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Shivalika Misra

Shivalika Misra

Chronically expressing myself through blogs

Forever My Girls

3 min readJun 6, 2026

One of the biggest decisions I had to make during my college years was to move into a hostel.

Me? A girl who had never lived away from home.

Even though it was just three hours away, the idea of not being able to come back whenever I wanted, even if just for a day or two, felt unbearable. I had never imagined a life where my family wasn’t right there.

I still remember the day my dad came to drop me off. When he turned to leave, I looked into his eyes, and I just broke down. He came running back and hugged me, and in that moment, the thought of not seeing him every single day felt impossible to accept.

But somehow, I held myself together. I chose to step into something unfamiliar.

And maybe that’s where everything began.

On the very first day, I made a friend, who then introduced me to four more incredible people. And just like that, I found my home for the next three years. My roommate? She became my sister. From the first day she moved in, we spoke for hours, and somehow, we never stopped.

The six of them became my home away from home.

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And the best part? I never felt the need to look beyond them. I was happy. Completely, deeply happy just being with them, living life with them.

The memories we made… especially birthdays, so chaotic, so stressful, and yet, at the end of it all, just pure happiness. The kind that stays with you.

And my roommate changed me in ways I didn’t even realise at the time. It was funny how our roles flipped. I am the younger one in my family, yet I often act like the elder. And she was almost like a younger sibling.

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If I stayed home for too long, she’d call and ask when I was coming back. And if something ever happened with her, I’d feel it deeply because somewhere along the way, she stopped being just a friend. She became family.

People used to be a little scared of me when it came to her; they knew how protective I was, and how I wouldn’t hold back.

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And the funniest part in all of this? For 6 months, one of my closest friends was also my roommate, and for the past 3 years, my sister, my best friend, and my classmate have been the same person.

She’s genuinely one of the smartest and most creative people I’ve met in recent years. She has this spark to always try something new and work hard at it, and she constantly pushed me towards doing the same. Whenever we had group or pair assignments, we always teamed up together because we already knew how well we worked as a team. We used to divide tasks based on our strengths and capabilities, and somehow it always just worked out naturally.

But college taught me something I’ll carry forever: girl friendships are different. They’re not just friendships; you hold on to them like a part of yourself.

These girls changed me. My perspective, my habits, my way of living. And the trips we took? Unmatched. The drama, the chaos, the madness, I would do all of it again in a heartbeat, to relive those moments with them.

I never thought I’d miss hostel life this much.

But I don’t just miss the place.

I miss my people.

I miss my home.

And no matter where life takes me, I know one thing for sure

I will always love them.

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Shivalika Misra
Shivalika Misra

Written by Shivalika Misra

Chronically expressing myself through blogs