It’s easy to forget about the people who aren’t right in front of you. In a digital world, keeping up with just about everyone seems like the exact fix needed for this problem. But with the mountainous load of life looming by my side, what seems like a simple fix, really isn’t.
Staying in touch with anyone long distance is not for the weak. Besides a quick FaceTime call, there are a plethora of other ways to stay in touch with your long-distance best friend. Here is how I stay connected with my best friend.
Snapchat might be dead… but not for all
With each passing day I feel older and older, and with that mentality comes a sense of maturity where I sometimes feel way too good for Snapchat. I reminisce on middle school days when “keeping the streak alive” was literally a metaphor for keeping my social status alive. But now Snapchat can take on a completely new meaning and even lend quite the strength to keeping your relationships alive.
My best friend and I are two busy, busy women. Our schedules seem to operate in a completely opposite way, making FaceTime calls seemingly impossible. And lo and behold, this is where Snapchat comes to mind. If something is pressing on my mind that can only be explained through the sound of my voice, an easy solution is to send my best friend what seems like thousands of videos explaining the event in exact detail- just so I can pretend she was there herself. Every detail matters in keeping my best friend up to date on the latest college fiascos I go through. Every. Single. Detail. Matters.
Sneak home for a weekend
While this may not be feasible for everyone, finding time to return to where my best friend and I met serves as the perfect place for reconnection.
It also reminds me that while a significant amount of time has passed, we still mesh in the same way as we did the last time we saw each other. And even if I’m home when she’s not, my memory is nudged in the exact right direction of everything that brought us together in the first place, which offers security in the strength of our friendship. Sometimes I just need a reminder of where everything started.
Love letters aren’t just for lovers
Pen pals are in. Text messages are out. There is nothing more heartfelt to me than receiving a hand-written letter from my platonic soulmate. It’s as if all her words disappear on the page and all I can make out is the ideal prescription for healing my longing heart for the friend who makes everything better.
While texting is the obvious answer to staying in touch with a long-distance friend, there are other more intimate ways to do so. I love a little versatility in my life, and love letters to friends are the perfect way to achieve this adventurous lifestyle. Letters have the power to say what a text can’t always convey, so the answer I always give is to implement more of these personalized notes into life- no matter who they’re to. Writing to integrate someone more strongly into my life has proven to work 100% of the time.
Keeping in touch with long-distance friends in the sea of madness that is college isn’t easy, but there are ways to make it better and more exciting. So, the next time I see my best friend, it feels as if no time has even passed.