FOUND GUILTY ON ALL ACCOUNTS!

In keeping with the theme of this blog I'm going to speak mostly about any revelations or insights I had during my travels across Spain.

So I'm going to start at the top - on a personal level, what was this trip about? First I have to say that I THOUGHT this trip was going to be an introspection into the topics I wrote about in this blog prior to leaving - emotional security and self esteem to name two. In reality it ended up being something very different. For me, this trip ended up being a retrospection on my life...all of it.

We'll start in Madrid where one evening my friend Katie and I were drinking many beers and talking about, well, everything. At one point she turned to me and said, "you have a tremendous amount of guilt. What for?" I said she was correct, I do have a lot of guilt but I don't know why. I know that I'm sorry for many things I've done in the past but it doesn't add up to the intense feeling of guilt I've always felt (the Catholic curse?...).

From there we'll head to Valencia where I had been thinking about this guilt thing and trying to understand not only where it came from but also how to end it - or at least find a better way of living with it. I was walking around Valencia when I came upon a young guy playing the guitar in the street. I recognized the song but it took me a moment to realize what it was as he was singing it in Spanish. The song was Wonderwall by Oasis which has a special meaning to me concerning a past girlfriend. It's also the relationship from my past with the most guilt attached to it. That really got me thinking. That night I laid down in bed thinking about the day's activities and I began having visions of experiences from my past. It was unbelievable - I was remembering things I never thought I'd ever remember. A few examples: My first memory ever - crawling around the house with my mother at the kitchen sink (I must have been 1 year old), another was sitting on the stairs of our house as a child crying because our cat tore half its ear off, and another of a girl in high school that I never said a word to but had a crush on (I don't think I've thought about her since I graduated high school). The rest of the trip I was reminiscing on my past and I didn't seem to be skipping anything. Some of the memories were happy and some were sad but I was thinking about things I didn't think my brain held on to anymore. It was a freeing experience.

I'll end this post with a quote from my travel journal I was keeping as I traveled around Spain: "This trip, for me, was a deep retrospection into my life. If for no other reason it has planted a more secure calm within me for one can't look back at their experiences with intense remembrance indicating patterns and paths without feeling an ease as to fates unaltering role in our existence."