The Diary of a Reluctant Traveler T -1 (or -2)

I don’t want to go.

Tomorrow, or possibly the day after, I’m due for a holiday. A break where I get away form it all.

All, except me, of course.

See, the thing is, over the last 2 years, I’ve been slowly getting sadder, and I’ve not really had time to deal with it. I’ve been busy dealing with the fact that everyone else is sad for the same reasons. I always figured that eventually they would be able to sort themselves out, and then it would be time for me.

That didn’t happen.

I’ve also got the kind of job where you spend most of your days giving support and help to people. A job which has been, predominantly, without support.

This meant that I fell over, and I’ve reached the point of being almost too sad to function.

I don’t want to go because the big wide world is scary. I don’t want to leave the house. I want to curl up in a ball and stay there.

But I can’t. I can’t because I know that if I do, I won’t ever get out. You see, I’m not beginning this journey completely well. I’m one of those people who’s broken completely in the past, and now spends most of the time just coping, rather than actually dealing with things.

I know that I need to go.

As such, I’ve set myself quite a big itinerary. One that, logically, I will enjoy, but that mentally, I really don’t want to do. I may have to be nice to myself and only get half of it done. Or perhaps none of it.

Perhaps I will have to simply get as far as the first service-station and camp there.

This journey is going to be a pilgrimage.

A pilgrimage that I will take in writing, even if I’m not physically strong enough to do it in a physical way. A good friend of mine told me that I should begin by writing out the things that have gotten to me until such time as I’m able to speak them to people.

To do that, I’m going to put some of it here. Daily. I’m making this promise to the world, just so that I actually do my best to keep it. I won’t, but I can, at least try.

I still don’t want to go, but simply writing this, and feeling the small amount of release that it is giving me shows me that I really do have to person-up and get out there.

I’m sorry for all the people I’m letting down this week by taking time for me. I’m sorry I didn’t time it better.

Hopefully I’ll see some of you on the pilgrimage. Others I may talk too on line. The rest of you can read this, and walk with me, if you like. Some of it may be painful, some of it may be difficult to read. Not all of it will be public.

Some of it might not be a surprise to some of you, and some of it might. These posts will be raw, sometimes accusatory. If you think they are aimed at you personally, then I’m sorry. That’s not my intent. If you do think it is aimed at you, personally, you might want to ask yourself why, and how you can address that in the future.

Here’s to a pilgrimage.

~Xen.