Let's start with a pity party. My best friend's family decided to move from their current home in Maryland (where I live too) to Florida. It is about to be our senior year in high school, our "last hoorah" before we take on college (who knows how far apart we will be then). Now she is 833 miles away and all we can do is FaceTime. We can survive this, no problem we will just text, call and FaceTime continuously, right? Right.
What we didn't account for is while things continue to change in Maryland, without her, things in Florida are changing, without me. She is meeting people I don't know and our friend group and I are making more memories without her. I wonder: how can this possibly work?
If living situations change obviously people will change too, I thought to myself. This in my mind meant my best friend would be gone, she would change and we would suddenly have nothing in common. We would not be on the same softball team anymore, we wouldn't go to the same school anymore, we wouldn't start school on the same day anymore, we wouldn't have the same weather, so how could could we ever keep the same friendship?
It's time for me to end my pity party and realize that worrying about what could go wrong and focusing on the negatives won't bring my best friend back home or make it any easier to remain best friends. My best friend will always be my best friend because we both won't let ourselves drift apart. We are working to keep our friendship and to share our new memories with each other.
I didn't lose my best friend, I just see her a little less. And yes that sucks, but we can get through it. That's what best friends do, they take what the world throws at them and laugh, cry, curse and talk about it. My best friend will always be my best friend. No distance or time progression will change that unless we let it, and we won't.
Long distance relationships, whether romantic or friendly, are hard (most of you are probably thinking “well duh”). Bare with me I'm not just going to complain the rest of the article. Long distance relationships are possible, all they require (I know this is hard in this generation) is effort. Growing up we always hear the term “you get what you give” I apply this to long distance relationships. You get the effort that you give, if you fight for your friend or your lover, it will be very hard to lose them.
So I will still have my occasional pity party when something great happens and I want to run and tell my best friend right away, but I will quickly recover and instead of run and tell her I will remember that I can call her. It's not the same, but it will work.
