02/10/2025 - I used to ask myself if I had somehow led them on.

There’s something that wants to come out of me today, and I’ve been scared of letting it out. I almost didn’t want to write at all. I’ve been agitated the whole day, carrying anger, frustration, sorrow, and other emotions I couldn’t even name. My throat has been itching, my chest restless, and my body heavy. It feels like there’s something stuck inside of me that wants to be released, something that may be triggering, for me to write and for anyone to read.

The day started with little sleep after a night in the dormitory, trapped in an endless concert of snores. Even with earplugs, I couldn’t escape the sound. I woke up depleted, empty, not wanting to walk, not wanting to talk. My period is due in a week, and I know this day of my cycle always brings a heavy drop. I left before sunrise, dragging myself into the dark streets, stopped at a bar for a pain au chocolat and a latte, called my dad briefly, and then started my 20 kilometers toward Rabanal del Camino.

Still, I couldn’t shake the unease. It was sitting in my chest, tight in my throat, a nausea that had nothing to do with food. A wave of emotions that wanted to break through. At one point Calypso called, and as soon as I started speaking, I felt words pouring out of me without knowing where they’d land.

I told her I had reread the article I posted on my blog yesterday, and how it triggered me, not because I regretted it, but because of how it might be received. That fear of being judged immoral, of being placed outside of what’s “acceptable.” Because my writing touches subjects that most people avoid. Childhood, sexuality, sexuality in childhood, drugs, trauma, death, love, relationships, the rawest parts of being alive. I write about people I meet, my friends, my lovers, not to expose them but to reveal the truth I carry inside about them, the things I couldn’t always express face-to-face. I let it all out without filters, and that honesty terrifies me.

I’m scared of being seen for everything that I am, disgusting, shameful, weird, unworthy. Of being pushed to the side, pointed at, ostracized. Because sometimes I live through my animal self, my primitive desires, not reason. Because I have a relationship with myself that is visceral, sexual, and unapologetically human. And writing about it is cathartic, but also the most vulnerable thing I could ever do. No one is forcing me to. And yet, there’s this invisible pull that I can’t resist. A force stronger than me. As I wrote this, I looked at the time: 17:17.

Morality is a construct. Shaped by religion, reshaped by time. Even if religion has lost its power in society, its conditioning still lingers in the air we breathe. And I question it, because my reasoning tends to push toward freedom, to allow more space for the truth of being. This is what transmutation feels like: extracting truth from chaos, shaping something meaningful from the mess inside.

After letting that realization breathe, I felt lighter. Reminded that my task is not to perform or censor myself, but simply to remain who I am, regardless of who’s watching. Still, I can’t ignore the discomfort of knowing my dad, my sister, my aunt, my cousins, even my boss, all of them are reading what I write, parts of me they’ve never seen before. It makes me squirm. But I don’t want to hide.

Even after this clarity, I remained agitated, sad. My mind wandered back to an old love I never got to live fully. I was furious with myself for letting it take space in my head again. I kept asking why it never happened, why it stopped before it could begin. Was I too much, too intense, too demanding? Or was it easier to love someone simpler, softer, less confronting? My ego burned with jealousy and grief. Because with him I had felt something undeniable, something in my bones. And yet, that story was never meant to unfold.

It struck me that this is exactly what my mother must have felt when my father left, and then dated a bunch of younger, prettier women after. Looking at old photo albums recently, I saw the trail of them after their separation, and I wondered, how could anyone choose that over my mother’s brilliance, her audacity, and strength and vulnerability? That same question rose inside me: how could someone choose “easier” over me?

It awakened a fire, a rage at the cowardice of men who step away from women of my kind. The kind who don’t just soothe, but challenge. Who don’t bend to comfort their ego, but reflect back their shadows, their depth, their shame, their lust, their anger, their fear. I’m not here to reform men, but to stand as a mirror. In the worst, but the best too. And still, it seems easier for them to walk toward docility. The story of Eve and Lilith repeating itself.

Lilith, sovereign, sexual, wild, cast out and demonized so Eve could be set as the “example” of woman: docile, gentle, obedient. I feel both in me, Eve and Lilith. And men haven’t been taught how to meet that wholeness. So I pay the price of rejection, of solitude. Even though I carry heaven on my tongue (and between my thighs).

With each step forward, my anger softened. I remembered that men too carry a lineage of repression, shame, silence. They have their reasons, their wounds. It doesn’t excuse, but it explains. And the way forward isn’t in blaming, but in recognition. Women open portals, men carry visions into form. Both are necessary.

By the time I reached Rabanal del Camino, the village revealed itself like a small treasure. Time seemed to have stopped there. Stone houses, green hills, air that smelled fresh and old at the same time. I had two hours before the albergue opened, so I found a little restaurant and sat with another pilgrim, whom was already there, and I’d met a few times already before. We shared a beautiful bond, and I felt comfortable with him because he acted wise, powerful, and mature.

We talked, and I told him about my struggle with the masculine, and how I was still grateful for men who carried their truth as a strength. He seemed touched. He looked at me with intensity, never breaking his gaze. He touched my arm a few times, warm and kind, but it made me hyper-aware. Because I recognized it: that shift from innocent warmth into something heavier. His compliments, his insistence. My gut tightened. I knew this feeling

.

He later invited me for pizza, and maybe it’s nothing, but my body doesn’t lie. Restlessness crept in. Anxiety that I rarely feel. So I let myself drift into memories, closing my eyes under the sun, and what surfaced were the ghosts of other encounters.

The man who disguised abuse under kindness, massages, hugs, his hands where they shouldn’t be, in public where no one would notice, while I was only a teenager going through the toughest battle of my life. The man in Madagascar who called it a kundalini class but cornered me into my underwear, touching where he had no right. The boy, much older, who during a childhood game “helped” me jump a fence by putting his hands under my underwear. Each moment a violation, subtle enough to be ignored by others, but clear enough to freeze me in my own body.

These memories poured out of me, one after the other, as if they had been waiting. And today, maybe because of this man's gaze, maybe because of the accumulation of silence, I finally let them surface again.

For so long, I used to ask myself if I had somehow led them on. If my openness, my kindness, the way I make people feel seen, could have been mistaken for an invitation. If maybe it was my fault. But now I see it clearly: it never was. My openness was never an invitation, it was simply my way of being. And they knew it.

They wore masks of kindness while hiding their vile intentions, because through kindness I let my guards down, and froze when they reached for what wasn't theirs to take. What they wanted wasn’t just my body, it was the feeling of being recognized, admired, accepted at a depth they rarely allowed themselves. They tasted that reflection in me, and they loved it so much they wanted to possess it. Even if it meant stealing it in fragments, even if only for a fleeting moment. That’s what scars the deepest: not only the touch itself, but the fracture of self-trust. The moment I stopped believing my body would rise to protect me.

And maybe that’s why I write it now. To stitch something back together. To say: I see what happened, I name it, and I refuse to keep carrying the shame that was never mine. I don’t know if it will ever resolve completely. Maybe it isn’t meant to. Maybe the point is to keep walking with it, lighter because it no longer lives only inside of me, but out here, breathing in the open. So if you’ve felt this restlessness too, if you’ve carried that same fracture of trust, maybe you’ll understand why I write. Not because I have the answers, but because silence was never the solution.

With truth, Louna.