Friends Forever??

There is a saying which goes like this- ‘You don’t realize the actual worth of something unless you part with it.’. I had always been a believer of this saying in the theoretical sense but recent past has made me discover its practical veracity.
Sometimes you tend to take some things for granted. You feel that whatever may be the case, somethings wont change. Somethings are just meant to be permanent. And then one fine day you wake up and find that the static has changed. Your whole world falls ap[art. All of a sudden your plans become a distinct vision and all you are left with is the agony of that loss.
Life is such a trivial entity that predicting English weather seems an easier chore than to predict the course of your life. Borrowing from a famous quote I’d say ‘Life is like a cricket pitch, you never know which way they will turn.’ And perhaps the only thing which brings a bit of stability to life is the presence of friends. Being surrounded by friends is a unique experience. When you are down and out, they lift you up. When you are skeptic about something, they clear the air and your mind. When you fall back, they trudge you ahead. When you have a hand which grabs your shoulders when something bad happens to you or the hand which pats your back when you achieve something good, you know that you have a friend watching your back. And believe me when I say this, having such hands can be an addictive feeling. Never get held on to it and least of all make it a habit, because one fine day it will happen. Those hands go away. You fall back and there is no one to catch you, you are drowning into the sea of misery and there is no life boat you can latch on to. What you thought would never leave you, suddenly vanishes into thin air, leaving you gasping for breath. And that’s exactly the time when you are swept away by the deluge of memories, the ghosts of past haunt you, you see the invisible hands which prodded you. You begin to realize their worth and you actually miss them. You want to say so many things but never got the chance. You want to thank them but they are not there to hug you and say ‘Its all right.’
You get this sinking feeling as if the dam is about to break. You feel as if you are hanging by a thread and that you went over your head. An acute migraine develops and you close your eyes.
After a while it all starts sinking in. you see things clearly. You try to understand their prospective. You realize that the time has come for you to be for them what they were to you. You have to be the invisible hands for them now. You take the personal suffering in a stride and push them ahead. And at the end of the day you lean back on a chair, staring into the dusk that’s settling in, looking at everything but seeing nothing, with a thin grin on your face, feeling happy for your friend, getting over your misery and finally the thin grin replaced by a wry smile, knowing that you’ll be there for them when they need you no matter what.
You have moved on because life….goes on……