“Will you be my friend forever, no matter what, no matter how much I change, no matter what stupid things I do that you don’t like, no matter how mean or sappy or silly or crazy I become?”
Over the past couple of days, I’ve felt like screaming this exact monologue at my high school friends while I’m away at college, unable to give and receive quasi-creepy random hugs that solidify our undying-I-will-always-be-there-for-you-ness.
Perhaps I’m feeling vulnerable right now because it seems like current friendships hang in the balance of 1000 miles, but this cloud over my head has got me thinking over past/current long distance friendships that don’t feel so long distance…ie, they work.
Background: The girls pictured above are two of my best friends. I don’t say this word lightly because for me, best friends have a certain quality about them…they are more like soulmates. That means you can talk to them after two months of phonetag and know they aren’t avoiding you because the moment you start talking it won’t stop for another hour. This is one somewhat-trite example of soulmate level friendship, but you get it.
The unfortunate part of an otherwise life-defining friendship is that when those friends have to leave your everyday life, you feel like a piece of you has been ripped out. It sounds cliche and cheesy but its not. Its isolating. Its depressing. It sucks.
This happened to me sophomore year in high school when the girls above had to leave meeeeeeeeeeee for their various reasons. I couldn’t blame them, and I didn’t, and I don’t (because good things came of it too). But, at the time, I thought it was some divine intervention made to make go psycho because my two guideposts had to leave within 6 months of each other. For the following six months, I lived in a dream world, counting down the days until I got to visit them, alienating everyone else around me who deigned try to live up to them, and spending a lot of weekends sitting in my room. I’m lucky those friends stuck by me and made me be normal again because I was able to realize some of the ups of having those girls move away.
Three years later, we are still best friends, I am glad to say. Its different. And although the times we are face-to-face finally are irreplaceably and unmimicably cool, having a friend far away can have its ups (and focusing on them can help mute the downs of not having their shoulder their to cry on or someone to hold your hair when you are sick).
This situation seems to continually come up in my life now, especially with the great inevitable college move: I have that same damn-I-wish-you-were-here-right-now for my other best friends from NY to WI to CA and everywhere in between. So I’ve got to trying to remember what turned out to be good about my other far-flung friends and what helped us keep our relationships intact.
The following is what helped me get to a better place even and will help me (and hopefully you) get there again.
UPS:
- They new you when…thus, they can tell you if you really are losing yourself when you think you may be losing yourself
- Unbiased about current craptastic events in your life (your recent break-up with your boyfriend, your roomate’s strange sleeptalking habits, big life-changing decisions you have no idea how to make) and will thus can tell you straight up what they would do in that situation
- Don’t underestimate their power to make you happy simply by talking about an event of your shared past that you (kinda) forgot about until their hillarious rehash
- They have the ability to remove you from your small little world and tell you what is going on in theirs
- You have an awesome place to visit (and even if its not, you make it awesome by being crazy together)
- Getting real freaking, in your hands, mail!!!
- Having someone who will still love you even when you do something bitchy to your current group of friends that may have alienated you before
- Knowing you have a real friend because they are still keeping in contact with you even though there is that much distance to you and could have faded into the woodwork. Its a really good feeling.
- Not talking daily makes you summarize and take stock the biggest events in your life…makes you realize what really matters.
- Having someone that always surprises you and makes you appreciate the coolness and amazingness of your friend’s accomplishments
- Getting to know that your relationship is bigger than the daily gossip of high school/college like “Joe kissed Miranda..OMFG.” You realize you can talk about ANYTHING even formerly untalked of items like history, foreign conflicts, the state of the economy (who knew we had it in us?)
THINGS THAT HELPED ME ACHIEVE FAR AWAY FRIENDS HAPPINESS:
- Make sure you have the undeniable feeling that they will put as much work into your friendship as you will. Old adage: “Don’t make someone your priority when you are their option.”
- Don’t set deadlocked quotas of talking every day or every week: call when you feel like it, if you are that good of friends, you WILL get in contact even if it takes a couple of weeks
- Learn to love to write strange rambly letters (either e-mail, or snailmail, or facebook) because it feels awesome to get them and strangely releasing to write it all out (also: love the cd mix! own the cd mix!). Using more than one of these
- Use shorter-inclined media to update them on random things that reminded you of them: text messages, facebook posts, blog comments (winks). Like this: “omg matt czuchry aka logan from gilmore girls is on friday night lights as *GET THIS* an evangelical christian….bahahahah.”
- Plan reunions…even if they are far off or sort of shaky, it will give you a time to look forward to.
- Ask about their new community (ew I sound psychology-y but its true) and call them out on bullshit like this: “Hey, how’s it going?” “Oh *tearyvoice* I’m perfect.” Don’t let them get away with vague answers…ask about the details.
- Keep their addresses in your phone…it makes it easier when you want to write a letter on a whim to do so.
- Don’t FEEL GUILTY about recent lack of communication…trust me, they feel guilty too and would rather you just call them when you can AKA just do it…call them.
- There is no reason not to CALL THEM OUT OF THE BLUE. The best conversations come from those “So guess what just happened to me in the dining hall?” moments
- Keep them abreast of your pipe-dreams, goals, future wishes no matter how weird or seemingly unattainable they are…having them know and support you mentally is a big deal and keeps you connected even into the future.
This is what I remember when I’m having those “WHY ME? WHY ME?” moments. Hope it helps. If it doesn’t, well then I’m still somewhat crazy. But you already knew that.
For several months now I have been interning with 
Today in my journalism class, we had an awesome presenter. While normally I have been let a bit down by our journalism guests (not because of their journalistic achievements or speaking ability but because of their journalistic philosophy), I was really excited about our guest today: 
yeah... 