He hit me, about 60 odd miles from the Colorado border. Without prior notice; The desert was over. I had left the canyon leaving the ghost ranch, chopped and covered with orange sand and cactus thorns while I had lost me again and again. He had walked when the sun set and the stars spread over me. I did not realize until the next day, since I went higher in Alpine, but that was all; The desert was over.
I cried in my store that night. Sobb. The enormity of what he had crossed but also this nostalgia. I loved the desert. I reflected on the walks and blisters. I cried because I had almost ended with my first state on the last of the Triple Crown paths and was sad. I have had this feeling a lot in New Mexico. The sadness that everything you experience will be the last time you experience something for the first time on any of these triple crown paths.
Above all I cry a lot on this path. I think almost every day I cried in the CDT. I cry because I am in the final stage of a triple crown, which even if I walk again, nothing would be the same. I cry because I am afraid of what life will be like without this goal. I also cry because I decided to get out of the antidepressants in which I have been to treat my fibromyalgia and my depression/ anxiety in recent years. The negative side effects had been dominating the good. Before getting on the road, I had reduced my dose and decided that only in the desert would be the perfect place to retire. My doctor in the United Kingdom showed little or no interest when I said I wanted to get out of them. They reduced my dose to the lowest possible and, from my own research, I discovered that I could stop taking them, or I could divide the capsule and count the accounts every day. That felt impossible in my hiking situation, so I decided it would stop me.
I have been taking a sni called duloxetine used to treat not only the major depressive disorder and anxiety, but also fibromyalgia and chronic pain. I fight with everyone, so in so many ways it was a miraculous pill, one that calmed my struggles and made life feel a bit numb and transparent. A part of me wondered if I could be in him for the rest of my life, but an objective that had established me this year in 2025 was to leave one of my daily medications that I take and that felt like the most obvious. I had this romantic notion that only in the desert would be the perfect place to get out of it, to feel everything my body needed to express with anyone around me to take the withdrawal.
I had been postponing it during the first weeks when I got solar poisoning, flu and then paralyzing blisters. Finally with my cured ampoules and things become easier; I threw the pills bag. I wasn’t coming back.
I had taken antidepressants in my 20 years when I lived in London in a totally different life, I had also become cold when I stopped, but I had been a much less remarkable withdrawal. No one (included doctor) had told me how horrible the antidepressants would be. What happened my body in the first week was like nothing I had imagined. I was dizzy, I had brain shoes, I was angry, irritable and extremely, then my skin felt more minced than ever. I spent night trying to cut the skin of my body. I changed outfits several times, surely it was a fabric that irritated me. After a while, the emotion began to flood, both good and bad. I began to see the texture and beauty in a way that had been numb. The sand and plants and the path again lived again in a way that I had not seen for a long time; But it wasn’t all good.
I fought to sleep, the insomnia took over again and woke up frustrated because they were often going at 9 in the morning with the sun already tall in the sky. The miles arrived long and slow when I found the route frustrating me; I found little or no rhythm.
Where I am at this time … Well, the withdrawal ended up ending my relationship again. I walked in Colorado (another story to come) and I realized that I needed to take some time out of the way to fix my fragile emotional state. If I was physically injured, I would take some time out of the way, I did it in fact; In the AT it takes a free week for an injury. I have thought about whether I want to continue with the CDT, it is a lonely and isolated path and I have spent days at the same time without seeing anyone else, which is not good for my mental health. I am so ready in my form of my need for a continuous walking path and I also need to take more zeros and have a different and confusing lack of routine due to my ADHD currently not medicated that I cannot follow the rhythm of a family of trails. I had never wanted a family of paths before, now I wonder if it would be good.
I am following the advice I wrote previously about how not to leave the path on a bad day. I took off the road and took an epic 6 -hour hitch thanks to the kindness of strangers to stay with a close friend where I have a safe place to cure and rest. I realized how exhausted everything was; Hiking, altitude, city tasks, dehydration, the fact that I have had little or no appetite the entire path and basically I have walked from city to city. I am emotionally exhausted to be sad and cry in beautiful places with a broken heart. My backpack is stupid and I want to get rid of the ice ax and the tips and who knows what else. Finally I have taken urgent attention for parasites/giardia tests that should have reviewed in New Mexico. I think I’ll be fine. I want to be fine. I want to want to walk again.
I am afraid to return to the road. I know that there are still very few hikers who go north. I have found a lot that they have left path or have heard of more that they have turned. I started discussing the flopping flip. I think more and more than usual, definitely something that I will need to get used to being out of medications again.
I know this is part of my trip, I know that this is a decisive moment in this walk. He had never considered quarrel of Trail so seriously.
The path does not fix you, and now I realize how important it is to be in a good mental state, especially in the continental division. Many of us are lost here, desperate for a normal way of feeling, we run away to the mountains or forests. What happens if that place that has always been the place where you go to heal and be well no longer works? I have a lot of confusion, so many great emotions enter and come out while slowly deciding how to navigate this. I want to want to return to the way and that is all I have at this time.
This website contains affiliate links, which means that the walk can receive a percentage of any product or service that you buy using the links in the items or ads. The buyer pays the same price that would do it differently, and his purchase helps to support the continuous objective of the walk to address his quality backpack advice and information. Thanks for your support!
For more information, visit the page about this site.
