learning how to ground myself, bit by bit

I have one more week in Valparaiso, and then I am heading home for good. Its hard to not feel quite melancholy, knowing that this wild, challenging, intense, beautiful experience is coming to an end. I'm am classically nostalgic, feeling extremely sentimental about EVERYTHING relating to an experience when it comes to an end, and I feel that now as well. I also know that it is time to come home. I will write a big reflection in a week when I am heading home, but for now this is how the past month has been.

I loved and hated, I spoke more Spanish than ever before, I cooked homemade lasagna and stir-fry in Horcon with people who make me filled with joy. I fell into a lake after paddling across on a makeshift barge. I broke up with a course that was causing me unbearable anxiety. I traveled to see my #1 brother graduate from high school and rushed away to catch my flight having only been home for exactly 24 hours. I traveled alone to Pisco Elqui and spent a lot of time reflecting. 

I feel a lot of acceptance and peace right now. I think I've learned a little bit about myself these past five months and now I'm finding a lot of joy and calmness in the act of living in my body. Its a glorious relationship, the one I have with myself. That's been the main growth I've experienced, rebuilding and nourishing and developing my relationship I have with myself. So now, when I am in this intense moment of saying goodbye and closing up a long, intense period of my life, I feel the tangible sense of security in myself, the knowledge that I will live through and in this rather than resist it or fear it. It is going to be really sad to leave. Especially my host family (Consuelo my mom has been my closest support system and friend), and the other friends I've made along the way--Danaes, Eduardo, the theater loves-- and the wacky life David and I have as we both, separately and together, worked our way through life here. I'm also going to miss the simple sense of familiarity that I have finally gained--the 507 bus, the streets of Baron, the empanada places that have vegetarian beauties, the subida to Cerro Alegre and Templeman 855, the feeling of being in a colectivo at 1 am flying through the city, the presence of the pacific ocean always on one side, getting arayan at Ilicito twice a week... I really will keep saying this, but I am going to miss speaking Spanish SO much, I really have come to love it deeply. And all these things I am going to have to say goodbye to, I feel very sad about leaving them but I also feel acceptance at the impending goodbye. Rather than hold on kicking and screaming, feeling deep angst, I feel like a sponge, absorbing every moment as much as I can while just continuing to breathe. 

The beginning of the end was when I traveled to Pisco Elqui by myself, a precious village in the Valle de Elqui in the cuarto region. This video and freewrite is from that experience, but I think it applies to this entire month. 

Begin freewrite. 
The garden is magical and as I move I feel like a child, delighted, mystified at the endless possibilities the pathways have. Wanted to throw my shoes off and sink my toes, all ten of them, into the earth, but the cactus are sharp and the branches hidden under leaves. Cold sharp air in my lungs, it strikes like the altitude, a tightening, an awareness within of being in the sky. Even higher in the mountain, deep sadness filed my body, the enormity of human existence or equally enormous mountains with zero essence of moist ground but rather pebbles, loose, crumbly, shifting ever so. I guess that's what life is like too. Although every day in Valparaiso I feel more and more stable, rooted, deep, my heels and veins and blood reach far down into the earth and gripping the inner workings. 

The tightness of the cold altitude reminds me of how my body feels when confronted with saying goodbye to people I love for probably a long time. That energy, intense and aching enters my body and I want to dance forever, to never stop as I can release some of it through the twirling and spiraling, shaking and twisting, allow it to sift through my body and settle so I can breathe a little. I suppose this is life. going to Valle del Elqui allowed me to pause for a second and remember my inner strength. I approach this last month with love. 









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