You meet in school and become inseparable. You grow together. Their family becomes your family. You cry - and laugh- over your mistakes (oops, sorry, ‘boyfriends’) together. Then one day, you’re packing up the car and moving to universities at the opposite sides of the country. The ten-minute walk has turned into a four-hour train journey, and suddenly you’re long-distance best friends. How did this happen? And how do you navigate it?
The first thing you need to do is accept that things are going to change and be okay with that. If you expect everything to stay the same, you are in for a shock; and it’s going to hurt. What you used to experience together, you now experience apart and in different ways with different people.Â
But just like watching a recap of your favourite TV show: hearing all the gossip, watching the storylines play out, and meeting the new characters in their life, it is all so exciting. There is no joy like sitting in your hometown when you go back for Christmas and listening to your favourite person recap the last three months of their crazy life.
Sometimes, you’ll feel like some sort of psycho ex. You will send them approximately 24 tiktoks every single day. Ranging from the most insulting ‘this is you’ videos to the cute but slightly cringey ones. You’ll send the ‘i miss you’ texts at ridiculous hours and you’ll beg to see them.
Phases of speaking multiple times every day come and go. Exams and jobs can get in the way and you’ll find yourself only ever seeing their forehead and ceiling on the snaps you send back and forth. Other times, you’ll get daily 3-hour-long podcast-style voice notes detailing everything from their morning coffee to the exact temperature of their bath water.
It’s important to remember that in life, low-maintenance friendships are the ones that last. Inconsistency isn’t always an insult, it is just life. Be patient with each other.
Another thing you have to remember when you’re missing the late-night trips to the Maccies drive-thru or your weekly Sunday debriefs over a Wetherspoons breakfast, is that they’re only on the other end of the phone. Occasional impromptu 3-hour-long facetimes are good for the soul and help you stay connected.
Long-distance friendships are also an amazing excuse to explore new places, and check out the nightlife of other unis. Every time you visit each other, it’s essentially another freshers’ week because of course, you have to show them the best places! If you’re lucky, their uni friends might even become your friends as well, and you get to meet amazing people you otherwise wouldn’t have.
You quickly realise that watching your best friend grow, even from a distance, is one of the most incredible things. You’ll champion each other’s achievements and you’ll watch each other find your respective places in the world. Then one day you’ll look at each other, probably a little bit tipsy and emotional, and say ‘we made it’.
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