My first real friend in New York moved to LA three years ago and this week I finally sent her the text I'd been not-sending for about eleven months.
You know the text. The one that's overdue by so much that sending it feels embarrassing, like the longer you wait the bigger the apology has to be, until it feels easier to just let the whole friendship quietly expire.
Her name is Reema. We met my first winter here, both of us fresh off the plane into the fashion world, both of us pretending we knew what we were doing. She taught me which parties were worth it and which ones were just free wine and sadness.
Then she got an offer in LA and left, and we did the long-distance friendship thing well for about a year. Then less well. Then it became likes on each other's posts and nothing else.
I was on a rooftop in Harlem for a friend's birthday when it hit me. Everyone around me was new. Good people, but new. And I missed being known by someone who remembered my embarrassing first New York year.
So I left the party early, got on the 2 train downtown, and somewhere around 96th Street I typed it out. Not an apology. Just: "I miss you and I'm sorry I went quiet and I don't want to keep doing this."
She called me before I even got off the train.
Here's what I'm learning about long-distance friendship. It doesn't die from one big fight. It dies from the small silences you let stack up until they feel too tall to climb over. And the only cure is being the one brave enough to look stupid first.
We talked for an hour. She's coming to New York in December. She sounded exactly the same, which undid me a little. Three years of silence and underneath it, still just us.
Long-distance friendship is a choice you have to keep making, over and over, usually when it's least convenient. Nobody makes you. That's the whole point.
In Hindi we'd say we were jaan-pehchaan once and strangers now. But maybe not. Maybe you can go back.
Send the text. You'll feel lighter on the train home.
Love,