My best friends and I met at a birthday party in sophomore year for a girl named Tina. Did we know Tina? Absolutely not. But there we were, huddled in a stranger’s basement, eating cheap cupcakes.
There are some people who come into your life so quietly you don’t realize they’ve become part of you until it’s too late to imagine things without them. Even if it’s only been two or three years, they feel permanent. Like they arrived just as you were starting to come undone and stayed long enough to witness you stitching yourself back together.
Baltimore gave me that kind of friendship.
I came here expecting college to be full of firsts, the kind you plan for. But I wasn’t prepared for how much of it would live in the in-between. The long kitchen conversations, the rides to nowhere, the dinners where we never sat down at the same time but still called it “eating together.”
I wasn’t prepared for how much of college would be shaped by the people who stayed up with me when I couldn’t sleep. The people who knew what song to play when I was spiraling, and those who knew whenever I needed company.
2637 wasn’t just an address: It was the place my best friends and I created life.
It was the place I came back to when everything else felt like too much. It was the couch where we cried, the hallway where we danced, the kitchen where something was always either baking or boiling. It was where we figured out how to be.
Somehow, in trying to become adults, we became something softer first: a little family.
It’s strange how quickly routines take root. After two years, I’m now used to the alarm system that chimes a bit too loudly as the door opens, and I know how to avoid stumbling over the massive pile of shoes by the stairs. I look forward to the texts that just say “anyone home?” and don’t need a response. Even our silences had texture to them. We learned the rhythm of each other’s days, and, in between it all, we learned how to care for each other in ways that felt quiet and holy.
It was never about grand gestures. It was the ordinary stuff. Molly dropping a flower on your bed without a word or Asmi sitting on the floor folding laundry while telling the same story for the third time or Janya stealing nail polish without asking or Kavya boiling an extra cup of water every morning.
We weren’t always easy on each other. There were days we got it wrong. We said too little or too much, and we shut down or disappeared for a while. But, somehow, we always found our way back because underneath it all was a love so steady it didn’t need explaining.
Living with my best friends taught me how to hold people through their mess and to let myself be held in mine. We knew who needed soup, who needed space, who needed to be told, “You don’t have to be okay yet.” We celebrated each other’s wins like they were our own and sat in the losses like they were shared.
I used to think growing up would be about doing big things. Now, I think it’s about learning how to sit at a table with the people you love, ask “How was your day?” and mean it. It’s about lighting a candle and waiting for someone to come home. It’s about choosing each other on the boring days, too.
These friendships changed me. They taught me how to love people without conditions. They made me less afraid of needing others. They made me feel safe in my softness and seen even when I didn’t say a word. And when I look back on this time, I won’t remember the classes or the campus tours or even the big milestones. I’ll remember the way it felt to come home to a room full of people who were glad I walked through the door.
So, to my Baltimore people: Thank you. For the car rides to get ice cream, the quiet check-ins after disappearing for a few days, the long debriefs, the way you loved me when I didn’t know how to love myself. For being the best part of all of this.
So, to Asmi, Janya, Kavya and Molly: I don’t know what comes next. Our lease is ending, and our time here is, too. But I do know this: We lived something real together, in that little row home at 2637, where the floor creaked in all the right places and the people inside made me feel like the luckiest version of myself.
I couldn’t have asked for anything more. I love you, 2637, and I’ll miss you forever.
Aashi Mendpara is a senior from Orlando, Fla. graduating with degrees in Neuroscience and Medicine, Science and the Humanities.