As the time (3 more weeks!) narrows down to the date of my departure, it feels less and less real. How can I imagine a life I’ve never known? Since I began planning nearly a year ago, the climax has been building, I’ve reviewed every situation I can think of, countless times, rerunning scenarios, imagining friends I haven’t met, thinking of everything from the morbid (what if my plane crashes on my flight there? Or worse, on my flight back? What if I get into a dumb car accident and flown home?) to the exhilarating (Himalayas! Elephants! Jungles! Trekking! Couchsurfing! INDIA!). Yet, with these situations, I can only barely grasp such now abstract concepts, without contextual information, I know nothing about my future life.
The excitement is building, the trip is upcoming, my mind is racing and I am found at the apex of the roller coaster, in the calm before the storm.