Off to India

I woke up from a nightmare, that something terrible happened and I was dead.   
A dead, dead, dead woman. 

In India. 

My trip was a week away, and my allergies were slowly putting death into literal meaning. I had to be healthy, I had to get better soon, but for some reason, it was as if my body was rebelling against me. 

I hadn’t packed my bags yet, and I didn’t know where to start. If anything, I was terrified of packing and realizing that it was real. 

I was going to go to India for two weeks. 

In my head I was constructing plans of my funeral, just in case anything happened. I had it all figured out. 

The food, the songs, the dance steps, the bonfire and marshmallows, and if possible, a mini Viking funeral. Or the one they performed in the Originals, you know, the one for the werewolves.

But I like the real Viking funeral type of deal.

Bows and arrows and all that junk. 

The last two days of preparation, Daniella and I were on Skype occasionally. It was the whole panic attack to what were we going to do type of conversation. Repeated over and over again. 

I didn’t want to die in India. 

Not before I had my last McDonald’s large fries. Or my last Baskin Robbins sundae, for old time’s sake.

  
Then the last night I was terrified. This time was real. 

My eyes were red, due to allergies, and my whole body itched. I could only blame myself for the horrid allergies, but what could a girl do?

At 3 AM I woke up and thought, hey, some coffee wouldn’t hurt. My flight was scheduled at 11 AM and I could do some last minute checking. 

Then I walked by a mirror and saw horror. In my blood shot, bloody, bloody red, right eye. There it was, granulated stuff which I wouldn’t want to discuss further, and my eye reduced half its normal size. 

So puffy. So red. So dry. And I was so dead. 

Looking at the time, I knew the one person who could drive me to the hospital, who happened to always wake up super early. So I ran and woke my sister up, telling her, “I need you to take me to the hospital.” 

She got up and got ready immediately. This was one of those moments when I cherished having a reliable sister. 

So we drove to the hospital, flying through the empty roads, and I threw myself into the emergency room and onto a white bed. 

Death. White sheets. White curtains. 

And India suddenly felt real. It was like the wind slapping on your face when you rolled down the car window. Painful, and it’s definitely there. 

How the heck could I go to India like this? 

Turned out my right eye had infection, and it would take five days to recover. 

I had planned beautiful photos in India, but those planned photos were slowly creeping away from me. 

Immediately I turned to my sister and told her, “Go! Take my passport and go! You look like me, so it won’t be a problem!” To which she said, “I can’t!” 

I mean, who imprisons a sister who takes her sister’s bookings and reservations? 

The doctor then told me that it would be okay for me to travel with my infected eye, but I had to take very good care of it. 

After he released me, I soared back home, showered, and went off to the airport. 

I checked in and sat down in Starbucks. It hit me hard. 
I was still alive up to that point. 
I was still alive. 

And I was going straight to India.