I would be lying if I said this was my first post on a blogging site.

Six years ago, I did have a blog on the now defunct Xanga. I still have the site address, and some of the posts are still there. However, I’m going to keep that a secret since I’d rather be the only one who knows. I shared it with my best friends - Emily, Kayleigh, and Kelly. Sometimes, I still browse the site just to see how I was years back. The last entry was dated December 20th, 2006.

As I’m reading, inevitably, a smile will creep onto my face as I glimpse into the inner workings of my 14/16 year old self. It’s hard to imagine that so many years have gone by. Here’s an excerpt:

Haha, so much for Saturday… you have to call me and tell me all about it. And yeah I gotta tell you some stuff too. Hehe. Both you and Sahithi are coming to my party and not sleeping over. Sillypants.

You are completely insane, AND you need to write on here more. Or else. *hires assassin* MY ASSASSIN WILL GET YOU!

Wow, that was odd.

-Buzz

That was a comment to a post I had written. I was reading through the other comments… and there were a few from Dan Weston and Brian Gerst. Dan, who I had known superficially since 9th grade recently committed suicide. Brian… I don’t know where he is now, but he was arrested a few times in high school and did drugs. Also, he may or may not have shown up to the first day of school drunk.

It’s weird not only to see glimpses of my younger self, but also glimpses of others. At that point in time, those people were reading my post and formulating a comment. At that point in time, they had not committed suicide, done drugs, or been arrested. What changed from the moment they commented on the post to now? What had they gone through to result in their life decisions? I can’t help but long for the days where our biggest problems consisted of geometry or coinciding birthday parties. 

One of my biggest flaws is how often I get nostalgic. Especially in times of difficulty. Currently, I’m 3 days into my first day of medical school. I had gone in on Monday with my characteristic optimism - determined to not repeat my failures with the MCAT. It’s Wednesday now, and the optimism has long left me and been replaced with a feeling of emptiness. That and nostalgia.

Not helping the feeling of nostalgia is the return of my childhood friend, Madhuriya. She is coming from India on Saturday to start school in the New Jersey Institute of Technology. I can only wonder how she is feeling coming to a new place since I have been in her shoes before. Being an immigrant is a funny thing. People assume that perhaps because I came at age 7, it wouldn’t be so hard to assimilate. And they would be right. It wasn’t hard to learn the language and culture. I even made friends. However, that elusive label of best friend has been bestowed to a few.

But I doubt even they truly know me like Madhuriya does. She is roughly 3 months older than me and an only child. Almost every childhood memory of mine involves her - taking dancing lessons, singing lessons, playing hide and seek, running barefoot on the streets. She has seen a part of me that none of my current friends have known. She knows where I came from - the street where I fell and scrapped my knees, the blue/green colors of my childhood home, my love for climbing rooftops. She knows the part of me that no one ever will. Every time I see her, my heart skips a beat, and I can almost smell the street where I grew up.

One post would not do justice to my experiences with her. So I won’t try. Besides, I should get back to what I was doing before this. Studying embryology. Alas, the reason I finally started the blog that I had been promising to start for a while is because I was looking for distractions. Nevertheless, I’ll pick up writing another day.

I hadn’t realized how much I truly missed writing. My name, derived from a Sanskrit word, means literature. I guess I will start living up to my name. And who knows, perhaps many years from now, I’ll look back at the ramblings of my 20-year old self and smile.

<3