I had a moment last night.
read more ↓Let me paint a picture of where I’m at right now: yesterday we started early with breakfast, and went to the Guernica Dry Forest for a hike. It was beautiful. We were supposed to be bird watching, but there weren’t any to see. Instead we learned about the vegetation, played with lizards and millipedes, and tried avoiding bugs that bit. I wasn’t so lucky at that one. I have a goose-egg sized bite on the inside of my knee, which the adolescent boy in me decided to start squeezing, much to one of my travel mate’s dismay. “Don’t, it’s going to get infected,” she wailed. I laughed. Of course, that probably says a little more about my subconscious psyche at that moment than I’d like to openly admit… and yet I’m admitting it. Go figure.
See, as I’ve said before, the last few weeks have been hellacious. And as I’m moving out of it, I still feel a certain amount of pain and fear, and in little ways it’s comforting to go back to old habits. And one of those old habits… well. Let’s just say that in a round about way, I keep re-breaking my heart. It’s not that I intentionally do it, but my brain goes there… and doesn’t want to let go of the “what if” game. And as this trip has gone on I’ve been doing it a little more and a little more. It happens so subtly that I don’t even realize it’s happening until I’m right in the middle of it.
So when we hiked up to the Guarya Centranino – a tree that is 800 years old – and the guide told us that it’s purported to have healing vibrations, I went and sat on one of its exposed stumps, hoping to feel something. Everyone else sort of followed suit. I wasn’t getting anything out of it, so I climbed up further and leaned my back against it, and closed my eyes to help me slow down my brain and get into a bit more of a meditative state. Help me heal my heart popped into my head, and I felt strange saying it. I mean really, for as woo woo as I am, asking a tree to help me heal my heart is certainly out of my realm – at least, without hallucinogenics coursing through my veins (from what I understand – having never done drugs, I can’t confirm anything.) But there I was, leaning against it, breathing slowly, trying to find… something. Anything to get me out of that mindset.
And then I felt it – subtly at first, but there was this surge through me. My heart began to race even though I’d been standing still for at least 15 minutes. I breathed through it and held on to the thought of healing myself. Slowly the feeling subsided, and I let go of the thoughts of how ridiculous the whole thing would seem to the outside observer. I didn’t feel like a million bucks, and I wasn’t ready to run a marathon or anything like that, but there was something that happened to help calm me a little more. There was a sense of peace.
We hiked back up the trail to the van and went about the rest of our day, which I spent mostly silent. When we stopped for lunch, I spent more time watching the turquoise waves crash against the pier a short ways away from us rather than engaging in conversation. My subconscious brain was working things out for itself. I just needed to occupy the conscious while it did so.
We checked into our new hotel in the afternoon, and I dashed off to my ocean view room to settle in and check some e-mail - which I did from my balcony in the tropical breeze, palm trees swaying, a bird landing on the table next to me - before changing for dinner. I wanted a few moments to myself before we ate, so I headed down to the water and walked along the beach as the sky went dark. There was no moon out and clouds left over from an afternoon storm were hanging in the air, so I couldn’t see any stars. I sat there in silence, my toes in the sand and water, which was still warm like bathwater. And after a while I came to the conclusion that I had to gain more control over my runaway brain when I’m in stressful situations that tempt me to go back into old behaviors. Not that I backslid to the point where I didn’t recognize myself in the mirror – I caught myself before it got to that point. But ultimately, I needed to find and hang on to the courage to heal myself. Nobody else was going to do it, not that I wanted them to. But in the past I’d looked to other people to help make things better when I needed to be looking to myself. The ocean wasn’t going to do it. An 800 year-old tree wasn’t going to do it. I had to. It was all me.
After dinner I chatted with Colleen a bit about where my head’s been at and why. She helped clear away some of the fog, and suddenly things seemed lighter again. I understood. I got it. So at 12:30 at night, after I’d finished work for the day, I went outside in the comfort of my t-shirt, underwear and a towel, and walked down to the water again. I dropped the towel and walked through the waves a little, but something about it seemed so inauthentic. So I took a quick peek around and determined it was safe to strip down and jump in the water. And I did. As I sat there with the waves gently drifting around me, through me and past me, I looked up to the sky and saw one single, solitary star shining through the clouds. And I said, “Thank you.”
After a while I wrapped myself in my towel and went back up to my room, where I went through my nightly ritual of face washing and meditating before falling to sleep. And I dreamed. I was hoping for something profound and earth shattering, but when I awoke I realized I’d dreamed that the Billy Walsh character from Entourage was showing people my underwear and commentating on the cleanliness of it. I guess I used up my profoundness quotient during the day. (Or maybe that has something to do with airing my dirty laundry. Whatever - it was weird either way.)
All of these events make up the reasons why I love to travel.
↑ close
