Page 53 of Every Step She Takes

TWENTY-SEVEN PADRóN, SPAIN

Mal

“Yesterday, we talked about what we’ll take from our experience on the Camino,” Inez says to the seven other people crammed around a single table with her in Carracedo. “Today, on the penultimate day of our journey, I want you to think about what you’re going to leave behind.”

The table goes quiet as seven people all take a drink from their coffees at the same time to avoid answering the question.

“What we want to leave behind…?” Rebecca echoes in confusion.

“I left behind two sweatshirts in Esposende,” Ro says. “Is that what you mean?”

“Less literal.” Inez smiles as sweetly as ever at them. “I want us to think about things that are no longer serving us. Habits or patterns or self-sabotaging cycles.”

I feel Inez’s eyes on me, but my eyes are on the crumbling monastery across the way.

Ro clears their throat beside me. “I can go first,” they grumble, surprising everyone.

“Go ahead!” Inez encourages excitedly.

“I’ve realized that… that I’ve been self-isolating,” they grumble. “Don’t get me wrong—I love my corgis—”

“We know ,” Ari interrupts, and gentle laughter moves around the table. I couldn’t tell you the names of any of Rebecca’s human children, but we all know Copernicus, Newton, Daisy, and old, baby-food-eating Max.

Ro laughs at themself too. “But I think I’ve maybe, um… used my dogs as an excuse to, you know… not connect with people.”

Their hands tremble around their café con leche, and Rebecca reaches over to place a comforting hand on their shoulder. “I’ve faced rejection all my life. For being brown, and queer, and Muslim, and fat, and trans… Most of my family doesn’t talk to me anymore because of that last bit.”

And then Ro starts crying. Ro , who started this journey hating all this touchy-feely shit. Rebecca scoots her chair closer so she can put her entire arm around them. Naturally, she’s also crying. And Inez has been crying since Ro offered to share first.

Ro keeps talking through their tears. “I-I think I got so used to being rejected that I started rejecting the whole world first. I shut myself away with my dogs, and I acted like I didn’t need anyone else. But… but I do. I need community. I… I needed all of you.”

And fuck . Now I’m crying. I adjust my hat to try to hide my tears under the brim, and when that doesn’t work, I simply tell myself to stop.

I will the tears to reverse their path and suck themselves back into my tear ducts before anyone can see them.

But when I glance around the table and see that Vera is crying too, my resolve weakens a little.

Then Ari reaches for a napkin to honk her nose. Cool, Portland-Hipster Ari.

And then Sadie starts crying, and she makes no attempt to pretend like she’s not.

“I honestly came on this tour because I wanted to escape myself,” Ro continues as the entire table weeps. “I-I never thought… I never thought it would change my life like this. Every one of you has had a huge impact on me.”

Stefano is actively blowing his nose into his sweat band while still positioned in Warrior Two.

“Even if we didn’t talk much, you helped me more than you could know,” Ro says. “So, thank you, Inez, for this tour. And thank you, Rebecca, for never shutting the hell up.”

Rebecca laughs through her tears. “Anytime, dear.”

Inez dabs her eyes with a napkin. “Thank you so much for sharing, Ro.”

“Fuck you for sharing,” Ari sobs. “What is this? Degrassi High?”

Stefano babbles in Italian, reverses his Warrior, and never translates his comments. I catch the words love, loss , and my beautiful friends .

I fix my gaze on the crumbling monastery again. I’m still trying to keep it all in.

“Mal.” I hear Inez say my name, but I don’t turn toward her. “Do you have anything you want to share?”

She’s once again opening a door for me, giving me the chance to finally be honest and vulnerable like everyone else.

“Do you have anything you want to leave behind?” she prods.

I wish I could leave behind my grief, all the complicated memories of my father, all the things we never said to each other.

I want to leave behind that childhood trauma, move past it.

I want to leave my father’s rejection behind in a neat pile on my hotel bed in Padrón with a note that says “donate.”

I would leave behind my fear of the silence, my fear of vulnerability, and my need to repress, my need to distract myself.

I would stop hopscotching across the world and between women. I would fall in love with Tuesdays and February and the middle of things. I would tell Sadie that none of it was practice, and I would learn to be comfortable in the stillness.

I wish I could leave behind my loneliness, but I don’t know how.

“I want to leave behind these fucking blisters,” I finally say, and I watch the disappointment paint itself across Inez’s face.

In the midmorning sun, we walk along the Rio Vargas and through lush forests, but none of the beauty does anything to dull my misery.

A little before noon, we stop again, at Cafetería Bocateria, a café and market that’s swarming with pilgrims. There’s a tour of at least fifty Spanish people in matching red polka-dot neckerchiefs, another tour in yellow neon T-shirts, and while everyone else braves the crowds for drinks or snacks, I find myself a random cinder block out of the way and sit down.

Sadie makes it in and out of the market quickly, and when she comes to sit on a neighboring cinder block, she’s holding a Bueno bar.

She opens the package and passes me half.

The simple gesture of this Bueno bar nearly rips me wide open.

The bar tastes like lonely summers and kissing Sadie in my childhood bedroom.

Ending things with her last night was definitely the wrong thing.

I want to tell Sadie that I started falling for her when we shared that pair of headphones on the flight here; I want to tell her that when I kissed her on that beach, it wasn’t for science; I want to tell her that the sex was never for practice.

That I spent two weeks trying so hard not to fall in love with her, and fell in love with her all the same.

“I talked to Inez,” Sadie says, licking melted chocolate off her fingers. “And she said we can switch roommates for tonight. If it’s okay with you, I’m going to room with Ari and Vera, and Stefano is going to stay with you.”

“What? Why?”

“I thought it would make things easier,” she says with her eyes on my Hokas.

And I want to tell her that I don’t want easier . That I want her .

But that’s what I always do, and I’m trying to do better.

“That sounds good,” I say, even though it sounds completely intolerable.

When we get to Padrón, Sadie follows Ari and Vera up to the third floor, and Inez hands the final key to Stefano and me.

As soon as the door to our room closes, Stefano pulls out two bottles of cheap Vinho Verde.

“I got wines. We will drink wine, and you will tell me how you messed this all up, okay?”

C’est La Vi with Me

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Things I’ll Leave Behind on the Camino de Santiago

Sadie Wells

May 25, 2025 86 comments

My pinky toenail.

18 inches of hair.

A pile of unnecessary items, neatly stacked on a bed in Vila do Conde—things I needed to stop lugging around.

Shame. All of it. Every last drop. I really need to stop lugging that around.

My fear of vulnerability.

My need to try to match someone else’s pace or follow someone else’s path.

My obsession with time, and with being too late .

My negative self-talk.

My need to have all the answers.

My heart. Is that a clichéd thing to say? Oh well. I’m a cliché.