Priya left for London on Thursday. And I'm still not okay about it.
She was my first real friend here — the kind you build a whole life around without realizing it. The one who knew which bodega had the good flowers, who I called at midnight, who understood the exact flavor of being brown and far from home and figuring it out.
Our last night, we went to the diner in Astoria that stays open forever, the Greek one on Broadway with the glowing sign and the waiter who's seen us at our worst. We ordered fries at 2am because the friend who moved back to London deserved a proper send-off, and in New York a proper send-off happens over bad coffee and good fries under fluorescent lights.
We didn't say anything deep. We laughed about the time we got on the wrong N train and ended up in Coney Island. We talked about nothing. That's how you know you love someone — you can waste your last hours together on nothing and it feels like everything.
Here's what nobody warns you about this city. You will make the best friends of your life here. And then New York will take them. Jobs, visas, rent, love, home — something always calls them back. The friend who moved back to London is the third person I've lost to another continent in two years.
I keep thinking about that scene in Dil Chahta Hai, the three of them at the fort, young and sure they'd always be close. Nobody tells you growing up means watching your people scatter across time zones.
I walked her to the cab. We hugged too long. She said, "You better visit." I said I would. We both know how that goes.
The N train home felt emptier than it should've for how full it was.
New York gives you everyone, then teaches you to let them go.
Love,