TakeaWays

I walked 800km across Spain and all I got was a bacterial infection and a smoking problem.. still no boyfriend.

Just kidding. Though often, on days and during extended moments of self-loathing, where I feel entirely uninteresting and worry that I’ll never do anything cool again, I eventually come to remembering upon unto a mirror gazing, that hey, I have partial heterochromia. And you know what, I’ve also had cancer. And walked the Camino de Santiago in 2018.

And although cancer’s clearly uncool, walking 800km west from the French Pyrenees across Spain is probably one of coolest things I’ll ever do; cancer only badass because I’m fortunate enough to say I beat it. Though more on that another time I think.

Looking back, as I also frequently like to do or more honestly where I think I may unfortunately live, I feel like it might be one of the only times I’ve demonstrated true integrity in my life (and maybe the only thing I’ve ever got right).

As in doing something I said I would. Finally following through only after five years of talking about it. Made manifest without a plan other than for “one day” almost in an instant, like most of my trips have been to date, with a sudden urge to flee or escape.

Though I’m always up for a challenge, that or I’m just, as some friends have said - addicted to pain, or any kind of penance (and opportunity to lose weight) 2018 had already tested me.

I closed my business at the height of what I had created, the only explanation I had to offer being that I just couldn’t do it. I know I was still coming to terms with what happened to me a few years prior as far as getting kicked out of America as well as the toll my illness took.

So I cashed in on the talent I represented and left on a whim without a clue let alone the correct shoes, to see if walking it off would fix it.

From Roncesvalles to Pamplona, Longrono, Burgos, Leon through to Santiago and everywhere else bumfuck en ningún lugar in-between.

I didn’t meet my husband but I did fall hard and fast in love with pan again. Con tomat, con marmelades, con cydre in the evenings. You name it. Discovering very quickly that the Camino was no place to diet, and rather still have it noted no two tortillas are to be the same; and that one must drink – honestly you won’t have a say in it and it will probably start earlier than you’d still prefer and think.

Yes, I got lost. As if I already wasn’t. And no shit I took up smoking.

I did ride 17 of all of those kilometres by horse and cart. Don’t ask. Spent two nights under the stars, one in hospital. Another on the floor of a cathedral, though didn’t wake up in hell. I ate the morcillo. I ate everything. I talked to everyone. Even kissed two Spaniards. And still found more than enough time for myself and days to walk alone and repent.

However I spent the last 72 hours in a hotel with a one Davide from Valencia, ten years my junior, so I couldn’t really tell you how Santiago is.

I’d understood early on that I’d return home with my demons, as i’m sure many peregrinos did, I was just there to find a way to be “cool” with having them walk beside me.

The end.