My friend Ananya is leaving New York and I helped her pack her Williamsburg apartment on Sunday.
We met in that apartment four years ago at a party where I knew no one and she handed me a plate of samosas she'd made herself and said "you look like you need these, and also a friend." She was right on both counts.
Now her whole life fits in eleven boxes and a suitcase that won't zip.
Watching a friend leave NYC is a specific grief nobody prepares you for. It's not death. It's not a fight. It's just — the L train to Bedford Avenue won't mean the same thing anymore. The dumpling spot on Grand Street becomes a museum of a friendship. The city keeps every location and takes the person.
She's moving back to Toronto. To be near her parents, her sister who's pregnant, a life that's slower and softer and closer to the people who made her. I told her it's the right call. I meant it. I also cried into a box of her kitchen things while wrapping a chai pan in newspaper.
"You're the one who stays," she said to me. Not mean. Just true.
Because here's the thing about NYC friendships — half of them come with an expiration date you can't see. People move here to chase something and then they catch it, or they don't, and either way they leave. And a few of us stay. We become the keepers of the addresses. The ones who remember which bar closed, which roommate was awful, which winter almost broke us.
When a friend leaves NYC, you don't just lose them. You lose the version of yourself that only existed around them.
We finished the boxes at midnight. Sat on the bare floor of the empty apartment eating cold pizza, the way you do. She put on an old Shah Rukh song, the sad-happy kind, and we didn't sing so much as remember out loud.
I took the L home alone at 1am. The car was almost empty. I looked at Bedford Avenue disappearing behind us and let myself feel all of it.
People will keep leaving. I've decided I'd rather stay and hold the door open than never let anyone in.
Come back and visit. I'll keep the samosa plate warm.
Love,