My best friend moved to Jersey this week and I am, to use a technical term, not okay.
Her name is Reena and for three years she lived eleven minutes from me — well, eleven minutes if the J train was feeling generous, which it never was, so really twenty-five. But close. Close enough that on bad nights I could show up at her place on the Lower East Side with a bottle of wine and a face that needed fixing.
Now she is in Jersey City. Which people keep telling me is close. It is a PATH train away. It is basically Manhattan, they say.
It is not basically Manhattan. It is a river. It is a whole state line. It is the difference between I'll come over and let's plan a weekend.
We helped her pack. Me and two others, wrapping her glasses in newspaper in her empty LES apartment, and it felt exactly like every hostel goodbye I had in college, the room slowly emptying of the person who made it a room.
Here is what nobody warns you about adult friendship in New York. The heartbreaks are not always romantic. Sometimes your person crosses the Hudson for a bigger kitchen and cheaper rent and it hits you in a place you did not know had feeling.
When my best friend moved to Jersey I helped her carry boxes down four flights and I cried in the U-Haul where she couldn't see, facing the window like a heroine in a Bollywood song, minus the orchestra, plus the sweat.
We have already made a rule. First Sunday of every month, no excuses, one of us crosses the river. She takes the PATH to me, or I go to her, and we alternate like a custody arrangement for our own friendship.
But I know how these rules go. Life sands them down. First it's every month, then it's when we can, then it's we should really catch up.
I am trying not to grieve something that has not died. She is a PATH ride away, not a plane ride. I already did the plane ride once, from Ahmedabad, and I know the real distances.
Still. The J train home felt longer that night. My best friend moved to Jersey and the city rearranged itself slightly, the way it does when your person is no longer in it.
First Sunday. I'll hold us to it.
Some people are worth crossing a river for. Cross it.
Love,