The community I built

Moving away after 26 years in this city is hard

Although our world is hyper-connected due to technology, a lot of people are still yearning for connection.

True human connection that builds into sincere friendships with random text messages, video calls, and inside jokes takes time to form. Sometimes, it takes years.

I’m lucky to have built a community around me that I’m grateful for. It was not easy and took years to build, but I don’t feel the dearth of human connection. In fact, I feel like I have it in abundance.

When I was in college, I had a vision of what my friendships would look like. I’d have friends from different stages of life, different groups who don’t know each other, people who share at least one of my interests, and people who share none.

This week, while meeting many friends for the last time before I move, it’s evident that my vision came true. My community is varied and filled with sincerity.

My school friends who have now split across cities but still make the time to meet when we’re in the same place. My big college friend group who are super fun to hang out with. My reader friends that I met on Instagram who have become my support system. My badminton group made up of people of all ages (25-65) where every person treats me like a sister/niece/daughter (I’m the only girl in the group!). My friends from my first job who became more than colleagues quite soon.

I have the community I dreamed of, and I’m sad to be moving away from them.

This isn’t goodbye. I’ll try to come to this city often and meet my friends. But it won’t be the same.

Unfortunately, some relationships depend on short proximity. This is especially the case with high school and college where friendships were made with those who sat nearby and who shared the most classes with you. Not all of them end when classes end, but quite a few do.

One of my close friends currently is someone whom I became close to after she moved to a timezone with very less overlap. But it worked out, because we both put in the effort to stay in touch and not mind the time difference and distance.

Similarly, the school friends I’m close to now are the ones whom I wasn’t close to during school, our friendship grew only after we all graduated college. On the flip side, I’ve grown apart from the girls whom I was super close to in high school.

Everyone has a different path to take in life. When our paths cross, we have the time to make a connection and we have to hold on to it when our paths diverge again.

As the date of my move and the start of a new adventure approaches, I’m hoping that the community I built here over the past several years doesn’t fade. I will build new friendships in the new city and perhaps reconnect with old friends who moved there, but I still don’t want to let go of the community that I built here.

All I can do is be intentional about staying in touch with my friends here and hope that they do the same.

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Catch up on…

Chapters of 2024 — Wrapping up in 2024 in hobbies, travel, social life, & more.

My Newsletter Journey — How I started, learnings, & looking ahead.

The Sword of Kaigen Book Review — I loved this book and had to write a review on it.