My best friend is leaving New York and I helped her pack her Bushwick apartment on Sunday and I've been weird about it ever since.
Her name is Rhea. We met three years ago at a rooftop thing in Bushwick where neither of us knew anyone, both clutching warm drinks, both South Asian and instantly clocking each other across the room like a homing signal. Within an hour we were trading Ahmedabad-versus-Delhi arguments and swapping our mothers' voice notes.
And now she's moving to Chicago. For a job, for a boy, for a life with more square footage and less noise. Good reasons. All good reasons. I keep saying that out loud like it will help.
Packing someone's apartment is a strange intimacy. You wrap their coffee mugs in newspaper. You find the earring she thought she lost under the couch. You hold up a dress and she says keep it, it looks better on you anyway, and you don't argue because you both know it's true and also that it isn't about the dress.
We ordered from the Thai place we always order from. Ate on the floor between boxes because the table was already disassembled. Cried a little, laughed more, played the sad Bollywood songs unironically because that's what they're for.
Here's what nobody tells you about friendship in New York. People leave. The city is a revolving door and you are constantly, quietly grieving the people who chose a softer life somewhere else. It's not a betrayal. It just aches.
Rhea was my person here. The one who'd take the L at midnight if I was sad. The one who understood the specific homesickness of being brown and far from home in a city that eats you and feeds you in equal measure.
I took the L back from Bushwick alone that night and the seat next to me felt loud with her absence.
We'll visit. We'll call. It won't be the same and I'm trying to make peace with the same being a thing you don't always get to keep.
Love the people who take the midnight train for you. Even when they leave.
Love,