I had seen other people do it.

People move, people travel, people relocate, and somehow friendships survive. So I assumed ours would too. We had history. We had memories. That had to count for something.

At the beginning, it felt reassuring.

Messages came in. Calls were returned. People asked how I was settling in, joked about accents changing, joked about time differences. I felt carried, like I hadn’t really left anything behind.

But slowly, the effort started feeling one-sided.

I would check my phone and realize days had passed since anyone asked how I was really doing.

I was the one sending updates.

The one asking questions.

The one trying to keep the thread alive.

Nothing bad happened.

No fight.

No misunderstanding.

Just less effort. Then even less.

At some point, I stopped reaching out first, just to see what would happen.

And that’s when I noticed how quiet things became.

It hurt in a way I wasn’t prepared for.

Not because I felt abandoned, but because I felt replaceable.

Leaving home didn’t just change my environment.

It showed me which friendships were built on proximity and which ones were built on intention.

Some people stayed.

Some people didn’t even leave. They just stopped moving in my direction.

And accepting that was harder than adjusting to a new country.