The Group Chat Knows it All

There’s a safe space in my life that is not marked by geography, blood, or logic. It is marked by memes, stickers, voice notes, and those 2 am texts sent with zero punctuation and maximum emotional damage. It’s not a place, it’s not a person. It’s the groupchat, and it knows everything.

Like everything.

It knows who made me cry in January 2021 (and again in July 2022). It’s where I soft launched my emotional breakdowns and hard launched my delusions. It contains the digital footprints of my lowest lows, highest highs, and that one phase I don’t talk about where I thought doing arts and crafts will solve my identity crisis. 

It’s the only place I can say, “guys, I think I’m in love.” and immediately get hit with: 

“Girl no” 

“He ghosted you” 

“He’s a man, babe” 

“This is terrible idea, girl” 

Iconic. Tragic. Healing.

And most importantly: home. 

Because that’s what it really is, home, not defined by four walls, but by who shows up when you’re not even making sense anymore. It’s not always gentle. Sometimes it’s brutally honest. Sometimes it’s emotionally feral. But it’s always safe. And that’s a kind of love that shouldn’t be taken lightly. It’s a kind of love that doesn’t get romanticized in movies, but it absolutely should. There’s nothing casual about the way women show up for each other. Nothing ordinary about the way they hold space, not just for your joy, but for your shame, your weirdness, your rage texts about someone who did you wrong. 

These friendships are made of stupid inside jokes that span years, an archive of voice notes that could be submitted as evidence, and the knowledge that if anything, anything goes down, someone is already typing, “Do we need to break some bones?” They’re made of silent check-ins, mid meeting “you okay?” texts, and midnight breakdown and in depth explanation of each and every single coke studio song (if you know, you know). They’re built on meme and emotional telepathy and the very specific kind of comfort that only comes when someone has seen you spiral and still wants to hang out with you.  

There are entire chapters of my life I wouldn’t have made it through without these women, the invisible pillar behind every version of me. How often I’ve been one bad day away from creating havoc, and a single “we’re here, if you want to talk” saved me from it. They’ve  been the soft landing, the tough love, the running commentary to my coming-of-age arc, and somehow they still have the energy to hype my outfits, validate my red flags, and remember how much I love 2000s R&b music. Name a man who’s ever done half of that. Yeah, good luck. 

And here’s the thing, I know in a crowd full of people, their cheers will be the longest and the loudest. Like I'll be onstage, holding back tears, and they’ll be in the back screaming “THAT’S MY GIRL!!!!”  like it’s the Grammys and I’m up there for Album of the Year, even though I just gave a work presentation I'm really proud of. Every Mehak deserves that. Every girl deserves a bunch of besties who hypes her up like she just solved world peace in kitten heels. 

There’s this idea that female friendship is dramatic or temporary or built on gossip, and to that I say, sure. It’s dramatic. It’s chaotic. It’s occasionally unhinged. But it’s also one of the most consistent, tender, spiritually grounding forces in my life. I have loved and been loved by women in ways that made me believe in softness again. In ways that made me believe I’m allowed to be messy and still be loved. In ways that made me realize that even when everything else feels shaky, me and my homegirls are solid. 

We don’t talk everyday. Sometimes life pulls us in different directions and we forget to respond for three business weeks. But the love never dulls. The connection never fizzles. When we pick up again, it’s like no time has passed, just more tea to spill, more Pedro Pascal edits to share, more books to dissect and more feelings to untangle. 

So no, I don’t have it all figured out. My life is like a rotating grill of existential crises, bad impulse decisions, and questionable food choices. But I’ve got these women. My counsel. My witnesses. And as long as they’re around to tell me, “Mehak, you’re not insane, you’re just emotionally aware,” I think I’m gonna be okay. 

We talk about soulmates like they’re romantic, but honestly? The truest, most loyal, most healing loves of my life have been the women who showed up with matcha, makeup, and violent optimism. Women who sat with me in silence when that’s all I had to offer. Who laughed with me so hard we cried and cried with me so hard we laughed.

I don’t know how I got lucky enough to find them, these chaotic, warm, brilliant women who somehow understand every single version of me. There’s a version of me that didn’t make it here. She exists in another timeline, the one where I had to do all of this without you. And I’m so glad I don’t know her.

To the group chat: You’ve held space when I couldn’t hold myself. You’ve laughed at my bad decisions and then help me rebuild myself. You’ve sent love in the form of Instagram Reels, and light in the form of brutally honest voice notes. You’ve never asked me to shrink, never made me feel too much.  

You’ve seen all the versions of me, and didn’t look away. 

And I wouldn’t want to be seen by anyone else. 💛