at a bit of a loss

India is great and all, and the vacation to Kerala was amazing, but I can't help but feel at a bit of a loose end. I've already spent a month here and I feel like I haven't done anything substantial for myself. I'm not not friends with anyone here but I also always feel like I'm tagging along rather than being involved with any activities, which just makes me profoundly tired and even less involved. I just wish that I didn't have to work so hard at being around people here, you know? I can't imagine how isolated I'd feel if I did the homestay. I feel alone enough living with 13 other people, who either seem to be happy being alone or have already split into small groups. I don't know.

This weekend I'm hoping to take the train to Varanasi, one of the holiest cities in India, that I've been wanting to go to since before I came here. Hoping also that I can find someone to go with; I don't feel comfortable traveling alone. I don't know, social anxieties just make it so hard to enjoy myself here, and being aware of that and my fleeting time I get even more anxious and worried that I'm not getting the most out of this experience. I'm lucky to be here, I know. I just wish that I felt like that all the time.

It was lovely being in Kerala for its different atmosphere, but in a way it makes coming back to Delhi that much harder. In Kochi there weren't children begging or salespeople that wouldn't leave me alone after I told them 'no' or so many sad stray dogs. There were goats wandering around instead, which was good because they eat a lot of the garbage, and cats. Kochi's probably not going to be like that forever though. It's developing pretty fast, the land is running out, and no one wants to do agriculture anymore, leaving it to migrants from other regions. I think it'll become more like Delhi soon. I feel like Delhi is somehow an inevitability for any developing nation.

It's easy to despair here. There's a lot of hope, yes, and a lot of really smart people working towards better things. But change is slow and there are just so many people here, so many, and I feel like I'm just taking up space and using up resources because I don't know what the best thing to do is or how to do it. Classes here put me into a bit of an emotional yo-yo -- studies in literature are sometimes uplifting by the simple fact that people can write and think such things and that they are out there to be shared, but economics so far is pretty damn depressing and history isn't always much better.

I don't know. Maybe all of this is just part of the funk I'm in right now. Coming back from vacations is always depressing, and realizing that I don't have a whole lot of time left just puts the pressure on. Will probably do more reading for class and then maybe some yoga.

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Listening to: This Will Destroy You - Leather Wings
via FoxyTunes