Freedom does come with a cost

I made it to my first destination.

But to be completely transparent and vulnerable right now... I cannot stop crying. Well, I had been crying long before I got here, but this is a different kind of grief.

I have very bad anxiety right now. I am in a foreign country by myself for the first time in my life, and that is a lot for anyone’s nervous system.

I have not had anxiety like this in a very long time. My anxiety tends to show up as the feeling that someone is bullying me because when I first developed anxiety, that was the environment I was living in. Someone was staying with me who had an extremely bad temper and could be very physically abusive at times. It was not a partner, it was a friend who needed help, and I helped her because when I was once in need, she helped me too.

But somehow, despite that, she became verbally and physically abusive, and she also almost SA’d me.

Every morning I would wake up with this horrible feeling in my gut, anticipating whether she was going to wake up angry and take it out on me. No one should have to live like that.

So when I started feeling that sensation in my stomach again after arriving here, my mind began interpreting the looks and stares from people in stores and restaurants as bullying or rejection. But that was my skewed perception speaking through anxiety and past abuse.

I am not being abused.

In reality, I had a taxi driver who was very helpful and friendly. Pushy and persistent, yes, but kind and genuinely trying to help me. The host of my Airbnb has also been incredibly kind. She saw that I was struggling to find food, so she knocked on my door and asked if I wanted to go with her to the supermarket. Earlier, I had tried walking around by myself and could not find anything nearby, and even Uber Eats was struggling because her location is difficult to navigate. I understand why now, because she literally lives on the corner of multiple three-way intersections.

So my landing here has not been the easiest on my nervous system, and my baseline anxiety made me feel like I was under attack when I really was not.

Freedom is not free. It comes with a cost.

The cost is shedding your identity, and that can be emotionally painful.

I saw Hecate once I landed, so honestly, I should have known I was about to go through another ego death and would need to shed many tears, because I cried myself to sleep.

Sometimes I forget that when I see her, it is usually a sign that I am about to enter her cave for a while... the underworld, emotionally speaking. My spiritual witchy girlies will understand exactly what I mean.

I know I have a whole team of powerful ancestors, deities, and spirits protecting me. Some of them make their presence known more strongly than others, and Hecate always makes her presence known when she knows I am about to go through something deeply emotional.

I wanted to abort the mission and go home. Back to my bed. Back to my kids and my cats. Back to something comforting and familiar.

That is one of the highest costs of transformation: being stripped away from everything familiar, especially when you have been living the same way for years.

I do not even have my favorite substances or comforts to lean on. Everything that once made me feel safe is gone.

So here I AM, in a foreign country, stripped of all my comforts.

Now I have to either find new ones... or maybe learn that I do not need them in the same way anymore.

That was the point of this journey, right? To find myself again. To rediscover myself in a new way.

But today, I am going to rest. I am going to lie in bed for most of the day because I have been traveling for two straight days through four different airports and on three different planes. My nervous system is overloaded, and right now my body needs comfort more than adventure.

I have fourteen days here before my next destination. There is no need to rush.

I did this for a reason, and I am going to stick with it no matter what.

And honestly, I think I understand more Spanish than I realize because somehow I knew she was talking about going to the grocery store even though she only speaks Spanish.

Anyway... tomorrow will be better. And the day after that too.