1o years. May be 14.

Today is 21 Nov 2025. I am not sure if this post will be published today or later but I am drafting this today.

I pinged someone I had zero contact for last 10 years. Perhaps 15 years. I cannot be sure. I have some messages from them from 2010 but I know I was still on Facebook in 2014 so may be there was some communication then.

I deleted Facebook around 2014-2015 or so. I will talk about it some other time. But it was because of the social pressure of “performance”. Anyways.

So this week I pinged them. We chatted for a while.

First few minutes were about what is happening in our lives. Ofcourse a but surprises from both sides about certain life events. The first 2-3 hours was a constant back and forth of chats. Asking questions. Trying not to delve too much in personal life but still asking about whereabouts. Questions about past, present, but still trying to be “professional”.

I felt alive. I felt a spark. If you are reading this I want you to know that I reached out because I wanted to. And I wanted to for some time.

Initially it was about catching up. Questions. Answers. But then it slowed down. Not many questions. General answers. The spark, atleast for me, was still alive but the chats slowed down.

Why?

I guess when you reach out to someone after a decade you owe them an explanation. I did not have any explanation. I do owe one though.

I agree that I cannot justify what I have done – disappearing for a decade, coming back and expecting a “fun, warm, friendly banter” as if nothing happened.

So much happens in a decade. So much happened with me in a decade. I got married, had kids (recently), moved many countries, traveled around, bought property, made many new friends (rather acquaintances), forgot how my hair look best, became a corporate soldier, had tough times personally and professionally etc

I can clearly feel the other person feeling the same. Thinking what to talk about when so much time has passed. Thinking what to ask and what not to ask. Thinking which lines to cross and which ones not too.

Thinking which pain from the past to bring out and which one to hide.

How can you reconnect with someone who was absent when you faced a decade of life alone ? Why to reconnect with someone who was absent when you faced a decade of life alone ?

And why would you trust someone who conveniently disappeared for a decade and then conveniently reappeared expecting everyone should pretend as if it was not a long pause in between.

1o years. May be 14. A lifetime almost. A boy becomes a man. A girl becomes a woman.

But the mind plays it games. It is playing with me too. It is convincing (or trying to convince) me that this lost decade between us is full of stories I can talk about to them. They dont know any of them. I can become a new person. I can make anything of the decade worth of stories. I can talk and talk and the stories wont end, there is so much to talk. These stories may spark a connection.

But that is not the case. The realities of life and the responsibilities of life soon catch up with you. At 40, you are not going to jump in bed after reaching home and continue the chat where you left if off. The people around you, who are your present, demand you, your time. There is work to be done, dinner to be cooked, kids to be entertained, parents looked after, things to be done.

So while I dont know whether my chat with my freind will continue or whether we will ever connect again, I am going to leave this post open ended. Just like life.

PS: Writing a post like this is a way for me to tell my older self in the future about what was going on in my life. I am writing this for posterity. And a little hope that this reaches to the friend this is about.