My friend left New York this week. She's the one who held my hair the first time I cried over a boy in this city, outside a bar on 30th Avenue in Astoria, mascara everywhere, dignity nowhere.
We met three years ago at a sample sale in the Garment District, both reaching for the same navy coat. Neither of us bought it. We got dumplings instead. That's the whole origin story. That's how it works here — you reach for a coat and suddenly someone knows all your business.
Saturday I took the N up to Astoria to help her pack. Her studio was already half-empty, the walls brighter where her posters used to be. We ordered biryani from the place on Steinway and it went cold while we taped boxes, because we kept stopping to tell the same stories we always tell.
Moving in New York is its own grief. You don't just lose the person. You lose the version of the city they lived in with you. The bar you only went to together. The specific Sunday you two had. When a friend leaves New York, a whole little map goes dark.
She's going back to Chicago for family, for cheaper rent, for breathing room. All reasons I understand. All reasons that don't help at 11pm when she texts me a photo of the empty room and I'm sitting on the 6 train with nothing to say that isn't selfish.
The truth is this city runs on people leaving. Everyone's always one lease away from somewhere else. You learn to love hard and hold loose, which are two things that don't actually go together, no matter what anyone says.
I helped her carry the last box down to the U-Haul. We hugged on the sidewalk like something out of a film where the train is leaving — very Kajol, very DDLJ, except nobody ran, nobody came back, she just drove off and I stood there.
I walked to the water at Astoria Park after. Watched the Hell Gate Bridge do nothing in particular. Cried a normal amount.
She'll visit. I'll visit. We both know how that usually goes.
Come back for the dumplings, at least.
Love,