Divya is moving to Chicago. She told me on a bench in Fort Greene Park with two coffees between us and I did not handle it with grace.
I ugly-cried. In public. In Brooklyn. A dog stopped to look at me.
Here is what you have to understand. When you move across the world at twenty-two with a fashion degree and more confidence than sense, the people you meet aren't just friends. They become the family you build to survive the distance from the one you left.
Divya was the first person in New York who felt like home. We met at a mutual friend's Diwali thing in my first month here, both of us overdressed, both of us secretly homesick, both of us pretending we had it figured out. She saw straight through me in about four minutes.
For two years she's been my emergency contact in every sense. The one who came over with khichdi when I had the flu. The one who talked me out of texting exactly the wrong person. The one who understood without explanation why I sometimes go quiet around festival time.
And now she's leaving. Better job, cheaper rent, a whole logical case I can't argue with because it's all true.
I know this is what happens. People come to New York and people leave New York. The city is a train station pretending to be a home. But knowing that intellectually did absolutely nothing for me on that bench in Fort Greene Park, watching her try not to cry too.
We walked the long way through the park after. Past the tennis courts, up toward the monument. Not talking much. The kind of silence you only get with someone who's earned it.
She said, "You know I'm four hours away by plane, not gone." And I said, "I know." And I do know. But friendship you build far from home holds a specific weight. Losing the daily-ness of it, even to a plane ride, feels like losing a piece of the scaffolding.
I'll be okay. I'll learn Chicago's airport. I'll make new emergency contacts, slowly, the way you do.
But god, the people who raise you in a hard city. There's nothing like them.
Hold your people close. Trains and planes are cruel that way.
Love,