Dear friend-turned-stranger,
Hoping that this letter finds you well and in good health. Days have turned into months and months into years, and now we’ve come to the point where we do not even wish each other on our birthdays. It’s not your fault or mine, it’s just a harsh reality that all relationships eventually meet their expiry dates. And that’s okay because they have already served their purpose in our lives. But some relationships are engraved so deep within our subconscious that even when our consciousness has decided to let them go, they take the form of dreams and keep reminding us of the prospects of being together again.
Yours was one such friendship for me. You were the first person that was my best friend. We shared everything, from our dirty secrets, to insecurities, to lunch boxes. Oh, those delicious lunch boxes your mom made that gave us the taste of home as we sneaked in between classes to gulp them down secretly! I vividly remember how we used to make code names of our crushes in school to talk openly about them in public, how passionately you talked about Taylor Swift and every day hummed a new Taylor Swift song, never caring about who could be around you or how you might be sounding. You were always true to yourself, and I feel it in my bones that you still are.
I often dream about us reuniting in the backdrop of a blissful evening, in a faraway land. And in those dreams when I hug you, I get the notion that this is happening in real life and that I have finally met you after such a long time, and I feel so happy as I sense that there’s no awkwardness- just two very old best friends sharing a beautiful moment. When I wake up, my more logical consciousness doesn’t care enough to reach out to you because we don’t have anything in common anymore. We are now two strangers sitting two worlds apart getting indulged in entirely different things.
Life as a single child can get pretty lonely at times, especially when you think about the prospects of the future without your parents. You understood and probably related to this, maybe that is why you’ve always stood out for me. Both of us deeply understand the value that friendship carries in our lives, so much so that we, very quickly, tend to think of our friends as family. I guess this thinking is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because we genuinely want to put effort into being a good friend, even though sometimes we might make humane mistakes like everyone else. A curse because many times we may burden ourselves as well as other people with our idealistic standards of friendship. In situations when people don’t meet those standards, accepting and moving on is the best thing to do rather than succumbing to the possibility of them changing their values to fit our standards, don’t you think?
As much of an emotional nutcase as I am, I have accepted that all friendships and relationships are bound to change with time and there’s nothing we can do about it rather than embracing the lessons we have learned in the process. All we can do is love and appreciate those that are around us in the present. I hope that you too are surrounded by people who love and appreciate you and make you grow for the better.
And who knows, if fate would have it, we might meet again to share a blissful evening at a distant land’s Central Park, enjoying the food cooked from your mom’s recipes with Taylor Swift’s music playing in the background.
-Your long-lost friend.
