- By – Gayatri
It all started with friendship. Doesn’t it always? 😉
2008 – 8th class it was! The usual chattering, fun, teasing, and you know how the school is!
2008-2015 – We became the best of friends. It was a group of 6 best friends! Sounds like F.R.I.E.N.D.S, doesn’t it?
Well, it was somewhat likewise too we had the sarcastic one, the fun guy and the uptight one like how they all say but we all knew we had each other’s back!
And in these years I didn’t realize I had my chandler next to me until he was getting fonder of Rachel. Yea, that’s my twist now.
He was going nuts over my best friend, but it eventually didn’t turn out well, and I became the superwoman to this chandler with my shoulder. So that’s when all the gut-wrenching and secretly loving my best friend turned out to be a for real.
Things are complicated, but only if we let them get complicated. Over a few months, he realized, ‘I have had Monica beside me all this while.’ and that’s when the actual Chandler and Monica happened!
It all started with a hug, a hug full of love, warmth and a promise of never letting go!
2016 – We were together!!! It was beautiful to realize what you have been waiting for has been along your side all this while! Best friends turned lovers, how cute and exciting! The best part is how we could just have the best of both worlds at once, you mad at your lover? Switch mode to best friend and talk from that perspective and vice-versa.
The first kiss, the first date, the firsts; I know how people talk about their firsts. But with us, funnily, we don’t remember any of our firsts even till date because that’s how lovely it was; every meeting was like the first one but, a little more meaningful, every kiss was like the first one but a little more expressive, every fight was like the first one but ended with a bit more understanding.
Not that it was all sugar and roses, we had our downfalls, but we never let the ego ever come in between us, that’s another benefit of being best friends now, isn’t it? You give them a whack of a reality check, and they are back to their feet.
2018 – That’s when the short distance turned to long distance. Oh yes! It isn’t easy, primarily when you used to meet that person every day and now you must meet them virtually!
But those six months were the best wherein I was surprised with appearances and trips along with which came a lot of life lessons, which were learnt.
One of which was, ‘Long distance is more than video calls, they are about how you love & how long you can overlook everything unnecessary that asks you to let go;
how at the end of the day coming back to the ‘i miss you’s’ makes you fall in love all over again and lastly, how the feeling of their longing presence looks all worth it with that hug when you meet them!
2019 – It’s funny, how we didn’t propose each other even till date but still ended up with what we have today! That special bond! It was still as strong as ever, and everything always felt like the firsts.
2020 – Here we are today! In a dilemma! Neither of us had thought this is how it would end! But with all the pain we still put up a smile on each other’s face because we realized more than lovers we longed each other’s friendship and that isn’t something we were ready to sacrifice for the world. He was a keeper, and I didn’t want to let go of him. But he was the crazy best friend who loved me too much that he was ready to let go of the lover because we knew that was the best for us. He was the one who would stand beside me through my worst and the best. I have seen his teenage stupid love and heartbreaks, but this was more than any of it. From being there as a shoulder for crying to giving me a lecture for something wrong, it was always him. And that idiot told me, ‘He would choose the best friend crazy over the unfortunate relationship drama that was meant to come, any day’. Sometimes letting go of a gem of a person feels like the burden of the Earth but realizing the worth of a real best friend over a lover is not to be overlooked ever.
It is the toughest, especially when you find both the lover & best friend in the same person. But circumstances and situations mould things in such a way that we don’t see the beauty of letting go right now but we will when the time comes and what we need always comes to us more than what we want.
So that’s when I realized why people say, ‘If you don’t ever want to lose your best friend, don’t fall in love with them’.
And for all the people who say that lovers can never turn into best friends? Once you realize they are the magic spell which you can’t lose or have otherwise, it becomes easier to let go off the lover because a real best friend always stays!
Penfluky 