When Meera told me she was moving to Harlem, I smiled and said congrats and then went home and quietly grieved.
We used to live five minutes apart on the Lower East Side. She was the person I'd text at 11pm just saying come down, I have chaat, and she'd appear in slippers. That kind of friendship. Load-bearing.
And now she was going to be a whole 2 train away. I know that sounds dramatic. It is dramatic. But when you live far from your actual family, your friends become the ones who hold the roof up, and the LES friendship I had with Meera was one of my main beams.
So the first weekend after she moved, I made myself go. Took the 2 all the way up, got off at 135th, walked to her new place with a box of jalebi that had gone slightly soft in the heat.
Her apartment gets this incredible afternoon light. She has more space now. She looked, honestly, happier, and I hated that I felt sad about the thing that was making her bloom.
We sat on her floor because the furniture hadn't come, ate soggy jalebi, and I finally said it. I said I'm scared this changes us.
And Meera, who has known me since we were both broke design assistants, said: Pooja, we survived my worst breakup and your worst boss. We can survive twenty minutes on the 2 train.
She's right. Proximity was never the friendship. The showing up is the friendship.
We made a rule. Every other Sunday, one of us makes the trip. No cancelling unless someone's actively dying.
I took the 2 home that night and for the first time the distance felt like something we chose, not something that happened to us.
Distance is just the trip you're willing to keep making.
Love,