I have words and words to write. Experiences and memories to share about my exploration of Andalusia, about my walking pilgrimage from the south of France to the west coast of Spain.
I have words and words to write. And memories to share.
But all I really feel is here and now. Here and now in my moment of confusion. Where I’m left completely uncertain of what I should do.
I’ve finally settled down after completing this life accomplishment- The Camino de Santiago. I found a place to live. I’ve got my yoga studio. A place to test my strength at Crossfit. I’ve bought all my health food essentials and remembered how much I love cooking again. I live in an oasis, with ceiling-high bedroom doors that open out to a green terrace, and a mandala lulling me to sleep above the bed frame. I’m situated in a bustling city filled with art and creativity, where the ocean breeze tries to cool the hot summer days. I enjoy the mix of tourists coming to swallow everything Barcelona has to offer and the ease of Catalan’s going about their everyday life. Spanish fills my language and I get to challenge myself in daily exchange. I am not just traveling around anymore, I am occupying. I am living.
With all this settling. All this occupying. All this living that is coming together. Another piece of me has been falling apart. My mother, the woman I love so deeply, so dearly, has continued to decline fighting her degenerative brain disease. Just two weeks ago I could carry on a phone conversation with her and talk for over a half hour sharing my stories, hearing about her day. And now, now, I can barely understand her. Frustrated, I wait for my father or her caregivers to translate the sounds she’s making.
So I leave these conversations nowadays, these conversations that used to bring me light, feeling broken and defeated. Because, why, why has disease started to steal her tongue? Why, oh why, does she have to continue to decline while I am a continent away?
And I look for answers in others. I message my father and type, “Do you need help?” I call my brother and ask, “Should I come home early?” I look to answers in others because when I go deep down within myself I am left confused. Everything here is starting to feel so right. A beautiful space. A vibrant community. A new culture. A love language. And then, death. Death, this fucker that has been taking away pieces of my mother from me for the past four years. This fucker that’s made me change my life track so many times because it knows how deeply rooted and connected I am to the one who birthed me.
And I can say, Fuck you Death. Fuck you Disease. But I’m having such a hard time, such a confused time, being present in my life because I could never say Fuck you Mother. I could never say, you deal with this on your own. I still can’t say, let me live my life. This has been an ever-present struggle for the last years. The desire to put myself first, at a time when the woman I love most is fighting for her life.
So I ask the answer in others, and what I get is just more confusion. Because they know, just as I know, that there is no exact answer. And it’d be different if this was the first time that I’d decided to rearrange my plans, rearrange my time abroad, for my Mom. But it’s not the first time. So part of me knows now that 3 months is just too long to be apart from someone who is losing function at a rapid rate. A part of me know this, and a part of me also knows how aligned I am with myself when I am living abroad.
I have guilt sitting in my tummy that I’m not at home. I have fear sitting in my heart that if I go home I will have wished I had stayed here in Barcelona.
And I’m writing all this out, instead of all those other words and revelations I came to in the past 2 and a half months, because this is what I’m feeling right now. And I’m writing this all out, because I want to be vulnerable in my feelings. I’m having a hard time being ok with being confused, but I also know that confusion is absolutely normal. I’ve got to feel and acknowledge my present state. I can’t resist the tears and the anger. As Panache Desai has shared, “Emotions are energies in motion, which means they want to move.”
Writing, for me, allows my emotions to become motions of script. Instead of denying my confusion, I’m learning to embrace it, to include it as a part of who I am.
I’m human, after all. We are human, after all. That’s our gift.
So, the key for me, is becoming available to my humanness. Becoming available to my emotions.
I’m allowing the flow of one energetic shift to the next. It ain’t easy. And I’d rather be honest about it all, than making it seem like this ship has all her sails in a row. The wind is shifting one moment to the next, one phone call home to one encounter in my neighborhood. The wind is shifting and I’m trying to let it all flow, rather than hold on to the ropes and tangle myself in a mess.
So here I am. Confused one moment. Absolutely aligned the next. With my heart strung to my Mom one moment. With my soul tied to a life of adventure the next.
Thanks for listening. It's made all the knots a little easier to untangle.
