With love

In a different place and a different time, we were friends. We were close. We laughed at the same people together. We shared ipod headphones. We made mistakes together. And we got caught together. How readily we made promises as we departed, how sure, how certain we were in a future together! How we swore we would be there for each other, how much we believed that even as different people with different lives, together we would always be the same! And, but, months have passed and we have already made our first few mistakes apart, laid the groundwork for paths away from each other. We build our little shells of protection, to keep us from getting hurt, and we walk away before we even try.

What are we so scared of? Why did i refuse to come to India in spring when I could have? Why would you refuse to go to your own convocation? Why are you so scared to call the ones you spent 4 years sitting next to? Why did you not tell me that you were in trouble? Why would you not take the time? What, again, are we so scared of? Seeing that the present is not as the past was? That you might be the only person who is the same? But are we ever the same? Havent we done the same things at other times to other people? We are friends with the people we are friends with for a reason. Are we truly so different from them? How easy it is to cast blame and move on. Are we the people we want others to be?

Why must we be so afraid of rejection? Or rather the prospect of rejection? Why must it be a shadow, whispering doubt in our ears, fears of possibilities, of events that may never come to pass? Why are we so ready to dismiss the people we knew, the people we came to love, the promises we made together, the dreams we dreamt together, over a few months of silence? How easy it is to race our thoughts to conclusions and to convince ourselves that we are not wanted in the new lives our friends have.

In my life, more friends have been lost for what they didn’t do than what they did. She didn’t call often enough. He didn’t remember. She didn’t ask me first. I look back on the friendships lost and i cant remember why i lost them most of the time. I speak to an old friend and i walk away and i wonder why i decided to just let go and i try and i try but i seldom can remember. All i can come up with is a vague memory of a conviction that she wasn’t trying hard enough, that she was no longer interested in being friends, that she probably had new people in her life. How easily we can twist the giving past into the shape we want it, contort it so we are now sure that she always was that way. She never really cared. How easy to give in to the tendency!

If we talk, we’d probably realize that even our new lives aren’t so apart. That our days probably intersect in a thousand different ways through a thousand different people. If we talk more and listen more, maybe we’d realize that we live the same problems and share the same troubled thoughts, that the same songs make us smile, and the same nightmares keep us up, that we both have the worst boss possible on the face of the earth, that we both cant stand the vending machine coffee, that we both hate the dress code, that we both have changed the dreams we dreamt together, modified and added to it and that the more we change, we never change too fast for the other person. Maybe we’d realize that we were never really alone at all and that we have someone who’d listen to us and be there for us, all over again. That the person who sat with you when you cried after losing your first mobile phone will sit with you through a lot more. And maybe we will find a place to meet in the middle, a place that is still common to both our lives, where we can go just to remind ourselves of the strong people we were and are when things get overwhelming, a place where a person can remind us that if we passed Cryptography in 6^th sem without knowing a word of it, we can survive this quarter life crisis. If only we tried, we’d know.

So to my friends who have no time for me and whom i have no time for, shall we introduce ourselves, test the boundaries and try to be friends all over again?  You have changed and i have changed and our lives are busy and time is expensive but i still want to know you, the new you and the old, and if you would care for a cup of coffee together, maybe in that new coffee shop we pass in the company bus, or maybe in your home and mine over a skype call, i would love to talk. 

With love,

Divya