I used to think California was a dreamland until it kidnapped my best friend since high school for two years and counting. Not only has it done that, but it hasn’t even blessed my bestie with bumping into Harry Styles for me. I feel cheated.

All jokes aside though, there is nothing easy about having a long distance friendship. Birthdays are just days with a “special” text and holidays really hold no extra weight. Time differences make it near impossible to have a normal conversation without one person falling asleep. As if that wasn’t difficult enough, trying to find the time to talk between my classes and his being fully employed to keep the United States safe is truly a struggle.

That being said, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Why? Because it takes a truly strong bond to last two years without seeing each other. It takes an even stronger one to only exchange about 1,000 words a day. But when one of us falls between a rock and a hard space we are the first ones to crush the rock down to little pebbles and get the other out.

There are some friendships that don’t even have that face to face, let alone with thousands of miles between them. And what about that time difference? I have that late-night-crisis-friend we all dream of, because when I need someone in the middle of the night, he’s probably awake. Don’t worry, it isn’t a one way street. His middle of the night is my early morning for class. Technically the time difference makes it even easier for us to communicate.

To trust each other across country can be scary and people would probably think our friendship has deteriorated over the years. It hasn’t. Being away from each other has almost made it easier and more compelling to confide in one another because there is no risk that the person we need to talk about or the event that has us stressed out will get back to its cause. There’s an extra element of trust when you know that there is no way for your secrets to get out to people who matter…not that we’d even tell them anyway.

When he left almost two years ago to join the Marines and eventually end up where he is now, I thought I would die without him being five minutes away from me. Who would I hang out with? How would I get last minute rides to places? What would I do when I was bored? I cried for weeks. Even the letter I got from him was not enough to make me recognize that I would never lose my friend. It was months after he was gone that I realized I wouldn’t lose the friendship. No matter what life threw at us, even judgment from other people that lead to us not talking for two months.

Until one day, I found out he was going to another state. Even further from where I was. My heart sank. I really was never going to see him walking through the halls or his car in my driveway. So I broke. I texted him. I wished him luck in the new state and told him how much I missed our friendship. Thankfully, the rest is history. We picked back up right where we had left off. It hit me that I didn’t need thousands of teenagers who I would never see again to approve of a friendship that made me feel strong and safe. That was what mattered, not other people’s opinions.

Two years later we haven’t grown apart. We haven’t decided to just talk sometimes. We talk every day. Our friendship isn’t without the occasional fight where one of us ignores the other, and we certainly still miss each other (me more than him.)

There isn’t any way to really explain the experience of never seeing your best friend. There’s no words to define the mix of emotions that comes with having a best friend in the military. And there is certainly no way to cover all of the pain, tears and anger that has gone into maintaining this friendship from day one. But even with all of that, nothing will ever surpass the happiness, safety and relief I feel when I talk to my best friend—no matter how far way he is.