My friend cancelled at 10:40pm. Totally fair — she was exhausted, and the N train from Manhattan to Astoria at that hour is its own act of endurance. But I'd already showered and put on the good earrings.
So I went out anyway. Alone.
I ended up at one of those 24-hour diners on Broadway near 31st, the kind with the laminated menu the size of a small novel and a waiter who calls you "hon" without it meaning anything and meaning everything.
Eating alone at a diner in Astoria at midnight used to terrify me. Two years ago I'd have felt every imagined pair of eyes. In Ahmedabad, a girl eating alone at night was practically a scene from a film — someone would call my mother.
But last night I got a booth by the window. Ordered fries and a chocolate shake because nobody was there to raise an eyebrow. Watched the neon from the Greek bakery across the street bleed onto the wet sidewalk.
And I felt — this is embarrassing — full. Not from the fries. Full in the chest.
Because eating alone at a diner in Astoria at midnight, I realized I've become someone my 22-year-old self couldn't have imagined. Someone who doesn't need a witness to have an evening. Who can sit with herself the way you'd sit with an old friend.
There's a Gulzar line my dad loves about solitude being a kind of company. I never got it until I was in that booth, dipping fries in shake like a heathen, at peace.
I texted my friend that it was okay, truly. And it was. I wasn't lonely. I was just alone, and there's an ocean between those two words.
I walked home under the elevated train, the good earrings catching the streetlight.
Turns out I'm decent company. Who knew.
Love,