“What
you've done becomes the judge of what you're going to do - especially in other
people's minds. When you're traveling, you are what you are right there and
then. People don't have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the
road.”
William Least Heat-Moon (1931-), American
traveler and writer.
Greece, March 18,
2015.
Three years ago I was
not a human being. Fear paralyzed me and
anxiety gnawed at me. In the beginning it was the logical nerves of going to an
unknown place, but the beast was fed by my insecurity, I grew and became a
monster that devoured my soul. Like a robot, I was only
able to go to familiar places. The last one that I got
to know was the National Library of Spain, where the low lighting and lack of
people made me feel comfortable. But
over time it became unbearable that every day I was assigned a different table,
and within weeks I was unable to get up from my chair to request new books, so
I stopped going, even though I had not finished my work there. Then I took refuge at home, I could not even
feel at home there. By that-+ time Gabi and
I were looking for an opportunity to build a new life away from Las Rozas where
we had shared flat with a colleague of his for a while. Until
something new came up, we had moved in to his mother's house on the outskirts
of a residential area. Just to go to buy bread
one had to walk for fifteen minutes, there was no contact between neighbors and
just to get to my library an hour and a half of public transport was necessary. Gradually
I stopped going to Madrid, I could not bear the stares of strangers when I got
on the bus. I didn´t even try to find an empty seat, I just looked for a corner
where I couldn´t bother anyone and waited for everyone to get off the bus when
it arrived at Moncloa so no one would see me get off. But
the walk to the bus stop was increasingly unbearable: my legs weighed me down,
they shook and my joints ached. A knot choked my throat when I searched my
pockets for the bus pass because I was making both the people waiting to board
and the driver wait. When the bus pass finished, I didn´t catch the bus for
fear of paying cash and the coins falling out of my hands. So,
it stopped making sense to leave home and expose myself to a world of
inquisitive looks, where I was just a nuisance in the routine of others.
