As Rachel Joyce eloquently states in her book The Unlikely Pilgrimage, it makes sense that if we keep putting one foot in front of the other we will eventually reach our destination. But sometimes for a person like me who suffers from depression, the hardest part of our journey is to keep going, to put one foot in front of the other. To face the mundane.
“People were buying milk, or filling their cars with petrol, or even posting letters. And what no one else knew was the appalling weight of the thing they were carrying inside. The superhuman effort it took sometimes to be normal, and a part of things that appeared both easy and everyday. The loneliness of that.”
Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
It’s a lonely life pretending to feel normal, to feel a part of the people and activity going on around you when you have always felt separate. When I meet new people I wonder if they feel like I do. Closed in inside their bodies, watching me from within, as I watch them. A body is designed for human touch, but a faulty design has meant I am hidden inside a body that has become desensitized. When this body is meant to cry, it wants to laugh out loud. When it is expected to laugh, it pretends, embarrassed that it is sad. A human body at fault.
“The least planned part of the journey, however, was the journey itself.”
Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
But the journey can be exciting, the best part is the unexpected twists and turns that happen in our lives. You never know what is going to happen next, especially if your are open to the wealth of new experiences that make this world so beautiful and being human, even a broken one, so worthwhile.
