I made it through my first day of ‘India Fever’ – the sentiment of screaming to your internal self, ‘what am I doing, why am I here, I want to go home, and I can’t stand myself.’ This first full day of India Fever happened to come on my birthday. How appropriate. I suppose absolute dread and discomfort is one way to remember your special day. I had felt like this over a week before, on the third day of being completely alone, but I chalked it up to jet-lag and the immediate feeling of detachment when you go somewhere new.
The emotions which hit on my birthday however, were more like invisible fire ants, crawling along the crevices of my body, stinging their way toward my insanity. Opening up to the world by moving to another country, and choosing to engage in self-exploration for over three months is a large undertaking. I knew that living in India and spending most of my days alone in thought wouldn’t be all flowers and puppies. I knew that it would be hard. Agonizing at times. Uncomfortable. Confusing. Ups and downs, and frustration all around.
Devoting our time to self-reflection is one of the most underestimated tasks of life. We allow our lives to become so full, so busy with to-do lists, meetings, and people, that we forget to keep some time set aside for ourselves. Call it ‘me-time.’ We don’t give ourselves that luxury of discovering what makes us happiest, and eventually, we lose it. We forget about our hobbies, our talents, our dreams, and even our loved ones. We begin to feel lost, that classic moment where we truly give up and throw in the towel. We figure that since society is pressing so hard to mold us into somebody else, that we should just play along, and become just like everyone else. That’s what society does. ‘It’ wants you to be normal. It asks you to make the most money, to be the best team player, to be the prettiest, to accept struggle as a necessary part of life. That’s bullshit. We shouldn’t put up with that. We should be unique, excited for every moment, happy, and encouraged to take time away from the pressure to remember what makes us those things in the first place. The marvels of traveling to a far-off land, of essentially running away from the matrix of your life, and exploring something or somebody new is exciting. It is the bait that ends up ensnaring us all. In the end, the strong of will realize that they need a break to explore the beauty of the world, and they simply walk away.
For these reasons, I don’t regret jumping on a plane to live in the middle of southern India. It’s definitely far enough away from my life at home to really learn detachment, independence, and a new level of self-awareness. Overall, I’m happy to be allowed so much ‘Me Time.’ On days like my birthday, however, I am reminded just how hard this experience is. I came to India with the realistic expectation that I would have many days of India Fever, and overall dread for my current situation. I knew the hard lessons of self-confidence and self-acceptance that I would be learning, and for that, I knew the instant beauty and pleasure associated with flowers and puppies would not be a reality. I was more weeds and chameleons. I’m just a mess of tangled emotions, changing each day to match some new lesson India has decided to teach me.
Beware of India Fever – it might just kill you…or me. The jury is still out.
