Long-Distance Best Friends

My best friend and I have been long distance for more than a decade. 

When my family moved from the only town I’d ever known to a new city in the winter of 2009, I was excited, albeit nervous. I didn’t have many friends at my school, and I was looking forward to remaking myself at the ripe age of 12.

On my first day of sixth grade at the new school, I was paired up with a girl with dark hair and brown, almond-shaped eyes. She had a contagious, room-filling laugh, and we immediately became best friends. She guided me through my first few weeks and helped tremendously with the mid-year transition. 

When you’re twelve years old, it’s easy to find a best friend. We were probably a bit too old for recess at that point, but we would stand around on the playground equipment and talk about everything from boys to my life at my old school to my first impressions of my new classmates. She told me who to steer clear of and introduced me to the people I should know. 

Within a few weeks, I was acclimated and making more friends, but she was the one who stuck the closest. My mom would pick us up from school, and we’d work on homework at my house until her mom got off work and came over to pick her up. During that time, we had countless sleepovers and did virtually everything together. 

Through our middle school years, we played basketball together—she was the one who encouraged me to try out for the team, and I ended up falling in love with the sport. I played on the school team for six years and played three or four seasons of travel ball with AAU. It even sparked a dream of playing basketball in college, and while that never came to fruition, I don’t regret the time I spent on the court. 

Freshman year of high school, we parted ways. I stayed at the private Christian school where we’d met, and she enrolled in public high school. I was worried. For the past two and half years, we’d been joined at the hip, and I wasn’t ready to go to school every day without her. 

Over those four years, we both expanded our friend groups and got involved in various extracurricular activities. We stayed in touch and still spent a fair amount of time together, but it was markedly different from the after-school routine we’d fallen into in middle school. 

Then came college, and I moved to Virginia—nearly five hours away. She stayed close to home, and I visited her at school a few times. We’ve had seasons where we don’t speak much and seasons where we talk every day. Now, we have a constant conversation going that’s made up of text messages, voice memos, and the occasional phone call. Every time I go home to visit my family, she is part of that visit because she is my family. 

Her parents have also been folded into the family. Her mom is my mom’s best friend, and they see each other more often than I see my best friend. They get together to do craft projects and go thrift shopping together. Her mom threw my mom a surprise birthday party a few months ago. Her parents even went to an REO Speedwagon concert with my dad this year. They came to visit me and my husband just for the fun of it. 

Long-distance relationships are hard, but they’re worth it. When you don’t have as much time with a person, you value the limited time you do spend with them. 

While I’m always going to want to spend more time with my best friend, I’m grateful for the time we do have together and will always treasure the memories we have together—both good and bad.