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I stepped out of the shower today and stood in front of the foggy mirror for awhile. Trying to make myself out in the distortion. I stood until slowly the fog turned into sweat dripping down and soon I emerged. I realized how often I look in the mirror but I never really look at myself. I am always so focused on my imperfections that thru the years it has become difficult to find beauty. Even as the moment came where I wanted to look away I knew I could not. I looked into my own eyes and I saw pain and anger but as the seconds passed soon I saw the woman that others have seen. I saw courage, a desire to persevere and beauty.

I stepped out to the darkness the garden offered in the hopes of getting this out. Out of me and onto a place where I no longer curl up with it. I love being in the dark, not because of the stillness that darkness offers but rather clarity. See after a few minutes in the dark what used to be indecipherable now has its angles of definition, our eyes begin to adjust. But it requires ambient light. I think of my life in the darkness and those who I have been fortunate to have around me that have given me of their light to help define the lines that I have found so difficult to find. For years I have been trying albeit perhaps not genuinely hard to get out of the darkness, and yet as I sit here in it I realize those things I hate are the beauty that stared back at me thru the mirror. But it is only now as my eyes adjust I am able to see that.

This year will mark the fifth year of my annual trip. I am trying to remember who was that woman who had looked at complacency and called its bluff. She is inside of me and I have allowed myself to suppress her. I need to push the status quo again. To no longer be satisfied with my own unhappiness. To instead look at the opportunity to expand to change the scenery and the goal. I have always been that woman who has believed that the job, house, husband and children would give me the happiness I so longed for. I was sure they would bring the fullness that has been so far from me for as long as I can remember. But the truth is there is fullness in my life right now but the bright sun has caused my hands to cover my eyes and bump into everything other than the freedom I actually had. In this stillness I can feel the fullness. Who knew I would find light in the blackout.

It seems that fog is this necessary part of the ecosystem that God has created. So often my life seems full of fog. I remain unable to see in front of me or even that which stands within me. My blessings and the love of those around me. I have allowed a fog to hover above those things. This fog of past hurts and lies I have refused to refute with truth.

I sit in my wicker chair a large blanket draping me and I see that the fog has taken its leave from my mind and now sits out on the Sound where only the ever changing water is hidden. It is here that clarity has come. I am relinquishing ownership. I no longer wish to carry the perpetuation of the lies that I have believed so long. And yet even in that statement there is a lie. I knew they were lies but they had become part of my routine. Wash face, moisturize, believe items I know to be lies- go to work.

The hardest part of today is realizing and accepting my blame in these matters. The pain is no longer from my abuse but from the decisions I have continually made from the place of fear, control and desire. I feel ashamed and angry that I have allowed myself to go so far and so deep.

For so long sleep has eluded me. In a very real way I have been unable to calm my mind and provide enough security to allow myself to relax and descend into the dark tranquil facet of the night. I have robbed myself of the very regeneration I have needed. I realize now that all those man made creations have been unable to calm me because I my battle has not been against just my flesh but rather the mind that I have listed for rent to a war zone.

I’ve been sitting with this concept of transfiguration. This idea that something wrought with pain and sadness can be transfigured into a pillar or proof of love and truth. Yet as the water washes upon the shore I am sure of this possibility. This definition I have written for myself is written in pencil, able to be erased and instead the truth able to be etched in stone with a chisel and patience. I am grateful for my desire for solitude for it has brought me to an understanding of companionship not offered by man.

A new day awaits me in just a few hours, even in the thickest night I can see it somewhere on the horizon. For once I don’t fear it and its uncertainty. For once I am taking comfort and solace in the truth that I don’t know what time is. I don’t know what the future is but I am holding tightly to it.

In the tongue and groove of this ceiling I have found the truth that was always etched in my heart. Soon the organ will play and my heart will soar.

As I roam upon this land that was created I find these pockets of myself as if they had been hidden from the beginning of time, this lifelong Easter egg hunt.

In his resurrection I find my own.

It’s been many days since Colombia. I started to write while there but there wasn’t time. I was left incomplete and needing more. For legal reasons I can’t yet return, knowing me you can already imagine. But I’ve dreamt many nights of that house perched just above that blue lagoon.

It is now in my renewed solitude that my soul cries out for evidence of what transpired all those many days ago. So with a full tummy and just the sounds of the ocean beneath me can I return to the native tongue that at times feels so foreign.

Regrese al corazón de Colombia. Al corazón que hace muchos años respiró aire a mis pulmones. Mandando me en el camino de soñadora. Me senté rodeada de las montañas y mis emociones.

