Right before my 12th board exams, I realised that I would have to move away from home for college. I always knew that I would move out for college, but the reality never hit me. The city I desperately wanted to leave had started to become familiar and more welcoming. This had only started when my friends took me to unique places hidden in the city, and that was when I was seventeen. Too late to be falling in love with the place you’ve spent your entire life in, right? The memories with my friends in the city held greater value than the city itself. I also realised they wouldn’t be in the city anymore to continue making many more memories here. I had always been an emotionally distant person who wouldn’t get attached to people easily, but this realisation just clicked something in my head.
I had fooled myself into thinking I was keeping an emotional distance from my friends when, in fact, I had fallen into the unintentional ploy of loving them and the memories we shared. There was another wave of realisation that nothing would be the same when we all met each other again. I will be different, they will be different, the problems we have and the city we grew up in will all be different. This made me realise that everything I miss about them is just reduced to a memory, a figment of my imagination that was once true. This thought made me conclude that I would never miss my friends, but instead the moments we once shared.
I was never able to share these thoughts with them, but here’s a note I think of sharing with everyone who had been a part of my life before college.Â
I hope I am engraved in your memory. I hope you look at yourself and are reminded that I was once a part of your life. No matter what the future entails, whether we drift apart, have a massive conflict, or never talk to each other, I wish to haunt you. I hope you look at the places we’ve been to, the things we talked about, the scribbles in each other’s books, the items we’ve given each other, and the photos, and remember me, fondly, I hope. I hope you never miss me, as I will only be a thing of your past. Relish in the nostalgia, but never forget it. We all move forward. You and I are both of the future, and the past never repeats. So, never miss me because moments are only precious when they’re never going to happen again. We’ll either make new moments or we’ll just brag about the times we had with each other. We were bygone strangers once entwined; I wish to never see you again.
It’s too dramatic of an ending. I still do wish to see them, but change is inevitable. I wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t see each other again, but I will always treasure our memories.