Blog #100: The Beginning of the End

Well holy cow... this is my hundredth blog post! We've reached triple digits, folks. I can't believe 100 days have passed since I started writing these. One hundred days of laughter, singing, dancing, cooking, walking, talking, crying, traveling, and little sleep have been documented, and though it seems like so much, it also feels like it lasted less than 30 seconds from beginning to end.

Speaking of which, this hundredth day also marks the beginning of the end, at least for this adventure. My dear friend Mary Alice left today, marking the first of many difficult goodbyes. The fact that she was leaving didn't really register with me, and even now, I'm not exactly processing the fact that I don't know when I'll see my little nugget again. After spending every day together for the past four months, it's difficult to imagine day to day life without her in it.

Mary Alice truly changed my time here in India, and helped me to grow and change as a person. She is an instigator of self-reflection, a driving force of self-betterment that is motivating and energizing to be around. Honest and kind, she is a friend I am so grateful to have found.

Alas, I've already cried a lot today, and have already written to Mary Alice the most important things that needed to be said.

In the end, when things were good, it's always bad. Good friendships make for hard goodbyes. But, I'd rather have a hard goodbye and truly wonderful friends than an easy goodbye with people I never connected with. The depth of my sadness in leaving these friends merely speaks to the depth of our friendship, reinforcing my gratitude to have even had them in the first place. The fact that I'm this sad means it was all really worth something.

As the surprisingly wise Dr. Seuss once said, "Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened."

I always think about this when I'm faced with a tough goodbye, and even though I still usually cry, I see it as an opportunity to appreciate the happiness and joy that inadvertently caused those tears. I can dwell in my sadness, letting myself be consumed with the crappiness that endings are, or I can appreciate all of the wonderful things that I'm sad to leave, and be grateful to have even had them at all. So, I am choosing gratefulness. And, even though I am still crying, I'm also smiling.

I'm smiling about all of the time I got to spend singing with Mary Alice. I'm smiling about our coordinated dance moves as we learned how to make chana masala with Dr. Chakraborty. I'm smiling about the time she saved my life by making me oatmeal in the morning before class and the time we spent together screaming for Bengaluru FC and the time we acted like maniacs in the front row of a Salim Sulaiman concert and the time that we performed a Bollywood dance in front of a thousand people and couldn't stop smiling and the time we spent together just being in each other's presence. Because of all of this and so much more, I'm smiling.

So, in this period of endings, my goal is to continue finding gratitude for everything and everyone that has come into my life in the past four months. They have been filled to the brim with wonderful memories and some of the greatest people I've ever met. And as I leave it all behind, I will keep smiling because it all happened, and wow... I'm just so happy it did.

I'm also smiling about the time Mary Alice and I performed some sort of water aerobics/synchronized swim?