The struggles of having a long-distance best friend are numerous and far too plentiful. My best friend and I have been separated (on and off) since August of 2014, and I miss her every day. From the late-night Arby’s runs when we both got done with practice to the sleepovers with peanut butter M&Ms (no other M&Ms were acceptable), the separation has been awful. The only pros are when she comes home, or if I get the chance to visit her. Which isn’t often. What else do you go through when you miss your bestie?

1. Not getting to see your best friend.

Obviously. Separation anxiety includes extreme amounts of texting, phone calls, and Skypeing. Eventually it dies back down to the normal (huge) amounts of texts per day, but you still miss their hugs and companionship and shadowboxing and mind-reading skills.

2. When anything bad happens, you can’t be there to help your person unless you can drive several hours.

3. When someone insults them, you can’t immediately jump to their defense — but you can jump on Facebook and stalk the offender.

4. Speaking of stalking, when they get a crush on someone that you can’t meet, you will stalk the newest crush as much as possible.

It’s a law, boys just need to expect that the crazy best friend back home will know where they live within 20 minutes.

5. You can’t give good advice on some things because you don’t actually know the people they’re talking about.

Except through social media.

6. When they do come home, you hug so hard that both parties might get bruised ribs.

And that's okay with both of you.

7. You have a new appreciation for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Labor Day, Spring Break, MLK Day...really anything that gives you an excuse to go home.