I just found this

A woman from a group called the "Camino Companions" that work out of the Pilgrim's office in Santiago, had offered me a cup of coffee and said if I needed to talk about my experience she was available.  I hadn't thought I needed that, but there was a lot going on in my head, not the least of which was saying out loud the pain and anxiety I'd been feeling for months, things not directed at me, but that I feel nonetheless because I give a damn about others, the not sleeping, the broken or breaking of something inside, and then all the experiences and insights I had while (willingly choosing to be) an outsider, an "other," a "them."  The not being "enough."  The things I didn't feel like I had the "right" to feel or express, and so didn't know what to do with them, because I did feel them.

Anyway, my housemate just asked about my trip (I didn't realize anyone knew I had been gone, I'd only told my landlord.)  And after trying to explain it, I came upstairs and found these poems/thoughts, etc., that the woman I'd spoken to had handed to me when I was getting ready to leave.  I'd meant to read and think about them on the trip home, but that's a whole other adventure, so that didn't happen.

This is one of them:

Trust in the Slow Work of God 

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability-
and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually-let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don't try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete. 

 - Pierre Teilhard de Charding, SJ

Ennui

I'm bored.  Out-of-my-skull: bored.  And is it hyperbole to say, "I've never been this bored before?"  I probably have.  It's the now it's-always-Sunday-afternoon feeling.  It's that what's worked before, no longer is, and the next thing hasn't come in to fill the void, so, I'm in the void.  Ultimately, it's a good thing, a good place to be, but...I'm bored.

And I decided to go to the doctor last week, because I'd been having throat pain (for a while), and I sorta' figured it was the thing I'd had four years ago, but wanted to rule out something more serious.  At the last minute, she decided to have her assistant run a strep test, and it came back positive, surprisingly; I don't feel all that bad.  Anyway, just have three more days of antibiotics left, but I took the day after off of work, in the event I was contagious, and that's when I realized how bored I was, so I went back to work the next day.  But seriously, what did I do before to occupy myself?  I've been trying to cut back on using the internet, my computer, and that's part of it, how much that had been filling my waking hours.

On the sick day, I finally finished uploading my trip photos (almost 4,000 and a very slow process), well, all the ones off of the first card.  Went out for a walk to see if the headache was actually from caffeine withdrawal, since it was already afternoon.  Ended up at the lake, spotted the giant orange fish near the shore, and was reminded that it was carp-spawning season, though they were just cruising around at that point.  A thought about released goldfish crossed my mind, and then an older man walked up to me mentioning something about koi, and we got into a long conversation about local wildlife, and then, tropical biology, bats and birds and that sorta' thing.  His wife works at the zoo, and they've traveled a lot in Central and South America, into the jungles and the cloud forests.  Ended up walking the whole lake, even though I'd originally planned on turning around earlier: I don't often meet someone that is interested in that.  (I'd spent time in a cloud forest in college, studying natural history/rain-forest ecology.)

And then I did eight hours of gardening on Saturday, and consequently slept most of Sunday, because I'm still rather exhausted.  I was awake for almost 40 hours trying to get home (was planning on sleeping during the 9-hour bus ride, but had a creepy dude sit next to me, so that didn't happen), and then the first week I was back, I had a bunch of life stuff to catch up on: an overgrown garden, volunteer commitments, choir rehearsal for a performance, a bake sale, the actual performance, the other rehearsal (which has an upcoming performance, as well), plus jet lag, etc., etc., and I can fill the time, but in a way, it's noise, and underneath the noise, is a restlessness, and what feels like boredom.  I don't know what should be there.  And I feel incapable of paying attention, or making any major decisions.  It's not the right time.  Something happened, something changed in my mind, in my view of myself, while I was travelling, and I'm only starting to catch glimpses of that, to begin to comprehend it.

And I've been feeling a little anxious that I have nothing new going on this year...I mean the travel (a super-privileged thing to have been able to do), the singing at Folklife, the theatre-workshop are all a deepening of things I've already done, nothing wrong with that...but life is short, and I'm more than half-way through mine: what could I be doing?  What do I want to be doing?  Why is depth not enough?

So many people I spoke with while traveling talking about having a mid-life crisis, or preemptively avoiding one, ("I'll be turning 40 next week." "I'm 50.")  And I guess I'm feeling a late one, now that I've gotten back home into the demands of every day life...and I suppose that's how it should be.

When you no longer feel the need to please everyone else, follow someone else's rules, to quell someone else's fears of the world, what do you choose?

Home again

I'm in a half-space, half back in this reality, half back in the one I left, the one without an importance of status, or time, the one of openness to the other, the one that says, "Good morning," to every passing face (or tree or ant or whatever.)  I don't want to lose the latter, but it feels too exposed and unwelcome.  A place without a phone, and with the exception of a tv in a bar (usually on futbol, or a game show, or an emerging scandal), and foreign-language newspapers, no contact with the "outside" world.

My body still in another time zone, but I wake up with the light (2 hours earlier here) and get up rather than linger.  Yesterday, arrived at work almost an hour early, because I just got up and started walking, thinking something would be open for food, nothing but Starbucks, and I had no food in the house.  And letting things go, letting myself not be responsible for everyone else.  Not everything needs to happen right now.

I need to sleep, found ants crawling across my bed, which made me feel itchy, and I was too tired to figure out where they'd come from: we'd never had issues with them in the house before.

I can feel the pain in my hands returning slowly.  Had no real RA symptoms while I traveled.  Took for granted being able to use my hands.  Something to think about: was it the sun? the dryness? the lack of stress? the lack of technology? the constant movement? the food? the new germs to contend with? (I ate potatoes like they were going out of style, and I can't do that here.)  What made the difference?  Can I replicate it here?

So, much silence, I could hear the thoughts that race through my head and run my day...so many small anxieties, adding up to dysfunction.  Someone told me to just focus on one thing to change, and if I fail, to try again tomorrow...every day, until I get it right.