Time May Fix Everything But It Doesn’t Fill The Space Left By Your Best Friends Moving On

After finding my best friends at work, I thought we would stay the same for life. But, I was mistaken and 4 years later, I still miss them.

I grew up in a defence colony, so transfers were quite common. Every year a few friends would go away and a new batch would come in. That is probably why I never really had many close friends, except a few.

Every year my friends and best friends would move to a new city, a new school and make new friends. And every five years even I would do the same. That was our normal, we would get close, some would even be old friends meeting again.

I finally found ‘my’ people

Anyway, after college, came a job, I got my job location and moved out of my parents’ house. By this time, I was used to the concept of the same friends. And while I bonded with many of them, a few of them became especially close. In fact, all of us are still in contact even today, almost 10 years later, thanks to cell phones and the internet.

Staying on our own was hectic and that is when I began to trust people who weren’t family. It started as a necessity but we started to bond, slowly. There were roommates who knew about my late-night snacking and crying due to homesickness. And there were colleagues who understood the pain of being a fresher.

During this period, I was lucky to have met some good people who guided and helped me mould myself while accepting the change. The transition from being a pampered princess to a woman army was a painful one, but I liked what I learnt on the way.

But i was yet to meet my absolute best friends

A few years ago, after I completed three years at my job and was living with two amazing roommates. One of them taught me to be a little more ‘girly.’ Trust me, I barely knew how to apply nail polish. When she asked me to do it the first time, she almost cried and pledged to teach me to do it!

Never miss real stories from India's women.

Register Now

My other roommate was a head-strong woman I idolised. She fought her traditional parents to be able to work instead of getting married and turn into a baby-making machine like her sisters.

It was around this time that I met my best friend and it was such a funny thing! We had been working at the same office since day one and had interacted a few times. But we never spoke much, except about professional matters.

A few years my senior, he had excellent technical knowlege and basically all the freshers idolised him. He was our go-to guy any time we got stuck on something for too long. I got to interact with him directly when we were selected as a part of the team that had to take care of a project at onsite.

So a friend of mine, I and him were off to join the rest of the team. Since there were only two girls, the rest of the guys ensured that someone would escort the girls to and fro from the office which was far from our hotel.

The other girl was his batchmate so they knew each other and I felt odd for the first few days but they helped me overcome it and treated me really well. In fact, being the youngest they treated me like a kid.

They got me a cake on my birthday and celebrated the day with me as they knew I missed home. In fact, they also handled my tantrums at times and cooked food for me. Those were the best days and it always felt like they were my foster parents or my God-parents.

It was fun while it lasted

It was all fun while it lasted but as time passed, things changed. We came back but we stayed in touch over the phone but it wasn’t really the same. With time and my mindset, we all moved on, changed jobs and moved to different cities. But this time, something felt different, I didn’t want to move on, but what else could we do, with time, all of us had changed and so had I.

It wasn’t easy but as the saying goes, ‘time heals all wounds,’ this wound too was healed. I still spoke to them ocassionaly and took advice. We shared details of our lives but then they got married and we got even lesser time together. Plus, the guy’s wife wasn’t too fond of him talking to two women. Soon, he also dropped out of our conference calls. He started to avoid us and eventually stopped answering our calls altogether. Slowly, the girl and I also stopped talking, though there were a few messages on New Years and Diwali, that was all.

Today, I miss them more than I could imagine

Today, it has been four years to this and I miss them. I miss the days when we would just sit and chatter about our future and laugh about it. All that was so much better and I regret not fighting harder to keep us all together.

Today when I see youngsters sitting with their friends, I remember my friends and I wish we could’ve stayed best friends. But maybe it wasn’t meant to be.

Thank you guys, for being there and I am really very sorry that I didn’t try to make our friendship stronger. It was amazing while it lasted and those are the memories that made that part of my life worthwhile.

In school, on friendship day, we never had enough friendshop bands to tie on our friends’s wrists. And today, I have those bands but what I don’t have are those friends. I really miss all the friends I lost when I moved on, every time someone started to drift, I should have tried to pull them back and stayed connected. But it still happens even today with all the technology we have.

All you people out there, there a lot of us who live without families but you always need friends. So don’t drift away from them. Try to stay connected and put that effort in or you will end up regretting it a few years down the line. And for all you know, your friend might be regretting it too!

I know we can try and connect again, but it is never the way it initially was. Even when we try to rrekindle it for old time’s sake, everything seems forced, the friendships just last for namesake. 

Picture credits: Filtercopy’s video on YouTube

Comments