Roncesvalles to die, A Coruña to live

There was a relationship that opened something dark in me. Something I didn't know was there. I started hiding the kitchen knives. I couldn't sleep. I slept with the Bible in one hand and incense burning. It wasn't religion. It was survival.

The church in Malaysia

I was in Malaysia when I walked into a church. I don't know why I went in. I felt a golden energy touch me and everything opened. There is no other way to describe it. It was physical, it was emotional, it was something that had no name. And in that moment I received the instruction — clear, without doubt — that I had to walk the Camino de Santiago.

Give everything away and begin

I gave the laptop to Xavier. I gave away my clothes. I gave away the money I had left. I kept the bare minimum. And there I started. Roncesvalles. The first step. And every step after that was a step further from what I had been and a step closer to something I still didn't know what it was.

Santiago: the closure

When I arrived in Santiago, I fell to my knees. And suddenly it was as if something closed. Something that had been open shut all at once, and then I stopped being a pilgrim. I didn't need to continue to A Coruña. I didn't need anything more. What had to happen had happened.

Roncesvalles was to die and A Coruña was to live. But the arrival point was Santiago. Something ended there. Something else began.

Starting over, again

I went back to my parents' house. They always kept the door open for me, all twenty times I went home to start my life over. No judgment. No conditions. The door open.

My first days in Barcelona looking for clients: I printed flyers, went door to door. A butcher took the flyer, looked at it, and threw it back in my face. That's how I started.

But I was no longer the same person who had left Roncesvalles. What died on the Camino needed to die. And what remained was enough to build everything that came after.