Reya moved to Chicago on Thursday. I've been avoiding writing this because writing it makes it real.
We met three years ago at a rooftop thing in Bushwick that neither of us wanted to be at. She was the only other brown girl there, we made eye contact across the terrible sangria, and that was it. Sisters by 11pm.
This week I took the L to Morgan Ave to help her pack. Her apartment on Jefferson had this one window that got gorgeous light around 6, and we'd spend Sundays there eating Maggi and watching the same three Shah Rukh movies on loop.
Packing someone's life into boxes is a strange intimacy. I found the dupatta she borrowed from me last Diwali and never returned. I let her keep it. I'll want it back one day so I have a reason to visit.
"You'll come see me," she kept saying. And I nodded like a person who believes flights are cheap and time is infinite.
Here's what nobody tells you about NYC friendship. It's built on proximity. On the fact that she was one train away. On last-minute "come over" texts at 9pm. When someone moves, the whole architecture of your closeness just collapses.
I rode the L home alone and it felt like the loneliest train in America.
My mom always says friends are the family you assemble when you're far from your real one. In Ahmedabad I never had to assemble anything. Everyone was just there, permanently, annoyingly, forever.
Here you build your family with your bare hands and then you watch pieces of it move to Chicago for a job that pays more.
I'm happy for her. I need that on the record. She got a role she'd been dreaming about and she deserves every good thing.
But tonight my phone won't buzz with "come over," and that's a kind of grief nobody prepares you for.
I'm going to eat Maggi and watch Kal Ho Naa Ho by myself. Fitting title, honestly.
Call the friend you've been meaning to call. Proximity is a lie. Effort is the only thing that's real.
Love,