We met at a dumpling spot on the Lower East Side, the two of us who used to talk every day and now text maybe once a month, mostly memes.
We've grown apart. Nobody said it out loud but it sat there at the table between the soup dumplings and the chili oil, this thing we both felt and neither wanted to name.
We met in my first year in New York. She showed me which J train exit to use, which bodega had the good samosas, how to cry in public without anyone caring. She was my first proof that I could build a life here from strangers.
And then life happened at us in different directions. She got serious with someone. I got serious with my career. We stopped needing each other in that daily, desperate way you need people when you're new and scared.
Over dumplings on the LES we caught up like acquaintances. Polite. Warm, even. But the shorthand was gone — I had to explain things I used to be able to just gesture at, and so did she.
Here's what nobody tells you about growing apart: it isn't a fight. There's no villain. It's just two people who were exactly what the other needed at a specific time, and time moved.
There's a line in an old Hindi film — something about how some people come into your life like a season, not a fixture. I always thought that was sad. Now I think it might just be true, and truth isn't the same as sad.
We hugged on Delancey Street after, longer than we meant to. I think we both knew. We'll get dumplings again in six months and it'll be a little more distant, and that's okay. That's allowed.
Not everyone is meant to stay. Some people are just meant to help you arrive.
Love,