Home & (barely) Alive

The curse of the inevitable "Delhi belly".  (Look it up, it's an awful term.) During my time in India I knew one girl who caught Dengue Fever while in Delhi and another who didn't leave her room for 48 hours. After a tearful goodbye to a friend in the Ahmedabad airport, I made it to Delhi for my last day in India. And I couldn't leave my hotel room.

After spending 12 hours crawling from the bathroom to my bed and back again, I mustered up all of the strength I had and made it through 25 hours of transit home. Upon arriving, all visions in my head of telling gut-busting stories of hilarity and adventure to my family were put on hold as I had an IV stuck into my veins at the hospital. And while I am sharing my its-not-a-cliche-i-actually-was-crying-on-the-bathroom-floor moment here, I also discovered that someone I loved for the last two and a half years had inevitably "moved on." It doesn't matter how many people tell you it wasn't the right match, hearing the "I've moved on" words hurt...yet it also finally frees up new beginnings.

It's as if India knew I was leaving and tried to stop me. Or maybe India just wanted to send me home with a reminder that life isn't always roses. That when you face a country with extreme poverty, lack of infrastructure and proper communication standards, you can't come back unaffected. Surely you grow to be a little less naive and sheltered. You learn that there is a lot of sorrow and ugliness out there. Awful conditions that make my last week look like a walk in the park. 

I was so worried about coming home and having it tarnished by being so ill. "Everyone thinks that India is a dirty place where you get sick, but it's really a beautiful and wonderful country," I kept saying to my family. "I don't want people to get such a bad image of it because of this!"

So yesterday one of the wisest women in my life, my dear sister, reminded me that it's how you respond to what you see and experience that sets your character. How you respond is a choice you make. You can't control what comes your way, but for the mere fact that I just roamed through India for six weeks on my own, met people who will be in my life forever and awoke a passion in myself for working with women, I do know this:

the people, situations, and experiences

that are meant to come your way, 

will. 

In their own time. 

So...in the coming days as I regain my strength and learn about how to let go for good or want to finally tell some gut-busting and beautiful tales of the country of extremes, I'll post them here. There's massive uncertainty in my near future as I have no idea where I'm going to live or what I will do for my next adventure. I'm on the cusp of big changes and yet am struggling to see the forest through the trees. However, this blog has the word "hopeful" in it because that's exactly what I am.

Hopeful.