Preparations

Today, I prepared for my impending trip to India by watching Black Mirror and unpacking wedding gifts that I purchased and were sent to me instead of the couples. I feel like the companies that do registries should have given me the option to have it sent to the couple and not me. Now I have to drive a fucking telescope and wilderness med kit to Pittsburgh in June. I just want to play with the telescope. Anything to avoid preparing.

I leave for India on April 22nd and will be there for about two weeks. Meeting a cousin there who has spent some time in Nepal and will be back visiting folks he knows there. We are planning on just meeting at the airport, I think, and then taking a train (?) north into the mountains.

I’ve got my visa and some medication but I just feel uneasy about the trip. I’m worried that it wont be perfect or it wont fulfill my fantasy. I want it to change me. I want India to make me feel comfortable in my own skin. It wont, but the fantasy persists. It’s a fantasy I don’t want to give up. I want it to be true even though it can’t be.

I’m not sure how to prepare and I am kind of hoping the trip doesn’t happen. It’s like when a friend cancels plans, I get so excited and relieved. I want someone else to be in control, to cancel this trip or for something more serious to intervene making the trip no longer a reality.

Learning Hindi. Listening to Bollywood songs. Hanging out with other South Asians. Reading Lonely Planet. I’ve attempted each of the above but haven’t followed through on any. I just feel scared and frustrated and annoyed. Mostly at my self.

Maybe writing will help provide some focus or structure to the trip. Maybe it’s just complicated and I wont know what it is until I’m there and there is no preparing for that. I don’t know what I want out of the experience, or maybe I do and it just feels naive. The fantasy persists and it is juvenile and embarrassing. I feel like a child. Helpless, wandering, seeking out direction, purpose, identity, belonging. I tell myself I should know these things by now.

Preparations. Prep. A. Rations.