The truest parts of me aren’t tucked away in a single place; they live in the people I love, scattered across cities and continents.
No one really tells you that friendship can break your heart. Not in the cinematic, all-consuming way we reserve for romance, but in a quieter, more persistent ache, the kind that settles in when you realize growing up also means growing apart.
The friendships I made growing up are stitched into my sense of self. They’re the reason I laugh the way I do, why certain songs still make me cry, and why I know who I am when everything else feels uncertain. I’ve always thought of myself as a mosaic of the people I love, and the pieces that fit most firmly are the ones shaped by those who’ve known me the longest.
When I left Mumbai for university in Kingston, my biggest fear wasn’t the academics or the loneliness of a new country; it was losing my friends, the ones who tethered me to something real.
We scattered across North America—San Francisco, New York, Illinois, Kingston—each of us beginning a new chapter. No one warns you that long-distance friendship isn’t one big heartbreak, but a slow one: when “I’ll be there in five” becomes “Let’s FaceTime next Thursday,” and catching up turns into scheduling, especially with different time zones.
But I’ve learned that this distance also demands intentionality. It forces love to grow teeth, to hold on, to stretch without snapping. When I started earning from my part-time job, I began saving for trips to see my friends. Plane tickets became our love language.
My most recent trip was to San Francisco, to see some of my girlfriends after more than a year apart. These were the same girls I used to eat lunch with every day in high school, back when we’d use “rehearsing for a school performance” as an excuse to skip class and hang out in the amphitheatre, talking about everything and nothing. Back then, friendship didn’t require effort; it simply existed.
Now, instead of complaining about teachers or planning rehearsals, we found ourselves talking about how hard the world is to live in—job insecurities, rent, and the soaring cost of living. There was something poetic in that: the familiarity in surviving the changes that the world imposed on us.
We spent four days trying to fit a year’s worth of updates in between karaoke, wandering Sausalito and our mandatory doomscrolling breaks. We screamed to Super Bass by Nicki Minaj, off-key and unapologetic, like we were 17 again and later negotiated which part of a giant photobooth strip each of us would keep from the K-Pop photobooth we stumbled upon in a Japantown shopping center.
Out of all of the memories we made on that trip, my favourite ones were the in-between moments. The mornings, with last night’s eyeliner, the late nights we stayed up to talk until we literally could not keep our eyes open. I felt the weight of our friendship the most then. There’s a kind of intimacy in being known by people who saw you before you started trying to become someone.
From being reunited with them, I was reminded that old friends don’t just fill your cup—they hold up a mirror to it, showing you yourself more clearly. They remind you of the parts of yourself you didn’t realize had gone quiet.
I came back from that trip broke, running on little sleep, and yet profoundly full.
When I unpacked my suitcase, I found more than dirty laundry—a crumpled plane ticket in the back pocket of my jeans, a disposable camera waiting to be developed, a kajal pencil that wasn’t mine, and tiny gifts for friends who’ve started to feel like home here. Somehow, all these small things felt like proof that my past and present could coexist.
Home, I’ve realized, isn’t static for me. It isn’t a singular place I return to anymore; it’s the people whom I’m returning to. The ones whose lives I get to witness as they grow and evolve in new cities. The ones who make unfamiliar places feel lived-in simply by existing there. It’s in the playlists that outlast the summer, the group chats that resurrect themselves a dozen times, the phone calls that start with “You’ll never guess what happened.”.
And maybe that’s the most adult kind of love there is. To miss someone deeply and still let them go where they need to be. To love across time zones without demanding proximity.
I know I’ll feel this ache again after I graduate—another scattering, another reshaping. Maybe one of us will end up in London, another in Toronto, another somewhere I can’t imagine yet. But I’m not afraid anymore. I’ve learned that friendship, like love, expands to fill the distance.
And just like that, I’m already itching for the next flight.
Tags
friendship, home, Long distance, San Francisco
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