I just finished watching The Motorcycle Diaries with Max. It's an awesome movie, and I highly recommend it to anyone who can even remotely deal with foreign language audio and subtitles. Very rich storyline and visuals, and a true story. Two young men from the same town, though relative strangers, embark on a journey to cross Latin America on a beat up motorcycle they christen The Mighty One. One of them goes on to be one of the most famous heroes of the Cuban Revolution, but in the movie they're just ordinary young men, one is 23 and the other 29.
It got me thinking about a lot of things. I have a traveling spirit, and wish I could see, photograph, and write about every part of the world, how it changes me, what I could give to it. But my body is not so free, so this probably won't happen.
Still, as we rapidly approach the new year and also the marking of a year living in this building, I wonder. How will I mark the beginning of my third decade in May? What have I done with the two past me? Not much, one may argue. I mean, here I sit in a nursing home. People, for the most part, come here to end their journeys, not start one. I know every ending is a beginning, but you know what I mean.
A very good friend of mine commented to me today that my life has/is in turmoil. Well, maybe life is supposed to be about turmoil at age 29. I think my life will always have some because of how I choose to live, allowing myself to feel everything, see all the colors. I will never turn away. (Ironically, when I'm around this friend, I experience a complete lack of turmoil, for the very first time. Now I understand, if only for moments at a time, what weightless peace is supposed to feel like.)
And walking home in a veritable windstorm made me so happy. It felt like the biggest hug from my friend, who will understand why. Basically, it awakened me, made me feel like I have the power to do absolutely anything I wanted, let me see the infinite scope of possibility that exists in my spirit, in my life.
But I'm always doing things for others. Always doing things because at least one other person wants, needs or expects me to do them. So I have decided with the screaming spirit that lives in me that just once, I want to do something just for me.
Go somewhere where no family are going to drag me to a family reunion on Saturday after rejecting me for Christmas, where nobody expects me to be over religious, like I will have to be this summer if I go to a Christian family camp for people with disabilities that someone wants to take me to in California in June. I want to go as well to see the area, but it's not just for me. It's for her, something she has wanted to do for years.
Just once, I want to do something that everyone says I can not or should not. I want to go somewhere where no one, or very few people, knows me. I want to embrace what is being held out to me when something is, say that I expect no promises but also embrace the turmoil, but only if it leads to something positive. When I finally do something truly for me, negative turmoil will vanish. I'm sure of this.
I'm slowly getting there. I'm slowly learning to say what I really feel, even if it's scary or painful to myself or others. I'm learning to give myself as wholeheartedly to myself as I do to others.
And I don't know what it is yet, but I'm going to do something that's a radical departure for me. The biggest feeling I have is that it will involve a move, larger than the one across town I have been hoping for. I want to go back to school to do something more productive or professional with my arts, probably writing. I feel like my words could change the world.
Move over, Oprah. Even from my little corner of a nursing home, I feel I am somehow on my way to living my best life. Don't worry, I will write about it, my journey, so that you can somehow come along. And if they ever make a movie, I will try to portray myself.
I love and bless you all, but at this moment especially one who was there at the beginning, and will most likely be there upon completion. Thank you for showing me myself. It's truly the greatest gift I've ever been given, and hopefully the world at large will come to appreciate the gift as well. But even if they don't, I do, and I know you do.
And that's enough peace to keep the turmoil at bay long enough to sleep deep enough to dream about the next phase of the journey.
Wherever the road takes me, you will be my traveling companion always. In spirit at least, if not in body. And that's one promise I can make truly and with a clear spirit, knowing it will be kept. Because it already has been. My statement is just a continuation.
If you ever need reminder proof, just look up at night.