There are many of us that are suffering an entire semester without our best friends. They are off playing in a foreign land while we are stuck on campus writing endless papers and crying in the library. Each relationship may be strained by a difference in location, but we all feel the same way about life without our friend, and go through the same phases while dealing with their absence.

Phase 1: Denial

First, you feel like it’s just a big joke. Come on out Ashton! My friend can’t possibly be 4,000 miles away from me for an entire semester. Any minute now they are going to barge into my room, jump on my bed and ask me to go get lunch.

Phase 2: Incompleteness

Then, you begin to feel like a part of you is missing, at the dining hall, in class, in your suite. Your life is missing a certain charm or spunk or sarcasm. At first you can’t put your finger on the source, but as you look at pictures from the Eiffel Tower or the Blarney Stone and it hits you. Separation from your friend makes you feel separated form reality.

Phase 3: Tears

You start to wonder if the day will ever come when your friend gets to return to you. You imagine it as a sort of climactic, slow-mo, reunion where one of you jumps into the others arms and everyone around you cheers. And that makes you even more upset because you know your friend would get a kick out of that.

Phase 4: The Countdown

Once months trickle down to weeks, the excitement starts to set in. You mark your calendars and set an app on your phone, calculating how many days left you have to live without your friend. 18 days 27 minutes and 48 seconds? You can totally do that!

Phase 5: The Reunion

It happens just as you imagined it. You sprint towards each other in what feels like the most dramatic movie scene in all of history and their hug is just as warm as you remembered it. Maybe no one around you is cheering but they should be because you two are about to pick up right where you left off.