College loves to sell you a story: that this is where you’ll meet the people who will define the rest of your life. And maybe that’s true, in part. I’ve met incredible people here, friends who have shaped me in ways I never expected. But the person who knows me best, who has seen every version of me before I even knew who I was becoming, has been there since the very beginning — my best friend.
I’ve had the same best friend since I was two years old. Before I understood what friendship meant, before I had the language for loyalty or love or growing pains, I had her. Our story starts in preschool classrooms and playgrounds, in snack times and nap mats, in a world that felt small enough for the two of us to always find each other.
We grew up side by side, which means we witnessed everything. And I mean everything.
She knew me when I had braces and no sense of style, when I got my first pair of glasses and thought it was the end of the world. We were there for each other through awkward phases, through the first time we started liking boys, through the insecurities that came with pimples, and growing into ourselves. Teachers used to separate us on purpose because they knew that if we were in the same class, we’d be completely inseparable. And they were right, we always found our way back to each other anyway.
There’s something so rare about being known across every version of your life. Not just the polished, put-together version you present now, but the cringey, in-progress, figuring-it-out versions too.
We’ve been through everything that life throws at you before you’re even an adult. Breakups that felt like the end of the world. Friendship fallouts that reshaped how we saw people. And then, of course, COVID-19; when the entire world slowed down, and yet somehow, we held each other together. During lockdown, we were on video call almost 24/7. It didn’t matter if we were doing homework, eating, or just sitting in silence, we were there. And every time it seemed like restrictions might lift, we’d make plans before anything was even confirmed, ready to run to each other’s houses the second we could.
I remember climbing onto the roof of her house, watching the sunset together. The world felt so quiet back then, almost paused. But we were just 15, so full of hope, so convinced that everything ahead of us would be big and beautiful. And in that stillness, with the sky turning shades of pink and orange, it felt like we were holding onto something timeless.
Then, everything changed. When I was 15, I moved to a different city. A different school, a different life. I remember being excited, ready for something new, but also not fully understanding what I was leaving behind. And through all of that, she stayed. She listened to my excitement, even when she didn’t get the same opportunity to leave. She supported me, even when it meant adjusting to a version of our friendship that no longer included seeing each other every day. And in a time when everything in my life was unfamiliar, she remained constant.
I used to go home just to visit her. Because she was my home. Distance didn’t change what we had, it just redefined it. And somehow, we kept choosing each other, over and over again. But nothing tested us quite like college.
Moving to a different country, with a 12.5-hour time difference, was the first time our friendship truly felt the weight of distance. For the first time in over a decade, we couldn’t just call whenever we wanted or expect the other person to be there instantly. And for the first time ever, we had a fight that left us not speaking for more than 24 hours.
It sounds small, but for us, it wasn’t.
It was unfamiliar and uncomfortable, like we were stepping into a version of our friendship we didn’t recognize. But even then, there was never a question of whether we would find our way back. We always do. I remember my freshman year of college, walking through stores and picking up little things that reminded me of her; random, thoughtful gifts that I wanted her to have.
I packed them all into a box and shipped them to India without thinking twice… until I saw the international shipping cost. And honestly? I’d do it again because loving her has never been about convenience. It’s about intention.
We had countdowns on our phones for the next time we’d see each other. Days, hours, minutes ticking down until distance would collapse into something tangible again.
And when it finally did, when I walked out of the Mumbai airport and saw her running toward me, everything else faded. It didn’t matter how much time had passed or how much our lives had changed. In that moment, it felt like nothing had.
Everyone who knows me knows her. Because to know me is to know her and to love me is to love her. She knows my innermost thoughts: my ambitions, my fears, the things I don’t say out loud to anyone else. She’s seen me at my highest and my lowest, and she’s loved me through all of it. With her, I don’t have to explain myself. I don’t have to filter or perform or be anything other than exactly who I am.
And that kind of love, the kind that exists without conditions, without timelines, without distance is something we don’t talk about enough. We celebrate romantic relationships all the time. We write love letters about them, build futures around them, center them in the narratives we tell about our lives.
But long-term friendships? The ones that grow with you, that stretch across years and versions and cities and time zones? Those deserve just as much recognition. Because they are love stories too.
The summer after my freshman year, we got matching tattoos. “Forevermore.” Not because we think nothing will ever change, because it will. Our lives will keep evolving. We’ll meet new people, step into new versions of ourselves, maybe even drift in ways we can’t predict yet. But no matter what changes, no one will ever know me the way she does. No one will have seen every version of me and stayed. No one else will carry the same memories, the same history, the same understanding of who I am at my core.
And that’s what “forevermore” means to me. Not that everything stays the same but that some connections are strong enough to grow, to stretch, and still remain. So this is my love letter to her. I think the most important love stories in our lives aren’t the ones we’re told to look for but the ones that have been there all along.
