It's hard to make real friends as an adult in New York. Everyone's busy, everyone's leaving, everyone's one bad lease away from moving to Lisbon. So when you find someone who stays, you notice.
My friend Reshma lives in Astoria, on a fifth-floor walkup with a rooftop you're technically not supposed to be on. This week I was having a genuinely terrible day — work stress, a rejection I won't get into, the special loneliness that only hits at 9PM — and I texted her something pathetic.
She didn't send a heart emoji and disappear. She said: come over, I'm making dal.
I took the N train to Astoria with wet eyes and dry hope.
We ate dal-chawal on that illegal rooftop with the Manhattan skyline glittering across the river like it was showing off. She didn't try to fix anything. She just let me talk, and then let me be quiet, and then made fun of my ex until I laughed so hard I snorted.
That's the thing nobody warns you about immigrating alone. You leave a whole net of people behind — the cousins, the school friends, the aunties who've known you since you were three. Here, you have to build the net from scratch. Thread by thread. And most threads don't hold.
Reshma holds. On that rooftop in Astoria, with the planes descending into LaGuardia and the dal warm in my belly, I felt something I hadn't in weeks. Belonging.
Chosen family isn't a poster quote out here. It's a girl making you dal at 10PM on a Tuesday because you sounded sad over text. It's someone who stays when staying is inconvenient.
We watched the sky until it went that murky orange it goes here — never fully dark, too much city for that. She let me sleep over. In the morning there was chai.
I came home fuller than I left. Not from the dal. From being loved on purpose.
Find the ones who stay. Then never let them take the N train home alone.
Love,