The Last of my Days...

"It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power."
~ Alan Cohen

I am now in the very last week before I take my first steps into this new world of mine: a world of leisure and hard work; of wanderings and ramblings and who knows...Woody Guthrie songs keep popping into my mind, but I fear I am romancing the idea of this adventure too much. There are other things, I know...like having to go to the bathroom in the woods; blisters on my feet and sore shoulders; long days of loneliness in the middle of nowhere, but even these thoughts are beginning to stir something in me-- a challenge.

I have begun a transformation. It is not the kind of change I would excpect anyone else to notice, but rather only something that my mirrored reflection in the morning, or the windows on the street as I pass, can show. The gradual recognition of the move into the next phase of my life and the next me...They say that, something like every 7 years, you become a new person-- literally. All your original cells have been replaced by new ones and you have become something completely new. Well, perhaps my changes are solely interior and brain-related; and, then again, perhaps I just notice these changes more than many other people. I can see it in my walk, in the way I am beginning to dress, in the food I am eating and how I am eating it; in the fact that I would rather save money now than spend it, but not at the cost of something exquisite or extraordinary...does that make sense? I am not sure. But, after the last 3+ years of some of the hardest trials and anguish-- real or imagined-- I think I am finally realising that tehse times in our lives are not bad times, but growing pains. These are the times that allow you to transcend and emerge who you are/will be. It comforts me to think that perhaps I already might know who I am, I just haven't gotten to know her well yet, so that i may learn as much as possible about everything I can while I am away, rather than going on a search to "find myself" and only realizing that it was at home and in me all along, right there to begin with...(there's no place like home, Toto, there's no place like home). So, transition. (s).

The closer the departure day gets, the more terrified and electrified I become. I keep thinking, "Stupid girl! What are you doing!...you don't camp! you don't know what you are doing, where you are going..." but, most of all, how I will ever be able to talk myself into coming back. I have not even begun the journey, yet...at least, not in physical form...but, how will I be able to be happy coming back to a 9-5? And rent and bills. And expectations. Questions that cannot help but be answered later, I suppose.

It is odd to me, but I was surprised to find, the other day, that I am more scared of having nothing required of me. At first, all I felt was relief-- the continual shock of, "oh my God...I really won't HAVE to do anything...there's no reason to panic about being late for work, or having to turn in a paper, or get enough money to pay off my doctor bill..." andit is just such a foriegn feeling. I don't remember the time when I didn't HAVE to do something... But, now, there is this-- small, but growing-- fear in me of...what do I do? After I've seen this and done that and I am sitting there on a log in the middle of the alps in November and... what do I do? I suppose anything I want to. It's terrifying to realise that your life is actually your own...