When I first got the news that my friend was going abroad to study and her manifestation had finally borne fruit, I was on cloud nine. The joy and euphoria of knowing she had finally made it overshadowed the harsh reality that she would soon be far away from me.
The feeling of missing her slowly started to creep in when she actually went away. Trust me, the distance doesn’t hurt as much as the time difference does. In school, everything seemed to last forever, and there was a genuine hope that we would keep interfering in each other’s lives and never leave each other alone. It was easier when the only distance between us was our different home addresses. Now the different home addresses have changed to different countries, and different countries mean different time zones.
Her tired nights are now my active mornings. My good mornings are delivered to her when it’s time for her to call it a day, while I receive her goodnights when the grumpy morning me still wishes it was night. My hectic afternoons are her relaxed evenings when she sits and makes all her pending calls. Earlier, we used to reply to each other’s text messages as soon as we could. But now the same replies take almost a day to reach us. While the chatterboxes in us crave a heartfelt tête-à -tête, the adults in us are constantly swinging between work and studies and are unable to make time for each other.
While the video calls, the voice notes, and the phone calls do help in staying connected, what I truly desire and miss is her physical presence, the conversation which did not depend on our internet connectivity, and just the mere fact that she was there, just around the corner whenever I stretched my hands. One thing I am certain of is that when we meet again, we will still be the same for each other. The Chilean writer Isabel Allende truly articulated my feelings when she said, “True friendship resists time, distance, and silence.”