Eggs and baskets.
For the last few months, whenever my mind has wandered, that’s where it’s settled.
Eggs, baskets and the distribution of one into the other. To be more specific, it’s been a constant, internal back-and-forth about whether I’ve thrown so many of my eggs in a single, overflowing basket.
You see, yesterday, one of my best friends in the whole world jumped on a plane and set up camp and soon, a life, in a world where I don’t directly exist. A world where her local coffee shop won’t be one I’ve ever been, her home one I drop by in and her work one I enthusiastically drive-by on days I know she’s bored, but perhaps I’m more so.
It’s a funny thing, the kind of grief you feel for a loss that isn’t one. She’ll always be a phone call away, never more than a message. I’ll visit her and she me and I know our lines of communication will never falter to a point where she wouldn’t know my coffee order had, for example, changed.
And yet, here I am at just 23, wondering whether the intensity of our friendship is the biggest blessing or the deepest curse. Because with strong bonds come keen losses when they move far away. And she’s moving far, far away.

Perhaps I first realised how deeply I would feel her moving when I began to tell my colleagues about it. I began checking myself when I started telling my cousins. And then, well, I started telling my hairdresser. It kept falling out of me at every moment; every wide grin extolling my excitement for her big move concealed a tightly-wound knot that had lodged itself in depths of my stomach. What now?
Top Comments
Yes, it is hard. I was the one to move away and believe me, this was just as difficult as if I'd been the one left behind. All I knew is that I had to branch out, that I wouldn't want my friends staying put because of me and that they would feel the same. It's been incredibly hard. I so miss our coffee dates, our weekend rituals and that if we needed each other we were never far away. I'm so grateful for technology and planes. It's been a little over a year now and nothing has changed, although everything has.