Pilgrimage: Introduction
“There is an unrest in my gut that feels like hunger… I have learned to walk at these moments. I have learned to walk until the heat goes out of it.”
Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
It was an early autumn morning, and a chill wind blew along the river Avon. Dead leaves in shades of rust spun from bare branches and spiralled into the rushing waters below. The river was swollen and high from heavy rain, running muddy and brown, thick with sediment and debris. Larger logs, toppled by the storm, drifted in the current. The air had a scent of smoke from a bonfire at a local urban farm, a pyre for what was no longer needed.
I stood on the footbridge over the river and looked down into the depths, thinking of how Virginia Woolf had filled her pockets with stones and walked into a river just like this.
How easy it would be to do the same.
It was September 2020, and I was not okay.
But then, who was at that time?
The World Health Organisation had announced the COVID-19 pandemic on my forty-fifth birthday in March 2020 and the world was mostly locked down, confined, sheltering in place.
I was lucky to have a home and an income and a loving husband, Jonathan. All I had to do was obey the rules and stay safe while the virus ran its course. I had no right to feel this way.
In those early months, countries closed their borders, and the media was filled with terrifying stories of rising deaths and debilitating sickness. There was madness in the air, fuelled by the incessant news cycle and social media contagion.
That summer, England had some glorious weather, and many people talked about being grateful for the pause the pandemic provided, for more time with their families, for the change to working from home. It was a vain attempt to reframe a situation that was unsustainable for such social creatures.
Yet sustain it, we did.
Everything was shut. Schools, restaurants, offices, cafes and shops. There was even yellow hazard tape over the playground in the park. It was quiet, except in the supermarkets, where there was a barely controlled sense of panic. There were stickers and markers on the floor, so people stayed two metres apart, and constant reminders to wear a mask and use sanitiser. People weaved around each other on paths, avoiding even the most basic human contact.
I was angry at myself for taking the freedoms of life for granted, for assuming that everything would stay the same, for working on things that didn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.
But as the months passed, and we walked the same paths near our home over and over, I wore a groove in my life. It grew deeper every day and became harder and harder to climb out of.
Life was comfortable and safe if we just stayed at home. So many people were worse off than me. I didn’t have any right to be angry or depressed — and yet, I couldn’t seem to escape the misery.
In the time before, I would never stay still for this long. I would always have another trip planned, another place to visit, another itinerary to be excited about. The pandemic destroyed the joy of travel, although of course, that is the least of what it has stolen.
As the months of restrictions continued, my wanderlust shifted into fernweh, a German word meaning ‘a longing for far-off places.’ The time of enforced stillness intensified it so much that, at times, it spilled over into frustration and anger — at the world, at the virus, at myself — for not being able to quiet the need to get away.
Much of the time, I maintained an outwardly positive attitude, but inside, I was a ball of rage. Jonathan said I seemed sad all the time.
I’d been struggling with insomnia for almost a year by then, waking just after two a.m. every morning and often not sleeping again. I began doom-scrolling on my phone, incessantly following the latest news and opinions on Twitter as the death toll grew. I knew it wasn’t helping, but it became a compulsion, a connection to the millions of people round the world going through the same thing.
We were collectively experiencing the stages of grief around the pandemic: denial, anger, bargaining, depression — and perhaps, one day, acceptance. I was a caged bird bashing my wings against the bars, desperate to get out and back to freedom. I had to do something before I damaged myself beyond repair.
I could not control the pandemic, but I could walk out the door with my backpack. I could take one step at a time all the way to Canterbury Cathedral. Perhaps I could walk my rage and grief into submission and find a new path for myself in mid-life.
Resources:
• WHO announces the pandemic, March 2020 — www.who.int/director-general/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---11-march-2020
• That discomfort you’re feeling is grief by Scott Berinato, Harvard Business Review, March 2020 — hbr.org/2020/03/that-discomfort-youre-feeling-is-grief
• On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss — Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler
• Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief — David Kessler
• Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times — Katherine May
