After graduating high school, my best friend and I went to different colleges. I never thought about the distance being a problem until it was actually time to move away. We went from being a 15 minute drive to not having the mean of transportation to get to each other. This created a big gap in our friendship, and we would go weeks without speaking. Yes, I was making friends at college, but nothing could replace the connection I had with my high school best friend. I spent weeks debating if she was feeling the same way, and if I should bring up how I was feeling. I didn’t know if she felt us drifting or was fine with the gap in our friendship.
After a few months of college, there was a long weekend that we both were going home for. This was the first time we saw each other in three months, which was the longest we had been apart since we met. I didn’t know if it was going to awkward or if we would fall right back into our old ways. Luckily, after a long hug and dinner with her family, we were able to jump right back into things. We put on a movie and just talked about everything and anything we could update each other on. From boys, to exam’s, to professors, to parties, to new clothes we got. It felt like we had never felt our small towns, as we laughed in her purple bedroom.
Later that night, I talked to her about the separation I was sensing since we got to college. I told her I knew it wasn’t her fault or mine, but that we needed to work harder on our friendship. I was struggling without being able to vent to her on facetime every now and again, and I didn’t want us to drift further apart as time went on. She told me that she also felt the distance, but knew our busy schedules were grappling to line up. We then spent the next three hours scheduling facetime dates for the rest of the semester and planned on doing the same thing for the following one.
Junior year when we finally had our cars accessible, she was able to come visit me for a weekend. This was fun because I was able to show her all the fun things, I do at UNH and what makes it feel special to me. A month or so later I went to her school and did the same thing. This really connected our friendship because we were able to see in person what each other’s lives were like during the semester, rather than just hearing about it through a screen.
Thought I was terrified to ask for more support in our friendship, I think communication is key in making any long-distance relationship work. Emily and I had a heart to heart which really made our friendship strong and allowed us to prioritize our friendship in between our busy college lives. We still have bi-weekly facetime dates and force each other to keep a snap streak so we can at least see each other’s faces daily. These boundaries keep us present in each other’s lives, while away at college.