors, tired diaphragms, and at the same time feeling that imagined but still tactile sign of the cross being drawn on my forehead. I walked because it felt good, and I had nothing better to do. Then I walked because I wanted to, and I started to change myself. I faced demons, I faced insecurities, I faced absolutely everything. I adopted a mantra that was "be kind to everyone, no matter what." I resisted the trappings of modern NYC life, instead opting for polite and sincerity.
My most peaceful moments were spent along the cemetery in Sunset Park, both the east and west sides. It somehow gave me solace, and filled me up with such beauty. These fallen people all seemed to connect me back to my soul, something that was yearning for daylight again. As I walked, I pictured my body getting smaller, the fat falling off of me as if it were just a temporary mold. Ten, then twenty, then thirty,then forty, then fifty, then sixty, then seventy, and now eighty pounds fell off of me. My walks started as 3 mile stints around the neighborhood, and have culminated in a 12 mile trek to Manhattan.
I went on my first few legit dates with women, I sang better than ever at my gigs, and was so happy with how much I was "getting after it" lately.
And yet, I sat in a chair at 2am after having sang for 3 hours in NYC, after saying goodbye to my friend who left with a woman he would take home to sleep with, while waiting for another one of my friends to finish a drink while talking to another woman, and the rest of the bar completely cleared out, and the staff packing up. There I sat, and my thoughts were not of finding my own fake connection for the night, or getting sauced. I just wanted to be on the Camino. I wanted to do something with my life. I wanted to walk, 500 miles, through the French and Spanish countryside, not because I had anything to prove to anyone.
But rather, for the first time in a really, really long time, my SOUL wanted to be there. And ever since I learned of the walk, the subtle sensitivity to human nuance returned to my life. The thought of walking for the health of my soul started to move me to tears, as it does now writing about it. It was the perfect marriage of all the aspects of me that were so out of whack, my mind, my body, and my soul, all together on one unified goal: walk to Santiago, along the Camino.
So I'm going on this pilgrimage because I need to. And because I'm supposed to. And most, importantly, because I've sent the last eight months walking for seemingly no purpose, and like she always does, Life finally gave me a reason, no, a DESTINATION. So henceforth, I'm walking the Camino, everyday, even though I don't leave for about 6 months.
I will spend the remaining time putting in the time to maintain and help grow healthy friendships, learning some Spanish, and saving money. My future as it stands in Brooklyn or New York is so pleasantly up in the air, as is my music career. I must do what feels right, instead of what is in front of me.
My transformation continues tomorrow, with more training for the 5K race and the walk that will almost surely put me into TriBeCa in time for my early evening meeting. I promise to pray tonight, and tomorrow, and if for nothing else than to put my head in order. I must be accountable for things now, and I promise to be. It's time to get a move on, to move beyond, and work to bring peace and light to others around me. From that very source, I will find my own.
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