Ever since I was a young girl, I have been plagued by an incessant need to worry. It felt like an invisible force inside my stomach that moved me to check my bag ten times before going to bed in case I had forgotten to pack something for the next day, to replay the events of the day previous ten times before allowing myself to sleep, to make sure to brush over each tooth ten times in fear of cavities and fillings. While I have grown around my anxiety with age, I have continued to hold on to my desire to escape it.
Books were my first port of call, but there’s nothing more classic than running away from one’s problems. The idea of it was enticing, but I quickly shut it down with memories of childhood bullying. During the six torturous years of primary school, people watching me run was an easy source of humiliation. Not only was I ever so slightly odd, I was slower, and more embarrassingly, bigger than all of the other kids. Adding to the public ridicule, my throat seemed to close up faster than everyone else’s, and I struggled for air whilst everyone else was happily jogging along. The devastation of coming absolutely dead last in cross country was paired finely with comments on my weight, the perfect combination of brie and honey that created a delightfully complex relationship with my body and exercise. Running as a method of coping with my anxiety (alongside counselling, the restructuring of my thought processes, and prescribed medications) was a no-go — even after having left primary school, I still felt self-conscious about how awkward and clumsy I appeared engaging in such a basic act. What I soon discovered was the love of my life, the purpose that I needed; what I soon discovered was running’s gentler, more forgiving cousin: walking.
I can’t quite trace back to exactly when my obsession with walking began, but I like to attribute it to the early formations of my very own music taste. When I was about ten or eleven, a twenty-something-year-old bogan with a curly ponytail and above above-average number of guitars moved his way into my mother’s basement, helping with the rent. He was a rather odd man, but he generously offered to teach me how to play the guitar. According to him, the first step in my learning of the instrument was for him to download 50 songs of various rock subgenres onto my second-hand iPod touch, and for me to listen to them and discern which ones I liked, which he would then teach to me. Between the two of us, I lacked the ability to maneuver my fingers with enough skill to move past open chords, and he lacked the commitment to actually teach me how to play guitar.
That doesn’t matter – what does is that the playlist he created for me changed my life. Tonight, Tonight by The Smashing Pumpkins, Good Riddance by Green Day, Down in Splendour by The Straightjacket Fits, and Just Like Heaven by The Cure were particular favourites of mine, and with the foundations of a still-evolving interest in music, I needed to move. By the time I was eleven, my mother allowed me to walk laps around the Howick Domain, provided it was still light outside. I was never more than 400 metres from home, but with my wired earphones and music in hand, there was a special kind of freedom that came with my daily walks. I felt free, and there was a weightlessness to how my worry seemed to burn away as I walked faster and faster, temporarily away from my problems. I didn’t feel embarrassed. In fact, I felt proud, revelling in the rhythm with which my body was able to move.
If music was the start of my obsession, then nature was what cultivated it. By the dreaded Delta lockdown of 2021, the not-guitar-teacher of my basement had long moved out, leaving only The Smashing Pumpkins with me. My mother’s landlord had since decided that he would make far more money selling our leaky central Howick home than renting it out to us. We moved to a new rental in Bucklands Beach, right next to Musick Point. During lockdown, the long track up through and beyond the golf course was my flame, and I was a moth being drawn to it over and over again. With the Level 1 Algebra MCAT and Reading Plus being my only real schoolwork, I was left with nothing better to do than walk, and walk I did. Two, three, maybe even four times a day, I would take my wired earphones and Spotify playlist up to the very end of Musick Point, turn around, and walk down half of Bucklands Beach. This route was different to my laps around Howick Domain. Not only had I acquired a broader music taste, which I enjoyed between ads for Spotify Premium, but I was also surrounded by far more scenic imagery. On particularly beautiful days, I would stop the music and watch the waves crash around my favourite rock that lay at the bottom of the cliff face. I would take notice of the trees and the insects that lived in and around them. Around this time, my interest in the environment and its conservation began to grow, and my appreciation for the life that surrounded me developed to an even higher standard. The Rotary Walkway in Farm Cove that I trekked on the days I stayed with my dad became another favourite route of mine for this very reason — walking me led to me discovering a deep, unrelenting love for the world, a world that has much to give and yet at the same time so much to lose.
It’s been nearly eight years since the start of my journey, and I still love to walk. There’s something grounding in the way my feet hit whatever is beneath me, whether that be a wooden bridge, hard pavement, or soft grass and dirt. I have to admit, the competitor inside of me feels a sense of achievement when the health app on my phone tells me I took more steps than I did the day before, but the act of walking itself never shames me. Each step I take chips away at my anxiety more and more, shaping a better view of myself alongside a better view of what surrounds me. The world is my oyster, and I’ll walk right through it again and again.
Cerys Gibby, Year 13
