“I dislike the phrase, ‘Internet friends,’ because it implies that people you know online aren’t really your friends, that somehow the friendship is less real or meaningful to you…The measure of a friendship is not its physicality but its significance. Good friendships, online or off, urge us toward empathy; they give us comfort and also pull us out of the prisons of ourselves.”

- John Green

Every now and then, life gives you a really cool day. And every once and a while, those days can be really, really cool days. This week gave me one of the coolest days of my entire life: getting to meet my Internet best friend in person after five years of friendship.

Listen, I’ve heard it all a million times, and I’m sure you have, too. Everyone on the Internet trying to talk to you is a middle-aged predator male who wants to kidnap you, right? And, on the slight chance that the person on the other side of the screen isn't a predator, those friendships through the medium of technology aren’t true, genuine friendships...right?

Wrong.

Don’t misunderstand me, here. Always exercise precaution online, because there are predators out there. But they could also be the people living in your neighborhood. Should that stop you from trying to meet the people on your street? Absolutely not! The Internet has given us access to people all across the globe sharing our interests and our passions. We should be utilizing it as the tool of connection that it is. Who knows, you might even make a close friend or two. That’s what happened for me!

About five years ago, I was a freshman in high school. A freshman who really, really liked One Direction. I loved the band so much that I actually started a One Direction blog. (Embarrassing, I know, but I was fourteen, give me a break.) I followed a bunch of other One Direction blogs, and it was a neat fanbase to be a part of. One of the blogs I followed was run by a girl named Lauren, and after some time of following one another, we started talking.

I guess a little backstory is necessary, here. I moved to a brand new place and started a new school my freshman year. At the school I had previously attended, I’d made several good friends, and I was very sad to leave them behind. Starting a new school in high school is crazy hard, and I’d never felt more alone in my life than when I started the ninth grade. Interestingly enough, my friend Lauren was also struggling with some friend issues at the same time, and she was also a freshman in high school. Even though I lived in Arkansas and she lived in California, we were both fourteen-year-old girls dealing with the same issues and the same feelings.

Lauren and I talked every day, that first year. I think we FaceTimed for the first time in the spring of that year, and it was definitely a relief to know for sure that she wasn’t actually a pedophile. As the years went by, we lost that tight knit communication. While we still would catch up every few weeks or months, we had both moved one with our lives. We had both made other friends and felt better about school, and we (obviously) stopped running our fan blogs. This being said, I cannot put into words how thankful I will always be for my friendship with her. She was the friend I so desperately needed during a time when I felt like I had no one else. She encouraged me, laughed with me, and helped me understand that I’m not the only person who deals with the things that I do. That’s what a true friend does. Despite the fact that we could never have sleepovers or hangouts or even hug one another, she was—and still is—my friend.

All this to say, I found out this year that I would get to go on this research trip to California with a few students and professors from the Social Science department at my school. Excited, I sent Lauren a message telling her the different places we’d be staying and asking if it would be possible for us to meet up. Turns out, one of our locations was only fifteen minutes from her university, so we arranged a time and place to get together.

I was actually kind of nervous. Would it be super awkward when we finally got to meet in person? Would she think I was weird? Would it be like how I always hoped it would be?

Turns out, it was exactly how I’d always imagined our meeting. We saw each other from a distance and then hugged (finally hugged!!) for a solid twenty seconds, laughing about how crazy it was to see one another outside of Instagram. We fell into conversation as easily as old friends...which makes sense, because that’s what we are. Old friends.

Don’t let anyone invalidate your friendship with someone because of distance or the circumstances from which you befriended one another. Friends are the people who love and encourage you, who make you a better person. And if you someday find yourself on the shore of California sitting in the sand and laughing at the days when you ran a One Direction fan blog, you’ll consider yourself lucky to have a friend like that, indeed.