Melide

A curious thing.  Fourteen years ago my first Camino essentially ended in Melide as I found what I was looking for.  I did walk into Santiago a few days later, but it felt like an afterthought.

And now this time, I also ended my Camino in Melide, physically.  I knew a couple days earlier it would be ending soon, but not there.  Both after dining in Garnacha, too.  Melide seems to be a catalyst for me.  (This trip was also a deepening of what 2007 trip was about, minus the Norovirus, thankfully.)  Love.  Belonging.  Connection.  Shame.  I was having a strong inner battle between self-love and shame on this trip.

I suppose I will know in time if this was some form of completion.  If I will ever return.

I've felt disconnected, disoriented since.  I don't know if it's the result of the five days it took to get home, or the very itinerant life of the past month (but that would've been true to an extent on all my other trips), or because things have actually changed.  I'll figure out that in time, too.

On the plane (the final one home), I felt nervous about returning home.  Had an unsettled feeling I didn't know where that was anymore.  I wake up in the middle of the night not knowing where I am, wondering who's luggage is next to me, if I am allowed to be sleeping there, if anyone else is there. (I had a room to myself in Ponferrada, and in Gatwick, otherwise I was in a dormitory with other people.)  I feel split...it felt right to come back to my job, but in other areas I feel disconnected.

And yet, I wanted change, so I have to let that be, and let things be released from the ties that told me who I was supposed to be without ever asking me who I was.  And who am I anyway?