Lost — Coffee & more

Try to recall last time you were lost. That time you were scared that you were lost. That time without the Google maps or that time when you couldn’t really use Google maps because you were in China.

This Saturday gone past, I got lost. Lost after a long time. I have taken that occasional wrong turn and gotten myself in corners I had no business in but never have had that sinking feeling of I-don’t-know-how-to-get-myself-out-of-this-situation so strongly before.

How does that come about? By bad planning and great arbitrary decision making on my part. Of course, I am being my overdramatic self here but bear with me.

I had not explored any of Almeria but had marked on my maps this giant fairground area at the outskirts of town. Now, when I say outskirts its really on 3KM away from centre of town which is where I live. I decided it’s only a 40 min walk: I can do that shit.

Fact: It is lunch time and I am hungry.
My brain: Tapas are everywhere so obviously I’ll find food at the end of this trek.

We all know that feeling when we enter shady areas of town.

It smells a little of both pee and weed. There’s no one around but large warehouses or storage units. Once in a while, slightly unkempt looking fellows standing outside looking at you hauntingly. Some broken down cars parked in fields that may have been someone’s property. An occasional car passes you every few minutes and the car driver surely shouts something in Spanish that you don’t understand. Of course, we all have been through that. I tell myself: don’t worry, it is safe in Almeria. Nothing ever happens here. In many other places, I wouldn’t be alive to repeat this story (a tad dramatic maybe?!).

I was at 30% battery when I walked out of my room. Keen though I was to photograph everything, I snapped picture after picture until I was still 20 mins away and with 20% battery.

Low power mode on and I strut on. I check my phone on and off, walk a little faster once in a while whenever I feel a bit threatened but best not to stop. This fairground, this great perhaps is waiting for me at the end of this trek. I check and see if anything is happening there this Saturday. Turns out, no. I reassure myself, there will be something there. The journey is more important than the destination after all. This is adventure.

I get there, and am hungrier than before. Also, thirsty and desperately need to pee but the fairground is closed. Locked. Uh oh. They don’t open it unless there is an event. Of course that is logical. I got some nice pictures, I tell myself. All good.

Fact: I have 9% battery and going back 3KM is option 1 and going to a beach 2.4KM away is option 2. I am in the middle of nowhere.
My brain: Hmm, I’ve made it this far without achieving anything. Should at least try the new place. Onwards!

Wait, a pigeon: let me take a portrait of it. Holy shit, only 6% battery.

Now, I am walking through these narrowest of deserted paths where I can hear crickets and bugs and birds. Every sound makes me jump even the sound of my own shoes. My phone has 3% battery. I am sweating profusely, my heavy jacket is stuffed into my small tote bag. My phone is on airplane mode but I cannot glance at it too often because must-save-battery. I try to memorise the map to the beach. Was it the first left turn or the second? I am walking on roads that have no pavements. Cars go past me too close for comfort.

Panic isn’t really the word for what I felt. Thoughts such as these ran past me:

I am not making it to my 29th birthday. So close, but I ain’t making it.
Do I know the word for help in Spanish? No.
Do I know the address of where I am living? Maybe, but what if I am mugged.
Would it be worse to die or be subjected to a different crime?

If I were more religious, I’d have been praying to a deity of boundless powers because I felt like I had fucked up big. Lucky for me, my battery did not give up on me. It was hanging on at 1% and I turned off location services. Was just going to use it like a paper map. I had taken a wrong turn but I knew I was close.

When I got there, I felt the most incredible joyous relief, an emotion covered in sweat, exhaustion, frustration and hunger but I was alive. Oh, thank the heavens.

What did I do next? It doesn’t really matter whether I had that tapas at the beach or a beer by the water.

What mattered then and now is how I felt… I was angry and I still can’t explain why. It had been all for nothing. My great perhaps: it was all arbitrary. I had little commitment left for anything else during the rest of the weekend.

Here’s the thing though, I could not really fathom my emotions then any more than I can now. I continue to feel a sense of failure. If at the end of that trek, I’d had seen something worthwhile: would that be good enough? Often a times, I tell myself to not focus on the ending, to enjoy the process. But, what if both are disappointing: the journey and the destination? What then?

“A journey will have pain and failure. It is not only the steps forward that we must accept. It is the stumbles. The trials. The knowledge that we will fail. That we will hurt those around us. But if we stop, if we accept the person we are when we fall, the journey ends. That failure becomes our destination. To love the journey is to accept no such end.”
- Oathbringer, Brandon Sanderson