Reasons why my mom says I can't go on the pilgrimage:

1. I've already had enough fun in my life.
2. This is just running away from my problems.
3. I need to start acting like normal people do and handle hardship the way normal people manage it.
4. She hasn't been there yet.
5. Physically I can't do it.
6. Why can't I just walk around the neighborhood?
7. Why don't I just start going to church again?
8. I can't just spend all of my work money on something like this.
9. To her it sounds like I'm going to be "mourning" the whole time, which isn't healthy.

...awesome. FML

The Spanish surprise.

I leave in nine days and I have so much to do. My parents are not thrilled about the fact that I've been taking the break up so hard; they don't think I should let it affect my life to the extent that it has. They're probably right about that, too. My mom had a little chat with me over how I've been handling this; like most of our little chats, she tried to overdose me on constructive criticism. I understand she means well and usually I'm a big fan of constructive criticism (as long as the "constructive" is attached, of course), but she doesn't exactly have an abundance of tact in these kinds of situations. She still doesn't quite understand why I don't immediately feel better when she tells me that practically everyone else can suck it up and kick ass right away in hard situations, including herself and my dad. In addition, I somehow ended up agreeing to move home for awhile. How is this going to help me? It's not. I guess I just gave up on trying to defend myself. Maybe one of the reasons I've decided to do the Camino is to convince myself that I haven't been rendered completely pathetic by this situation. If I do this, then I must have a shred of independence left in me even though it has been ridiculously hard to find lately.

Oh, and the beauty of this situation is that I haven't told my parents about Spain yet. Something tells me that they're not going to be too tickled or willing to throw me a farewell party, so I'm holding off until my plans are more solid. Stay tuned for what I expect will be the equivalent of a nuclear bomb going off in my house. I hear nuclear fallout is totally underrated.