Beginnings and Endings

Hello friends 🙂

So I’m sitting here at my desk the day after my best friend’s wedding and feeling a little bit nostalgic and sad and with my heart a little bit heavy. It’s the beginning of a new year, but it’s also the end of holidays for me. Today marked the beginning of going back to school for me, but I took an extra day to recuperate from the late night festivities of the wedding last night.

For the past few months, I had been counting down and looking forward to yesterday night with great anticipation. After my best friend told me she was getting married, it was the highlight of my year, the thing I was looking most forward to. Like a few other things in my life that I anticipate highly, I couldn’t imagine how I’d feel the day after. I had planned for it like any other party, as I helped her with party planning and decorating. In all the excitement and anticipation, I forgot the fact that she was actually leaving and moving to New York. As the wedding began winding down last night, it only hit me then that she was actually moving away and that her life as a single girl was quickly drawing to a close.

And while I don’t mean to sound all depressed as I write this, but it really is the end of a lot of things. It’s the end of carefree days, spent hanging out in our rooms, just talking for hours on end. It’s the end of driving to downtown Toronto and getting lost but not caring anyways. It’s the end of dreaming of fairytale weddings and princes sweeping us off our feet. It’s the end of seeing each other almost everyday. It’s the end of an era.

But for her, it’s a new beginning. The beginning of a new life and a new relationship. The beginning of a new family and a new city. The beginning of a new era.

These are all the thoughts that flew into my mind last night, as I cried and hugged her tightly during the sending off, or rukhsati ceremony. And even though I know that I’ll be seeing her in a few hours for her reception, or walima, I know it won’t be the same. The next chapter of her life has already began, and the blank pages are just waiting to be written on.