A couple nights ago, I was thinking, I just want to go and get this trip over with as fast as I can!. And that thought surprised me. A lot. This trip, which is more apparent to me than anybody else, is one of the biggest milestones (if that is even the proper term) I will have accomplished in my life! Yet, this reaction made me wonder, what am I really feeling here? Nervousness? Obviously. But what made me want to "get this trip over with"? I think the big obstacle that currently stands in my way, is fear. Simply fear. Well, not simply. Some of these fears I have come to recognize even as I am writing this. Maybe, I am scared that I will not treat my family the same when I come back to the States, for what I will have experienced will have changed me greatly.

But I think, in fact, I know that what I fear most, is not knowing what I am going to experience, what I'm going to feel. Only stepping off that plane will then I know.

I know everything happens for a reason, but sometimes I wish I knew what the reason was.

As I was reading one of my books for my study tonight, I came across a sentence that really spoke to me. "Who is more vulnerable to the fear of future loss than an adoptee who has already experienced an unfathomable loss?" I thought about this briefly and tried to think about where this question applied to me. Speaking in terms of an adoptee --  not a teenager fighting to bring out the more independent side of himself. And after thinking about this a little more directly, I came to realize that this question is going to be a process to grasp. But I also realized that one of the things I fear most, and to be honest, have been thinking about a lot lately is losing my close loved ones, such as my parents and my sister. Funny, as I type this I realize more and more things. The loss of my parents or my sister would arise the same helplessness I have felt in this empty hole in my heart as far as I can remember...resulting from the loss of my birth mother.

So in the close picture of things, it is apparent that as I further this thought and my studies, things seem to be connected by a weak chain link slowly being welded back together by exploration. 

Last Thursday I received some disappointing and incredibly frustrating news. I found out that one of my travel companions, the one who I've grown up with my whole life and who is from the same orphanage as me, will not be joining me on my journey back to our home country. It saddens me that we will not get to experience India together. But it is on an understandable factor also. I realize it's a lot of work for her, me....anyone, to take a trip back to someplace that you are just simply not ready to comprehend.

I know in different emotional places, I am ready (and excited) to go on this trip, and also a little bit...not. I certainly hope I will be at least more ready when the departure date arrives. In all, I know it will be a great trip no matter who I'm going with!