Can You Start Again Without Knowing Where You’re Going?

Six months after walking to Rome, I’m still finding my way

What do you do when you’ve walked 1,200 kilometres to Rome and still haven’t figured out what comes next? This is where I find myself now, on my birthday, a little over six months after returning home from a journey that marked a new beginning.

When I set out to Rome last year, the intention was to walk my mind well. After years of battling severe depression, I’d arrived at a literal dead end. I didn’t have the strength to keep up the fight anymore. My old life was a distant memory, and the depression demons interfered with any attempt to imagine (let alone build) a new one.

I was stuck. I didn’t know how to fix what was broken. Only that something had to change. And fast. Walking to Rome seemed as good a place as any to start.

This pilgrimage was not some bucket list item to be ticked off. In fact, until the idea popped into my mind one year earlier, I’d never given much thought to camino walks, let alone imagined I would go through with one myself. For me, the walk was a last-ditch attempt to save myself. (It turns out I seriously underestimated the scope of this endeavour, on both counts!)

On the trail, I encountered all manner of obstacle: intense heat, torrential rain, near-constant blisters, a bout with water poisoning, blinding migraines, an attack by a dog, the stomach-churning fear of creepy dudes along a remote stretch through the Po Valley, and even credit card fraud.

There were also jaw-dropping views, friendly encounters with locals at café bars where I stopped to refuel, interesting exchanges with the smattering of fellow pilgrims I met along the way, and mouth-watering delicacies to top off each day.

More than any of these external experiences, the journey into my mind, or psyche, was the most arduous. When you walk for six-to-eight hours on your own every day, over the course of two months, you become intimately acquainted with the workings of your mind. The usual distractions aren’t around to take the edge off whatever lurks beneath the surface.

Throughout those 1200km, my mind was the only constant walking companion. It soon became apparent that if I wanted to walk my mind well, I’d need to get a grip on this unruly thinking machine, and use its power to my advantage rather than be yanked around by the jumble of thoughts, emotions and sensations it produces.

The longer I spent in the conscious company of my mind on the road, the more I began to see patterns emerge from this soupy mess. I noticed how often a prickle of fear would appear out of nowhere for any number of potential pitfalls that may or may not transpire a few kilometres down the road.

When I walked over the Cisa Pass, a fairly remote stretch of the Via Francigena, my mind was in a constant state of panic. What would happen if I got lost in this section of trail with so few water points and limited mobile network? Would the food I’d packed be enough to last until the next main town? What if the hostel volunteer forgot to meet me and I had to sleep outside?

With each snapping twig underfoot, or hunter’s gunfire in the distance, a new worry appeared on the scene, propelling me away from the trail and into some disastrous imagined future. (None of which ended up happening.)

The past was equally as captivating. The day after I made it up and over the St-Bernard Pass, floodgates of grief cracked wide open over losses sustained years beforehand. While bees and flies and butterflies flurried around me on the mountaintop, I was nowhere to be found. My body advanced, a lone walking shell. Meanwhile, my mind was captured by the replay of a conversation from five years ago.

As days turned into weeks on the trail, the chasm between mind and body started to give way. I’d catch myself trying to control for potential obstacles and then turn my attention back to the donkey peering over the fence, or the field of plump tomatoes right in front of me.

Instead of scenario planning for A and B and C, I focused on resolving problems in real time. When road works appeared out of nowhere, I figured out a detour. When the skies opened up, I put on a poncho. When the GPS map and signage differed, I made a judgment call based on immediate parametres. When blisters sprouted, I treated them.

I found a balance between assessing for risk and dealing with whatever the trail threw my way. More important, I grew less attached to how this cammino should go, and more in tune with how it was going.

People often talk about the Before and After aspects of a pilgrimage, or personal transformation process. They neglect to tell you the “after” can take a while to figure out. And the During isn’t always pretty.

Did I succeed in walking my mind well? It’s still too early to tell. Apart from a short post-walk dip last November, Life-as-Usual has sucked me back into the rhythm of household chores, cat care, grocery shopping, and everything else that comes with being in your regular routine.

The conditions of my life are much the same as before the walk. There is still a lot to sort out. It’s not that I expected miracles while away. But I wasn’t prepared for the sameness of it all upon completing the journey.

Six months later, the walk feels like a distant dream. Life presents the same problems. The same confusion. And the ever-present question: What now?

“Maybe the change you seek from this walk is within you,” suggested my shrink when I shared these concerns with him one day. (Of course he would say that. P.S. No need to tell him that he’s probably right!)

I haven’t yet solved any of the big problems that need addressing in my life. The difference is that now there is room for a “yet” in the previous sentence. The walk propelled me out of sheer survival mode, onto safer ground. It may take me a while to catch my breath. And that’s Ok.

From here, I do have a choice: remain in the rubble of the old life and become a resentful has-been who feeds on her past successes, or else chart a whole new path into the unknown.

Whatever happens next, I know for certain that I don’t want to be in the same place a year from now, clinging onto a past identity and waiting for things to change, rather than taking matters into my own hands.

This is easier said than done. Change is hard at the best of times. Let alone when you didn’t want to change in the first place. With this in mind, I’m offering myself an unusual birthday gift this year: the opportunity to create a new life from scratch.

This time, a life designed with intention. Not the should-do version. Nor the safe ticking-boxes existence that ended in a Lifequake. The upside to losing everything is that you’ve got nothing more to lose. You can do things your way from now on. During the next year, this is exactly what I will do.

Before leaving for Rome, I had no idea what was in store for me on the trail. All I had was a general sense of direction and a firm intention to walk the full distance. The same is true as I look to the year ahead, from this birthday to the next.

I can’t control for what will happen in future, or how things will evolve along the way. None of us can. Just as on the walk, I can only define and stick to a direction of travel: in this case, to create a (new) life, worth living. And to revel in the journey itself.

Rome was only one stop on an adventure-packed 1200km walk. Likewise, wherever I end up next year, or the year after that, is less important than what happens today, or this hour. Better yet, this minute.

Fear of the big unknown can be paralysing. That didn’t stop me from lacing up my shoes and taking that first step to Rome. It’s time to do the same thing back home.