Friendship is a bittersweet topic when you graduate high school and realize that all of your friends are going to follow different paths. Some of them will stay in town and others will leave, but despite the distance… is it still possible to keep a friendship? I think that it is possible—you don’t have to talk to your friends every single day and restrict yourself from making new friends on your journey to do so. I think the biggest advantage of having technology is that you can keep in touch with your friends more often and be aware of their life through social media posts (I genuinely think commenting on your friends’ posts is a way of keeping in touch). I’d like to share my experiences with long-distance friendships and what I learned from them to help other people who are going through similar experiences. help other people who are going through similar experiences.
A 13-hour Time Difference
I met my best friend the first day of freshman year in high school and at once we made a beautiful connection because we were both in the same situation: two foreigners from different countries trying to survive in the United States for the first time. We were so used to seeing each other literally every day despite not having classes together sometimes, and when we were not at school, we used to text a lot and send Instagram reels to each other. During my high school years, I knew she wanted to go back to her home country for college, but I didn’t think much about it until we were about to graduate, and I realized that we would be separated from each other.
Eventually, she went back to her home country, and I moved to New York City. Despite being so close in high school we had different dreams in different places, but that was not an excuse to cut her out of my life. In fact, I think it made our friendship stronger because of how beautiful it is to have someone in your life that is worth crossing the world for. We don’t talk every day because we are in different countries, we have different lives and we have a large time difference of 13 hours that makes us check the time in each other’s place before texting in case we are sleeping.
I think it is very easy to identify what type of friendships are going to last. If you feel that you can spend a long time without talking to your friend and then you talk to them again and you guys still have the same chemistry, that’s when you know that person is already part of your life. I miss my best friend a lot and despite making beautiful friendships here in NYC she will always be part of my life and someone I will cross the world for.
I Will Always Cheer You On
There is something I never understood: why do some people get jealous of their friends’ success? I think I could never be like that because all my friends have different goals and even if we coincided at some point, I could not see them as my competition. I feel that people who are jealous have an emptiness in their heart and they believe that undermining their friends’ success makes them superior. In reality, that says more about their bad character compared to others. If you have a friend like that, I advise you to question if it is worth it to keep that person in your life because a real friendship is a bond where people support each other, in good and bad times.
I believe distance is not an excuse to stop being there for people—a very cute way of reminding your friends that you are still there is by commenting on their posts or texting them sometimes. I love cheering my friends up every time they post a picture where they look stunning as always, where they have made an amazing achievement, etc. I always try to remind them that I am happy to see them happy.
Making New Friendships is Just as Beautiful as Maintaining the Good Old Ones
You should never stop yourself from making new friends in new places or cut off your earlier friendships to move on. You can always keep both new and old friendships. Along the way, you will find out what friendships are going to be lifelong connections, but you don’t have to worry about that right now. Just enjoy your current friendships, the new and the good old ones. Trust me, it is frustrating to think about which friends will last and which friends will not. Simply focusing on making memories now will make you feel happier.