delayed reaction

(written on October 16, 2009)

Tomorrow we have two interviews due along with their write ups, and my main interview won't happen until 2:00 PM tomorrow. Friday we have an in class exam and an extended version of the proposal for our research projects and an annotated bibliography due. I am getting over (I think...) a cold, soar throat and stuffy nose, which directly followed ups and downs with Delhi belly, all of these ailments causing me to miss what feels like ¼ of the classes on which we'll be tested on Friday.

Here's the thing though- I'm pretty sure that I'm going to be OK. Like, about 99% sure. Not just with school either. I am happy. It's a slightly alarming thing to realize after spending so much of the last three years battling with depression. I'm going to do OK on the school stuff this week, though undoubtedly will feel that I could'veshould've done better, and then on Monday will head off with half of my class to Orissa to study architecture and such foolishness. I'm going to be OK.

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The academic director of the program here in India told us yesterday that her friend had a baby who was born still. Shivers up and down my spine and a tug in the region of my belly that is all too familiar. I thought of Gal, and Kate, and how my Tikva necklace broke the other day and is waiting to be fixed, and how I've felt its absence so much. I checked in with these mamas who have come to learn what it means to be mamas to both living and spirit babies. Both wrote about the ways in which they've grown, changed since their babies died. Both wrote about the beauty that they see in their lives that they never saw before their now-spirit babies were born, how their lives are more beautiful for those children, even though they won't be the kinds of children they had expected and planned for. They both wrote about crying, a year plus after their babies stopped being what we expected them to be and started being what they were meant to be, or not meant to be but just are. These mamas have big words and fiery spirits.

I have never had a baby, much less had to see her or him die- I can only speak to my own pain.

It never stops hurting, I think, those things that hurt us so badly.But it is what it is, and in a way, that's how it should be, merely because of its being. Maybe we can take solace in that. Or maybe not.

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I was feeling sulky today coming home from school. At least four ricksaws said they wouldn't take me home because they didn't want to go that far, and the one that finally did agree overcharged me. He apparently changed his mind and, without telling me, stopped the rickshaw, and asked me to take the other rickshaw he had procured for me so that he could go on his way. I was PISSED. The air was so smokey/dusty and I was tired and soar-throaty. None of the music I had on my mp3 player was distracting me from the insanity of the gridlock that is Delhi just before Dawali.

Then, I came to this song called "Question". So corny. I love it so much, it is so sweet. And I got it from the “Scrubs” soundtrack. I listened to it over and over and over again. It was like when I listened to this song on repeat all night the day before Valentine's Day of my senior year. It's silly, and as a friend of mine would say, it's songs like this that make real-life love so abysmally unsatisfactory. But here's the thing- it's not just about cute boys (though I hope there will be more in the future). I think the future will be good, great, beautiful, crazy, exciting, sometimes sad and hard and excruciating. But I'm looking forward to it. And for now, I can enjoy the fact that I don't have to drive through the paggel traffic, but I can sit back and love the fact that I'm in India. I can sit back and listen to silly songs about something that may or may not happen to me in the future, trusting that however it turns out, it will be so good.