Having long-distance best friends is extremely difficult. Anyone who has maintained a friendship, 20 or 2,000 miles away, I am sure, would all say the same thing. It absolutely sucks (excuse my language).
I have endured the unfortunate situation where my best friend from high school lives exactly 726 miles away and when my four best friends from college graduated, they also all moved away.
To go from spending every second with your besties (we lived together) to seeing them only once every couple of months feels like a piece of you is suddenly missing. To make such a drastic change in your life definitely takes a lot of getting used to.
A long-distance friendship takes work, I will not lie about that. It tests your friendships with each and every person. You see who is really going to be there for you at the end of the day and, for this reason, I am extremely grateful for the distance. I have been so lucky to see my friends living in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Arizona, and even Canada be there for me through thick and thin almost like they are right by my side, literally.
The next negative of long-distance friendships is how quickly your phone battery dies from having to FaceTime every day. My high school best friend and I are constantly FaceTiming because obviously if she gets a new pair of shoes, she HAS TO show me. This is all fine and dandy until its only eleven in the morning and your phone battery is down to 16%.
You would think Apple would really keep us long-distance best friends in mind when they are designing their products battery life. Rude.
Don't get me wrong, there are some upsides to these kinds of friendships. When you haven't seen your best friend in eight months, getting to visit with them is just that much more exciting. You never run out of things to talk about and you get to hear every detail about what they have been doing for that long while.
Although I would do anything in this world to bring my best friends from all of their homes to Charleston, it has been such a pleasure seeing them chase their dreams. After all, you know what they say. "If you love something, let them go."
As sad as I have been watching my best friends in the world pack up their moving vans and head off to "do their thing," I would not trade my long-distance friendships for the world. I feel closer to them than ever before. Even when I don't speak to them every day, or maybe not even, every week, I know when I need them they'll be hopping on that plane.
To my long-distance best friends, I love you.