Me pregunto mi Chef como se sintió regresar después de tanto tiempo. La verdad es que aún estaba allí hace muy poquito fue este viaje que devolvió mi corazón a mi tierra. Se siente como respirar. Como la sangre que antes andaba despacio por mi venas ahora corre hasta mi corazón, mis pies, mis dedos. Moviendo me a conocer a caminar a volver amar.

No soy poeta en español. No sé como describir que siente mi corazón al ver el horizonte bajar detrás de las montañas. Como mi suspiros suben a caminar y respirar las nubes. Aquí la noche me alcanza y los sonidos del campo me tranquilizan. Si la puerta tiene llave o no me escapa la atención y el querer.

Es verdad que la sangre reconoce su tierra. Puedo oír los pedazos de piel encontrarse y tejarese a formar una cicatriz. No me duele, me inspira que mi cuerpo se puede recuperar, mi alma también.

No sabía lo grande que era mi país, pues es lo mismo que la mente, alma y ser emocional de uno. Tenemos tantos rincones que guardan memorias, experiencias y sentimientos.

Cada lugar que visitó trae a mi lobo frontal un recuerdo que no existe. Espérame mi amor que ya pronto vuelvo.

It seems impossible to fly into this city and not think of you. To feel the wind on my face and not think of that first time I saw you standing in the freezing cold waiting for me.

Time has made me less susceptible to the nostalgia of those memories. So while I remember that smile on your face I remember the anger in your eyes the next day when I feel short of your expectations. I no longer see just snowflakes I see the blizzard I stood in. I still however wonder where you are. Whether concrete walls are once again your home or whether you’ve found how to push thru and be the man your grandmother always knew you to be.

I am so different from that girl you once kept on the phone for hours. Who was she ? How deep and wide were the body of lies she believed that ran thru her. I’m not quite out of that river yet but I know that what we shared was not love. It was power it was possession it was fear. Neither of us was ready for the next stage of our lives and our presence in each other’s lives kept us tethered to a past we no longer belonged too.

I hate that I had to live thru you. I hate that I offered up so much of me for your amusement. I hate that the words I love you escaped my lips so many times, but worse I hate that you were a reinforcement of a misconception of love and sex, one that I continued long after I tried to quit you.

Why is my name still written in your bible, why does a city call your name to me. I thank God I no longer answer, “I am temporarily disconnected”. Unable and unwilling to return to the time and space where every moment of my day was accounted for and never belonged to me.

I made it, back in the safety of the terminal.

Mom said there is this switch inside and with one flick everything changes. I was sure that was an oversimplification, but I’m finding she is right and more than that I think that’s the day the switch flipped. The standard changed all of a sudden and nothing seems acceptable and yet everything seems possible. I now sit with the traffic of hundreds of people, some finding their way home others off on an adventure or the few that are most at home in these crowded halls with only letters and numbers to situate you. It is in the reflection of the sky in the smooth floor that I see the possibilities, the one that my grief, fear and loneliness prevented me from seeing. Right now in this moment, I am lucky, I am blessed, I am fulfilled, satisfied but expectant of the future. Mom you did that for me, silent support has pushed me to jump into free fall, you are the net beneath me. Strong only because even you find your strength in something other than yourself.

There are so many things my heart still longs for, the switch has not shut those off but now I’m willing to trust in “perfect timing”. I see that now only after seeing the consequences and scars I myself am responsible for. I don’t know that I’ll be here tomorrow I can only trust that each day I will renew this desire to wait and truthfully choose to no longer struggle.

But Now….

It’s time I’m honest. I started this blog as a way to record my hearts thoughts as they happen on these solo trips and yet somehow during this trip as I attempt to put my fingers to the keys I become stumped. Not because of the adventure itself but rather because instead of being a melody of the things I see and feel it is a play by play of the things I did. I don’t want that for me, for this, for us. So there may be days where I post every detail and others where just my heart emerges to imprint on that small part of you that draws you here. I’ve realized this isn’t a travel blog it’s a story about a woman on the road and at home and how a country can change or reveal that which we might try to suppress.

So shall I tell you how this trip has made me feel….

There is something melodic about a new city. The pace of those who call this home. It feels as though I am inserting myself into someone’s family. Sitting at their table for dinner and hearing their private conversations.

Reverence seems to be my word for this voyage. Living in such a young country we tend to not have the resilience of countries that have fought wars on their lands for thousands of years. Understanding occupation and oppression not in the modern view but a literal one. Where people stay in their homes as bombs go off around them, their churches burning and their fortress turned into a symbol of intimidation.

