September 2002

A year ago this month I was in Spain. Maybe that is why it is on my mind all the time. I can't seem to stop thinking about it and I am sleepwalking again. My body will be walking to the post office and my mind will be walking the Camino. I am also thinking about all that has happened since I got back from my walk and I still have trouble wrapping my mind around it. Although I know that everything I have seen and heard is real, I still find all of it somewhat unbelievable and fantastic.

I do not understand why I am thinking about the Camino so much. I need to find someone else who has walked the Camino and see if they have gone through the same thing I am going through now. I decide the best place to find someone would be at Shirley Maclaine's website. So, I go there and leave a message asking if anyone has walked the Camino and, if so, how the experience affected them a year later. I do not find anyone but I do have people asking me what it was like. At first I am hesitant to answer because I still do not remember much. In fact, when I read through the notes I wrote during my walk, most of it does not mean anything to me. I do write about what I can remember and find if someone ask me a direct question I can remember more than I thought. The act of writing seems to open closed doors in my mind.

Each time I visit the website I only spend a short amount of time because I do not feel safe. I think this is because I do not really want to talk about anything that happened because I am afraid of what people will think. Will they believe me? Will they think I am crazy? The feeling that writing about it dangerous gets so strong; I start thinking that people at the website are talking about me behind my back. I can't believe how paranoid I am getting about this. Then something happens that makes me think I was right to be afraid. I start a back and forth dialogue with two people and write about some of the stranger things that have happened and , on two different days, each one tells me that they are not going to be able to answer my messages anymore because they are going away for awhile. It isn't until two days later that I realize I had been given a polite brush-off. I feel like a fool. They don't believe me. Then I get angry. How can they not believe me? They are at Shirley Maclaine's website, she has said things that sound unbelievable too. The irony of this makes me laugh. I decide not to go back. I don't need these people judging me.