Hopping on the train

She gets married on November 30th.

I don't know how I met her. Just like I don't know how I met my sister or my parents. She has just always been in my life. I was born just two months after her, and came to inhabit the apartment two floor above hers. I think her mother gave me my first vaccines. At least I remember being 4 and being told "come let's go out and see the rainbow" and then finding myself down in her apartment screaming bloody murder as I realized I'd been tricked into entering my best friend's home under false pretenses. I remember getting scared of thunder and lightening and, for some odd five-year-old reason, running up four flights of stairs with her so we could cower in my house, instead of taking the sensible route and climbing up four stairs to cower in hers. When I visit I tell her mother to cook x, y or z. I have that right. I call her older male cousins "bhai". I tease her younger brother about whether he has a girlfriend. He calls me "tai". Her parents are "aunty" and "uncle". As are mine to her. She remembers my sister's birthday. I can still talk about everything from boys to politics to homosexuality with her. Our views are sometimes extremely different, but that tradition of respect and agreeing to disagree and the knowledge that there is no judgment allow us to have an honest exchange of ideas. The things I do, she would never imagine. The things she does, I would never imagine. And yet we can sit on the sofa, toes curled under the pillows, once every year, immersed in conversation.

She gets married on Nov. 30th.

He sounds great. She's so happy. Her family loves him. I want to hug her and scream excitedly and help her plan her wedding and hang out with him and get to know the future Mr. A, to make sure he is as kind and wonderful as she says. To confirm that he'll understand her incredible independence and that he won't take advantage of her extreme loyalty and love. To set my mind at ease that he'll appreciate the beautiful sparkling imaginative creative intelligent loyal independent amazing honest darling woman she is. To meet the person I expect to have in my life for the rest of my life because of his connection with A.

But.
A part of me is jittery, selfishly so.

Because this is how it starts.
Sure I have other friends who are married.
But this is real now.