A friend out there.

I’m trying as much to not write about breakups out here, but there have been more breakups than relationships in my life so I can’t really help. 
So.. this happened sometime last year, I don’t even remember when, but it was around winter. I was on the web, surfing aimlessly, looking for someone to talk to, because I had just broken up. I wanted to talk to her, but she had blocked me on her phone and everywhere else she could. It’s like the only person I talk to about sad things in life became a sadness I couldn’t talk to anyone about.

I didn’t want to be a burden on my brother, he’s had a lot of my breakup stories and we always end up smoking a cigarette on the office couch or my terrace talking about the good times we had together. I wanted to vent, and I thought maybe, maybe there’s some service on the internet where you can talk to a stranger. So I googled “talk to strangers online” and all I got was omegle and a bunch of other dick-posing-contest websites. I didn’t want to see them dicks, so I kept looking till I stumbled on this website I don’t quite remember the name of. Some blah therapy or something. Place for depressed people to talk to other depressed, maybe not so depressed people and vent.

As soon as I logged in, I saw two options. “Vent” and “Listen”, and though I wanted to vent, I pressed listen. Call it ego or whatever, I did what I had to. So I talk to this person who’s quite frustrated with life, and people in general. We spoke for a bit and I started opening up, and eventually ended up venting out everything about the relationship and the breakup that followed. We had an intense conversation for about an hour, and things finally started to cool down. That’s when we asked each other our names and figured where the other person was from. I really didn’t expect I would be talking to someone from Pakistan. I thought it might be someone of British origin because of the phrases and spellings used, but it turns out that TV shows do influence people.

Finally it was time to say goodbye, but since things were anonymous, there was no way we could stay in touch. I wanted to ask for a number, but then I thought it would be too rude. What if the other person does not want to stay in touch? But I got an instagram handle, so I followed that immediately. Didn’t want the chat history to be gone by the end of the chat.

The next day we spoke on instagram, and more asynchronous conversations followed after that. I got to know more about Karachi than I had ever known before. She told me about her parents, annoying little sister and this charming brother of her who’s now following his dreams in the fashion industry. As we spoke, we knew more about each other. We skyped, instagrammed, whatsapped and what not. And there hasn’t been one dull conversation between us.

We share a similar taste in music, that we realized once we started sharing youtube links, which gave birth to this insane playlist called “affinity”. This is a plain old youtube playlist where we both keep adding tracks, some we have heard before and some we haven’t. And like every depressed person, music has always been by our side when things are trembling in life.

I still remember that one night when she texted, she said she just wanted to talk. I knew something was not right, but we still spoke till we fell asleep. She’s that one person you can talk to on a rough day and hope that tomorrow will be a better one. And even if it’s not, she’ll still be there listening to you bitching about your new boss who’s an asshole or that you regret hitting your brother when you were seven.

We still speak to every now and then. I still snapchat her ugly pictures of me. And we still keep adding good music to that shared playlist of ours. We may or may not ever meet. But I know, whenever she needs me the most, I’ll be there, and she’ll be there for me too, just 30 minutes behind my time zone.

If you’re reading this, This one’s for you..! Thank you for being there for me on the darkest of days and lending me your light.