Journal game

Forgive me if this entry is confusing. It has a point, I promise :)


Aside from our blogs, Ashleigh and I both have been writing journals. The blogs are for family and friends and to share our experiences with the public but our journals are where all the good stuff is and are very very personal. If you ask either of us, these journals will never be seen by anyone other than ourselves. They hold all the secrets, information, and deepest thoughts. I think we would both agree that only SOME excerpts are ok to share from our journals. We both learned that when traveling, your journal is your best friend and ooooh boy, if my journal could talk, I would be in big trouble.

So back about a month ago, February 1st to be exact, Ashleigh and I were leaving Barcelona and headed for Rome. Although we were stoked about going to Italy, the land of food, we were both completely heartbroken about leaving Barcelona; we fell in love with the atmosphere, the people, and didn't want to leave. The morning of February 1st, ash and I sat in a coffee shop in Barcelona and reminisced about our trip so far, laughed and even shed a few tears. It was a moment of realization for the both of us: Where we started, what had happen, and how we were forever changed. Remembering everything from our lunch back in October when we initially imagined a European adventure to then, February 1st, having experienced the most incredible things and situations, ALL of which (positive and negative) will be fondly remembered.

Sitting in the coffee shop, February 1st, feeling a little blue, I told Ashleigh to open her journal to a random page and read line #6, no matter what it said. Hesitant (probaly from all the dirty secrets;) ), she did and oddly enough, it was EXACTLY what she needed to hear. It was like she was speaking to herself from the past. She picked a random page for me and I read it out loud as well. Again, the line that I had written myself was exactly what I needed to hear in that moment. Feeling so incredibly connected with our surroundings and feeling like we were exactly where we were suppose to be at that moment, we took time to write in our journals at the coffee shop. Some of my writing:

"Listen and feel. Trust in what's around you. It's suppose to happen. A quote from Rilke 'sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from foreign matter; so one must help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and break out with it, for that is its progress'. Be your own doctor and heal yourself."

Then, feeling inspired, Ashleigh and I traded journals and wrote each other a note on a random page, promising not to read it until we were actually using/writing on that page. We made this promise because we knew that when we eventually got to that random page, reading each others note would be exactly what we needed to hear in that moment.

So guess what I stumbled upon today? And guess what it was that felt so good to read? :) ash wrote a Rilke quote, one of my favorites:

"And your doubt may become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing, it must become critical. Ask it... Why something is ugly, demand proofs from it, test it, and you will find it perplexed and embarrassed perhaps, or perhaps rebellious. But don't give in... And the day will arrive when from a destroyer it will become one of your best workers- perhaps the cleverest of all that are building at your life."

Beautiful. Simply beautiful. And I have no other words except thank you Ashleigh. She knew that writing that on this page of my journal in Barcelona on February 1st would find me well early on March 3rd in San Marino, just after asking my parents when things are suppose to get easier. Thank you Ashleigh. And because of stumbling upon this, it made me go back to the page in my journal on February 1st and re read everything from that day. I told myself then to trust in my surroundings and here I am now, telling myself the same thing.

Full circle moment