Before I went off to university, I fretted. I worried. I almost didn’t go. I was convinced I was making the worst decision of my life. Arriving in my prison-style room didn’t help either. A ten-day quarantine meant missing freshers’ week, the time when appetites for friendships are at their highest. I was certain I’d blown it, that my one chance to find friends was gone.
Looking back, I’m sad about how I felt. My eighteen-year-old self had no idea where life would take me. I wish he’d seen the curve while he was on it.
When my brother left for university, I started writing him a little document of advice. I never finished it. One note I did leave was about survivorship bias. People rarely account for it when they tell you their stories. You hear, ‘I met my best mates at uni and so will you!’ Forgive the cynicism, brother, but there’s no rule, no guarantee. You don’t hear from the ones who didn’t. And you never know if you’ll make it through the wreckage yourself.
But somehow, I did. It didn’t matter that I missed the first week, or that I was stuck in my own head. It didn’t matter because in the end I met my best friend. I met Rob.
Sometimes I wonder how it all came to be, and what would have happened if things had gone differently. If I’d taken a year off, or chosen another university. Maybe it would still have worked out. Maybe if it weren’t Rob, it would have been someone else. Or our paths might have crossed later. But I’m glad I live in this life, the one where they did.
Early on, my conception of friendship was something like this: you have a set of characteristics, and pursuing other people with those same traits leads to friendship. You map the world by looking for people like you. With hindsight, that seems like a poor way to approach the world. By chasing similarity, I often missed out on compatibility. And for my own sake, surrounding myself with people just like me now feels boring compared to the contrast of meeting those who are different, trying to understand them better, and getting to touch their reality.
I had this shift because of Rob. He was the working-class boy from Birkenhead, the first in his family to go to university. It wasn’t a life I could relate to. Perhaps even my own privilege made me uneasy, almost defensive around him. My loud mouth and constant self-deprecation felt like a poor match for his quiet nature. Rob speaks in a deep voice but so softly that it often takes me two tries to catch what he’s saying. I end up reading his lips. He never had to read mine to know I felt lost in that part of my life.
There was nothing pointing towards us being friends. If we were at a party, I don’t think anyone would have tried to connect us. They wouldn’t have said, ‘Rob, meet Gaurav!’ Neither of us would actually have been at a party anyway. We would have been in the library instead, working for hours. Him stuck on some piece code that wasn’t working, and I mostly not understanding the law. Yet somehow, we collided and cared for one another, two paths heading in different directions that still crossed.
Friendships, much like people, mature. Ours began in a way that wasn’t especially healthy. I idolised him. He was the rock in my life when I had no rocks. He convinced me to try therapy; I copied his mannerisms; I even started to speak with a faint Liverpudlian twang. But as I grew more into myself, I began to see him more clearly. I saw the rock crumble. And I could be his anchor, loving and caring for him when he was down.
One memory is burned into me from when he broke up with his partner in London. He came down to Bristol to see me and crash at mine. We sat together, watching a fake fireplace flicker on the TV, while he opened up about what happened. I’ll always remember the embers and orange glow, the broken black couch, with the armrests that had cracking seams, the blanket wrapped around him. I didn’t have to say much. I just had to sit. We had to, just, sit.
Past this point, our way of communicating had become very direct. I haven’t always been clear in how I speak, or sure of where to set and loosen my boundaries. But with Rob, I slowly learnt how to say what was on my mind. It means we can have difficult conversations, but also be utterly silly with each other. We can play smart and dumb in front of our friends – me tossing out nonsensical claims, him roasting me and laughing at the absurdity, until everyone else is caught into our whimsy too.
As the idolisation faded, admiration took its place. What makes Rob, deep down, my best friend is his virtue. He cares about doing the right thing and never wants to hurt anyone. Even though we sometimes differ on what ‘the right thing’ means, or on how far one should go to stop harm being done, he still tries to act with integrity. He thinks carefully about how he treats others and wants to spend his life improving the world. I can get behind that.
From the outside, our friendship looks sturdy – a ship built to withstand the gusts of wind that send other people drifting apart. No matter the distance between us, or how busy our lives get, we make the effort to be there for each other. In some ways, our friendship feels easy. It even seems as though, if we stopped trying so hard, we would still be close. We’ve come to know each other so deeply that the bond feels unshakable.
But this ease has meant taking my foot off the pedal. I’m always excited for our weekly calls and would never miss one unless I had to, but sometimes it feels like we don’t talk about much. Maybe that’s just the product of calling so often. As he speaks, I sometimes open a tab. I check Slack. I don’t sit and listen. I’m half-present, half elsewhere. Even when we met in person recently, I caught myself checking my phone several times. I was distracted. I was uncomfortable. Because it feels easy, I haven’t, in a while, sat with his full presence – to pause, to look, and to say: there he is. Even if we aren’t drifting, my attention often is. Pulled towards the rest of the world, to distractions that have little to do with the person I want to become – someone fully present with the people in their life.
I do not want this to be the default. Friendships, like any other relationship, should feel intentional, and I am scared of complacency or of taking things for granted. He is near me, he is in front of me. Where am I in all this? If I can’t show up and be there for my best friend, what does that mean for the others I hope to know intimately and deeply?
Friendships don’t usually have breakups. You don’t usually tell the other person, we should stop staying in touch. You just…well…stop staying in touch, and it becomes nothing. Ignore, and it is forgotten. Ah – I see now what I am afraid of. I am afraid our friendship will turn into nothing. That I will never meet Rob again, or another Rob. Sometimes paths cross only to move apart again.
Rob likes to use the cliché saying, ‘Just because something comes to an end, doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth it.’ I imagine if we stopped being friends, we would say that. Friendships end for all sorts of reasons. Maybe we’ll start skipping plans and forgetting about one another. Perhaps one of us will move away from the UK and making plans will become too hard. More morbidly, and eventually, of course, we will die. And even then, this friendship will have been worth it.
But I don’t want to let it slip from my hands. I must learn to be content with its finitude, while also recognising that it is precious. That I must be there with him, for however long this lasts. I hope I never look down to see what I’ve dropped, but instead look up and say: Ah Rob, there you are.
EDIT 10/09/25: Fixed a few poorly written sentences.
EDIT 14/09/25: Typo