My erstwhile best friends

As I scroll down the news feed on Facebook, I see a lot of friends. If I had to categorize them, this is how I’d do it:

a. Close family members and friends about whom I’d know even if facebook wasn’t there.

b. Classmates and friends whom I haven’t met since the last day in school.

c. Friends of friends who are now my kind friends, the kind I wouldn’t meet without that one common friend.

d. Friends I have never met in my life but became friends on facebook somehow so now we are friends who never meet.

e. Friends who were once only coworkers. Or coworkers who could never be friends.

f. Neighbors and their friends.

g. (And this is the most interesting of all friends) Once best friends.

Well, there aren’t many of them. But I do visit their profile every now and then to see what’s going on in their life. And there is also facebook sending you daily reminders of how life once was with them through “See Your Memories”. I never miss out on seeing my memories. It tells me how life has changed and I often wonder how and when it changed so much.

I guess we all have these “best friends”. Friends who were so much a part of our daily life once that we saw our entire life together. We’d never miss out on an opportunity to catch up with them over a cup of tea or a bottle of beer. We knew they’d have our back no matter how tough life got. Then, before we even realized it, we drifted apart. If facebook wasn’t there now, we wouldn’t know where they were.

This post is dedicated to my best friends whom I don’t meet anymore. If you had written this post instead of me, I am sure the thoughts and feelings would be mutual.

We were friends and that’s the fact we can never change. We may not see each other or talk so often and there’s nothing wrong with it either, I suppose. May be it is just that we chose different paths for ourselves and our paths don’t meet anymore. Do you sometimes think about me and wonder what went wrong? Cause I do the same. Look back at old photos and see how we were so inseparable! So, when and why did we part our ways?

As I write this, I am thinking to myself, may be that was the destined life span of our friendship and just because it lived so short and didn’t last any longer doesn’t mean it was less meaningful. The purpose of our meeting may have been fulfilled and to say the least, your presence in my life has definitely left a large impact. A much of what I do and what I am today is because you were once a part of this life. I may not get a chance to say this again but thank you for being there.

I believe a part of growing up is prioritizing our work over everything else. We may not wish to but work becomes very important for us and we choose to compromise with our relationships rather than compromising with our work schedule. Also, we meet a lot of people whom we start considering as more important and closer. We may have also chosen to give our date a miss because we thought something or somebody else was more important. So let’s not judge each other for those choices. I am sure you are the same person I became friends with you for. And trust me; I am pretty much the same. If we were to meet again, I hope things would be the same too.

Here’s hoping that our paths cross again and we’d be what we once were although for a while. The Best Friends!