My head hit the pillow and almost instantly I was off dreaming of the adventures to come. One of the many gifts of these foreign lands and their time zones is the facility with which I am able to sleep. It is a gift I am never quick to forget. I awoke with no jolt but rather from the cold air that has penetrated the brick walls meant to protect me.

Auf Wiedersehen

Shall we begin….there have been times I have wanted to start these posts like a stewardess on an aircraft. Advising of the dangers ahead as well as the exit locations and life jackets. There are moments…small moments where sadness can creep. Sometimes its on a mountaintop others its in the back pew of a synagogue. I find the need to honor those moments not because I want to be sad but because to avoid it will only cause further rot. See this is an exit…this is where you kindly thank me for going on this trip but excuse yourself from the continuous monologues I find are necessary to get the fingers against the letters.

We begin where we alway do in an airport, anxious and waiting. This time someone is by my side. I’ve had this countdown going for the last 6 weeks “Europe with Tuti”. Now for the first time this journey won’t be alone. The solemn moments will be few and far between and the wheels that roll will only be those of the train and yet I am filled with excitement.

Normally my travel posts begin once I have arrived to the city and yet the journey to this country requires re-examination. It has been an indicator of the overall vibe of this trip…mind you we are only on day 3. The bulkhead seats that we selected and purchased months ago someone how disappeared behind a new row of seats with a very comfortable and annoyed Russian (I technically don’t know if he was Russian or not and yet my spidey sense aka Shanka, recognized her compatriots and the pure douchebag of it all) His feet perched high upon the wall in front of him and his chair reclined as far back as it would go. As my eyes found the toots the annoyance became palpable. But what were we to do, would we argue and become one of those viral sensation videos that seem to be the norm these days. “Crazy ladies fighting for a seat…an economy seat at that” Nope!

I gently asked if he would move his seat up so we could at least be in our seats before he made us as uncomfortable as he could. He begrudgingly obliged, we took our seats and the case of the giggles began. I’m fairly convinced it was the complaining and the laughing that made the unbearable flight bearable. MIA-LIS began as we ascended and night began to fall. The next time we would see this sun we would be across the Atlantic and everything would be different, we would be different. The Bermuda Triangle ain’t got shit on a woman who crosses an ocean with nothing more than sheer force of will. We would not remained satiated with the small corner of the world that we had been designated. I sat in the most uncomfortable seat with the lingering smell of some pretty terrible food and the unheard of heat of the plane yet I would not have traded that seat for one of great comfort but her not by my side. Other than the sweetest woman who birthed me there is no one I would rather travel with. She is a wall that is always closing in on me and yet never crushes me, every inch that she pushes me I become better, more aware more in desire of change of growth of becoming better. See what I mean about the exits…..this is just the plane ride….!EXIT!

“EIGHT HOURS! LATER!”

So we land and the mad dash begins to get our luggage down and off this plane as quickly as possible. A nice walk would soon reveal the relatively short customs line. Ok let’s stop here for a moment. You know what they say about first impressions. Portugal gave me their best, let’s be clear the men in Miami and in the US that I have seen really don’t hold any kind of candle to the men on this side of the world. The words in the English language give not reverence to the beauty of God’s hand. Instead all I can seem to find is “Arequipe”. Let’s not linger here anymore, I hate thinking that I left the love of my life back in Customs. We continued on the catch our next flight LIS-VIE. Having been highly annoyed at the confusion of the seats we quickly logged onto the airline and changed to the magical first row that just seemed to appear when it damn well pleased. A bus took us to our plane where I lovingly lifted my way too heavy for a carry on suitcase. We found ourselves sandwiched between another pair of men…my kind of sandwich.

You know that feeling when your tired of being tired….I got to that point at about minute 22 of the flight. Which is not very helpful when there is about 2hrs and 38 min left. I sunk down in the chair and lifted my feet the same way the man I despised had ( I’m cuter so it’s ok) and soon enough we landed. But of course we were closer but not enough – we made our way to the train station and boarded our next and I thought final leg. As the train filled up and began to chug along the crazies began to come out, not in the they are funny and crazy but more the Are you freaking kidding me. I digress…almost literally. Finally the train stops and we disembark.

Another moving vessel awaits us yet as soon as we board soon our exit is announced and there we stand before our home for the next few days.

I’ll be back tomorrow and we can catch up on the last two days. I’m going to need a lot of coffee!

Day 1…Done