That’s it, time to come home after over a month on the road.
(technically, I came home a few weeks ago already, but I wrote this back then so let’s just pretend okay?)
This time, my old companion took me to Italy, Denmark, Germany and Poland, the occasion for me to visit some friends we have in common, she and I. Those few weeks have also allowed me to gather the courage and inspiration I need to tell our turbulent story.
Yes, the Road and me, we have a bit of a complicated relationship.
In the beginning, I looked at her from far away, shy and in admiration, dreaming of the destinations towards which she would take me one day.
When I finally embraced her for the first time, she was better than all of my deepest desires. She was everything I had never dared to dream of. Thanks to her, I felt alive.
And then of course, as with every passionate relationship, our honeymoon period didn’t last eternally.
At the start, changes were subtle. What made me vibrate in the past stopped procuring me as many strong sensations. The butterflies I felt in my tummy whenever I faced her beauty and her power slowly lost their intensity, and shook me less and less often. I began catching glimpses of her darker sides. This scared me at times, left me perplexed at others… and my patience for her slowly started to reach its limits.
But I never stopped loving her. Despite the waves, I still very much wanted to navigate in her waters. I had found the love of my life and nothing or no one could ever take her away from me.
I was with her when I fell in love with someone else, more than once, once more than the others.
That’s when things started to go sour. The Road is jealous, she doesn’t let herself be shared so easily. She gave me an ultimatum: it would be them or her.
Faithful, I always knew that I would end up choosing her. Because without her, I didn’t know who I was.
Therefore, for her, I sacrificed a lot. I gave up on many other love stories and on the easiness of a more peaceful but less exhilarating life.
When she let me down, I hated her. Not in the same way than during our small, regular fights, no, with an intensity that equaled the love I had felt for her all of those years. I resented her so much for bringing me where I was, only to leave me sad and alone.
I had lost my Great Love, the one made of flesh and bones, and also the one I thought could never abandon me the way a human heart could.
Like at the end of any love story, my own human heart found itself shattered in a thousand pieces. I resented myself immensely for sacrificing so much for her, for whom all of a sudden it was so easy to leave me to die mercilessly.
Losing her loving made me realize the value of the love I had the honour to feel for other people. People who could admittedly not be all the answers to my questions, people who could not make me eternally happy nor never give up on me.
But the Road couldn’t do that either.
Thus, by showing that to me, she finally taught me the most important form of love of all.
I think that I finally started to learn how to love myself the day I decided to make peace with the Road. By taking her back, by forgiving her and giving her another chance, more softly and more slowly this time.
Actually, she too was faithful. She hadn’t really ever left me, she simply wanted me to treat her and myself a bit better, to stop taking us for granted.
She was there, so beautiful and simple, asking only to be appreciated, without all of the impossible expectations that I had imposed on her all of those years.
Today, we have a less fusional relationship. I don’t expect her to bring me all of the answers. I prepared myself to the idea that she will disappoint me more than once, but I still choose to love her. To accept her the way she is and to stop trying to make her into what I want her to be.
The Road has taught so much to me, given so much to me and also taken so much from me.
We truly have a great love story.
Returning from one month in her company, I feel at peace. The links are appearing, events are taking their meaning. But daily life continues, with its lots of highs and lows, of intense moments as well as resting days.
I took my pen again to finally write in details about the love story I briefly presented to you here. And then, when I will have finished writing it, I believe it will be the end of something. I believe it will make room to start a new story.
I am not the same person as the young woman who once decided to leave everything to go out and live my passion with the Road.
The one who created this blog and posted a first article announcing that the day had come to leave.
I cannot help myself but to see in those words and in the project of a second book, that I intend on finishing in the next few months, a metaphor for a circle that’s closing, for a page that’s turning.
But I also know that it’s not really the case, because the story never really ends.
Not as long as I’m alive to tell it.
❤
