Day 24 - I Miss Complaining

May 24th - Day 24 

Please STOP snoring

“Itʼs not fair”, I whine to Robin. “You give all your energy to all your co-workers and friends and when you get home, all you do is sleep! I have been looking forward to you coming home from work and going to Kingfisher for Sunday brunch for a month and I have so much I want to tell you and now all you are doing is sleeping, this drive to Courtney is beautiful, you're not looking at the view or talking to me, it just isnʼt fair, Why canʼt I get any of your energy? Shouldnʼt I be the one that matters most?” I said in one long run on sentence, with hardly a breath between complaints.

Robin looked at me, said Sorry and went back to sleep.  I turned on the radio and listened to the background music as the beautiful stunning scenery past by. He couldnʼt even enjoy the beauty of  British Columbia, let alone me. I know he is tired as he has worked so hard and just wants to come home and rest. But it does bother me that everyone else seems to see the fun, laughing, joking Robin and I am stuck with the sleeping one. It is bad enough that at the end of dinner we put on a movie and within minutes he is snoring so loudly I canʼt even hear the movie.

The other day I was acting out Robin's and my life together, to my audience of girlfriends at work.

We went to the video store and Robin picked out a movie that he wanted to watch, of course I compromised as he wouldnʼt watch the documentary that I had picked out. I put on the movie, (ridiculous I canʼt remember the name of it). Well we put on the movie and then Robin fell asleep within 20 minutes. He started to snore so I gently said, “Robin, wake up, your falling asleep, you said you wanted to watch this movie.”

“Yup, yup” He groggily says as he opens his eyes for a bit to keep watching.

Within seconds he is sleeping again. “Robin, your snoring, if youʼre going to sleep, go to bed” I say in a nice gentle tone, but he continues to snore.

He starts to snore even louder, now it is getting hard to hear the movie, so I up the tone of my request for going to bed. “Robin itʼs time to go to bed” I say with a gentle shake of his shoulders.

“Yup”, he growls and doesnʼt move an inch.

Now the snoring is getting to a decimal that resonates with a jack hammer. “ROBIN go to bed.” He doesnʼt even hear me over the snorts. Finally I am through, “ROBIN YOUR SNORING GO TO BED!!!”  I yell at the top of my lungs!

F&#%K!!! He yells at me. “YOU DONʼT HAVE TO YELL AT ME”

“Well then go to bed!”

“Fine!” He grabs his blanket and heads to his bedroom. I finish watching the movie with the sound of his constant snoring bellowing from his bedroom. The nice thing about his snoring is I know he is alive, when he stops snoring, I actually walk in to make sure he is still breathing.

My girlfriends are all laughing, they relate to what being married is like and how ridiculous and funny living together can be. I laugh now, but at the time I was so frustrated with this ridiculous routine we had every single evening.

So the next night, Robin says. “I fell asleep so I didnʼt get to watch the movie, we can watch that one again". Yah, he didnʼt watch the movie but I did and Iʼll watch the action, fighting, blowing up things movie again. But the whole scenario happens again .... exactly the same as last night. Then the third night we watch the same movie again! And everything happens almost identical as last night. He falls asleep, I get mad, he gets mad, he goes to bed, I watch the movie. Now I am realizing how mindless I am acting. We are repeating the same scenario again and again for no reason at all. We are living our lives on repeat. Robin has no idea of what is going on as he sleeps. I am the one who is awake, but am I really? See why it is weird that I donʼt even remember the name of the movie? I watched the same movie 3 nights in a row and the movie had that little impact on my life.

Night 3 I say, “that is it! I am not watching this movie again.” Now it is just plain funny and we laughed together. We created a story of the happenings of our lives and what it is to be us. Stories fuel us but it is hard to get out of the cycle of being the character in our own play. Finally I made it a rule, I will only watch a movie once and if Robin misses out on it, he misses out.

Over the years, I came to enjoy the silence from Robin. Even though silence was usually accompanied by mind boggling snoring. I still got jealous of the energy he gave his co-workers but not many people in Robinʼs life saw the quiet side of him. I now feel special sharing the silence. He rejuvenates himself for the world, when he was home with me, it feels good that I could recharge his batteries and I am not one of the people or things that depletes his energy. Home is the place you are supposed to come to make sense of the world and a place where you regroup and re-energize so you can face the world full force. I guess this is what Robin was doing.

Astroga to Foncebadon - 28.2 km

Yesterdays long siesta and then my early bedtime didnʼt help me sleep last night. My guess is that I woke up around 2:00am. I lay awake waiting for people to rise but no one was moving. I couldnʼt do it any longer so I packed up my stuff and headed downstairs. 

