How has life been with you old friend?

Have you changed a lot? I sometimes wonder what it would be like if you walked in through the door. Would I still see the person I last saw? How is your family? I never understood them when I knew them and was always convinced they hated me. How are your roommates? The last I remember, you had your issues with them. How is school? How are things with your girlfriend? How is your house? How are things in general on your end of paradise?

The last we spoke, life was just beginning to get rough. I got jostled around a lot. I burst out one evening and that was the end for us. Since then, a lot of things have changed. I finished my course requirements for my Masters. Some friends graduated. Yet another phase of goodbyes has begun with packing and moving and sending friends off to richer pastures. I shifted homes. When I moved the last box out of my house, I stood at the threshold and stared at the tiny bubble of universe that I’d found and furnished and fought for and about and called home the last year and a half. And remembering how it felt to come back to it every day, make myself a cup of coffee and sit at the edge of my bed and talk on the phone, I called Maya to talk to one final time from the then empty space. I would have liked to call you. That place holds memories of you too. Most of them are colored sad though. I made new friends in my new home. We travelled together, celebrated the New Year together. We went to Vegas, like we’d once planned to go. I stood at the edge of the pool at Bellagio while waiting for the fountain show to start, threw in a penny and made a wish. I danced till my feet hurt. I went to Tucson for Srivi’s graduation. We walked around the empty campus and spoke about life. I cried when she was conferred her degree. I gave, I don’t know how many, interviews. I got the job I’d always wanted. I signed the offer a couple of days back. I got my Driver’s license the same day. It’s like 2012 is being extra nice to make up for the last year.  Life is good.

Life, now, is racing towards a phase shift. And I am tying up a lot of loose ends and racing along with it. And sometimes it makes me think of you. You’ve always been the one loose end that I’ve never been able to fix. I've given up wondering why or trying to set it right and just accepted it as one of those quirks of life. If that doesn't come from a place of wisdom, I don’t know what does.

I hear people talk of you sometimes and I itch to ask them what’s up with you. And I talk of you sometimes too. In parties after the celebrating is done and we are a little tipsy and somebody asks what was up with you and that person, and I laugh and say we were a little mad and I laugh again. I’ve always wondered if we’d meet again or rather when. Our world is too small to break it down into two completely disjoint sets. So I wonder when we’d meet again and as whom. And when we do, I will write another blog with all the answers.