I found a picture of us today in a scrapbook I made years ago, that lay in the depths of my old room’s desk drawer. That polaroid we took years back at the base camp in Manali during the camping trip we went on before we parted for college. We were 18, insecure and awkward and despite our smiling faces, you could see in our eyes the setting in of a fog of realization. The realization of the sheer steepness of the hill we had to trek up and the realization that there was a possibility we were both better off at home with our home-cooked meals and our washing machines and our rooms and our families… and that maybe independence was overrated anyway and the vastness of nature and the abundance of paths that lay ahead of us were too much of a good thing… that maybe we should turn back right now, go to your house, sit on your comfortable and oh-so-familiar sofa, and snicker as we re-watched our favorite sitcoms forever. But we did it anyway… I remember how the two of us held hands throughout the climb, stumbling over rocks together and laughing at how far behind the rest of the group we were…
I remember the day at the airport where we hugged for the last time and you whispered into my ear a promise that you would always keep in touch. I was too naïve to recognize the power of distance and the sheer emptiness of promises at the hands of fate. And I was too blindsided, as were you by the newness of things and people and places. And when calls reduced to messages that reduced to nothing but a shadow of a past comfort, our lives unfolded at double the speed; degrees, internships, friendships, relationships. But sometimes at night, I would think of you. How we would laugh so much about nothing, how we would talk so much about everything… and how much I really, really missed you… And I would always contemplate texting you but always come to the inevitable conclusion that I had nothing to say to you anymore. No string to tug on that would revive the tapestry of our past friendship. Anything we say now will be but a sad imitation that would cloud good memories that should be left well enough alone.
I hold now this picture in my hand as if it were an artifact. As if it was something I excavated from the site of an old civilization. A memory of a yesterday that shone a light for every step I took moving forward from that moment. A memory of a happy childhood and a consciousness of the strength your presence gave me, the remnants of which still linger in me today. I have nothing but gratitude for you, smiling back at me and I only wish I could hear that same laugh and feel the warm embrace it gave me again. And I soaked for a moment in the bitter-sweetness of it all before I stashed the scrapbook somewhere where I may discover it again.
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