Friends

The ones who know me well – people who were once my close friends and the people who are still my close friends – will know that I have difficulty maintaining friendships. If I were to define my life in the friendship scale, I’d say I’m way below…maybe at -30 on a scale of 30? I’ve lived a life that is largely lonely with months of friendship in it. 

Why am I like this? Well, when I was younger I just travelled so much between two countries that I could never really keep a friend. I was messed up between two very different cultures that put very different pressures on me. I was ‘uncool’ throughout my childhood and early teens simply because I never fit in. I loved and kept losing friends. My closest friend in Syria moved on to find other friends. My closest friend in India moved on to the States. I didn’t quite mind this at that time… I had enough noise in my life to let this go by unnoticed. When I joined a high school in India, I knew I as in for the rough ride. I was already struggling with enormous low self-esteem, cluelessness, depression over my aunt and cousin’s tragic death, and was downright ugly. I was the hairy, fat, dark kid in class. Then I found someone. She was sitting next to me staring at some girls playing badminton during PE. Then I found another one. She was in the drama society with me. It was the first time I felt like I belonged to a ‘group’. Somehow when I got to my undergrad, I messed it up. I didn’t know the rules for maintaining good friendships. I thought it was them. With hindsight, I know it’s me. I didn’t fit in..again. Maybe because I didn’t know what’s it like (or what it takes) to fit in, in the first place.

That’s okay though, coz in my undergrad I made other friends. I lost a few as I am wont to, but I held onto one. She somehow stuck with me through my undergrad and longer. But she got busy. She moved to Dubai. Later, I got cross with her long enough to shred the friendship down to a few messages. The first year in the UK doing my Master’s, I was so busy looking elsewhere that I took a long time to discover my first long-term-with-no-bumps friend. Then I had to leave and come back to India. I remained lonely. Somehow I wasn’t too bothered by that. Guess I was busy enjoying the whole ‘recently returned from abroad’ status. But towards the end, when I thought I may not get any scholarship to do my PhD, I started to get scared. I was unbearably lonely. I kept blaming myself for not sticking it through with anyone. It rendered me clueless when faced with opportunities to make long-lasting friends. It was all my fault. 

Then the UK happened to me again. No one gets what the second trip to the UK did for me. No one understands just how magically and permanently it changed me. I made friends. I rediscovered some old friends. I finally fit in. Maybe it was the age I was at, my desperation, or the scholarship validated me…but I started thriving. I realized while some of my previous friendships withered because of me, but for the most part it was because I was in the wrong society. In the UK, I belonged. I finally found people who get my messed up Indian-Western ways. They found it entertaining, endearing and fun. I was loved. I found my place.

Then I came back to India. Leaving all that makes me happy behind in the UK. I’m not saying that I have no friends at all, but certainly no one who has the time to build that strong bond. I made a meaningful life for myself there with people who genuinely cherished me. Here, there’s no time for it. Here, I will never fit in. Back then, there was not a single day I was lonely. Now, there is not a single day that I am not lonely.