It is 4:00am in the morning,  Patrick is here and he likes to get up early so I hope he arises soon. I listened to my friends advice and donʼt venture out alone, I write some postcards and wait. Then as I suspected Patrick gets up and starts to get ready to walk, next Christian woke. He saw me in the entry and was happy I was waiting and not walking alone. I told him I was walking with Patrick. Christian went to the bathroom to start his morning routine and said to Patrick, “So your walking with Charlene” Patrick said, ʻNo”. Christian came out and said Patrick isnʼt walking with me. I said, “He doesnʼt know it yet”. Christian and I make sure we can leave the building and then Patrick and I head out. Christianʼs morning routine takes longer as he eats his hot breakfast. He walks faster then us so we knew he will catch up.

Patrick is lovely to walk with as he doesnʼt talk in the morning, actually he hardly talks at all. He is one of those people that only says what is really important. We walked in silence most of the morning, he feels like an old friend that I am so comfortable with that I donʼt feel the need to fill the space with endless chatter.  This is the first time I have walked with someone in the solitude of the darkness.

It is an amazing morning as there is no moon in the sky and the milky way is prominent in the night sky. It feels so good to walk in the darkness with the stars and the peacefulness of my new friend. As the sun comes up the stars began to fade. It is weird to think that all those stars are still in the sky during the day, we just canʼt see them. Usually it is the light that illuminates things but we need the darkness to see the stars.

There is a really big hill the last part of the way today. My muscles enjoy the climb as it has been awhile. Patrick being only 21 is able to get up the hill much faster than me but he waits and we make it to our destination at 10:45. We feel accomplished finishing 28 km so early in the day. The first albergue as we enter Foncebadon is full, the next one was still closed and the parish doesn't open till 2:00pm and it is only 11:00am, so a long wait. There are buildings in the town that were crumbling and we worry that one of these is going to be our accommodations for the evening. We stumbled upon a small, comfortable albergue with an open courtyard. Patrick ran into Christian as he arrived in town, on his own search to find accommodation.  He tells Christian where we found a place and Christian contacted everyone via text and made a reservation for them to join us, by the end of the day the albergue was filled with all our familiar companions.

Christian didn’t catch up to us walking today as he made 2 wrong turns in one day. I thought Petra wasnʼt going to attempt the last hill, as she was getting blisters. By the time she made it up the hill all the beds in town were taken, one albergue put some mattresses on the floor in their yoga studio. Petra had to go past the goats, then the chicken coup to get to her bed. It was so funny. I sat and talked with Petra with the view of the valley in the distance, laughing as she always makes me laugh.

Petra came to our albergue for dinner and we all had a fun time together. Rumi, a young German woman, was staying here as well. I had seen her many times as she was one of the comforting, familiar faces on my journey but the times we passed on the trail were always in the middle of a difficult hill and neither of us were into, introductions at the time.

Tomorrow is the place where you put the rock on the pile of other rocks la Cruz de Ferro. I am excited as this is the only thing I prepared before on my journey, Dominique and Xavier picked a rock for me to put on the pile. Xavier chose the tiniest little rock so when I was in Langley I had my girlfriend Kim's daughters, Rylee and Sophie find a more substantial rock to place under the cross.  Within these two rocks are my past and my present life;  I will place these both at the cross in hopes to free my future. 

Missing arguing and complaining

Going through a hard time and being in such a dark period in my life I was able to see the friends and family that shone so brightly during this hardship. I am so fortunate to have so many shining stars in my life. It is also good to see the individuals that couldnʼt shine during this dark time in my life and I was able to let them go their own way. Just because they couldnʼt be stars in my life and be what I needed them to be, doesnʼt mean they canʼt be stars in someone elseʼs life. I feel like, I am freeing them to find people where they can shine and be stars in their own universe because they arenʼt in mine.

Robin was a star in my life.  My world changed so much when his light didn't shine on my life anymore but it doesn't mean it always shone bright.  Living with someone and being with them for many years you get to see all their good and bad sides.  I was really comfortable with Robin and he saw and felt my  rawness.  Not having a partner makes me miss that not so nice Charlene.  When I go out in public I am nice and sweet and supportive but when I am home that annoying and irritating side comes out, I have a sarcastic and cutting sense of humour that not many people see.

I can be that star that doesn't shine bright in some peoples lives, especially Robin's.  I feel sorry that the person I loved so much, got the worst of me, but then I got the worst of Robin as well.  I feel unbalanced now with Robin gone as I miss having someone to complain to and argue with.  As much as I got to see Robin’s bad side, Robin got to see my bad side.  I miss being a bag and complaining and getting angry at absolutely nothing.  I miss having someone to cry to when I've had a bad day and my life isn’t going the way I want it to.  I miss my bad side.  

I have to focus on taking care of myself so I can manage my alter ego.  I need to get as much sleep as possible, eat well and get exercise.  When I don't my daughter, mother and a couple of my close friends get the repercussions of me having no place to spill my grumpy, negative and overwhelmed emotions.  I feel sorry that Robin got most of these emotions, I wish now I had learnt to take better care of myself then so even more of our times together were full of laughter.