Long Distance Friends
By Lauren Slattery
Image by Kate McNeil
I've decided one of the best and worst blessings of this life is having long distance friends. It may just be the stage of life I'm in, or maybe it’s going to be like this forever. I don’t know the answer to that, but what I do know is that most of my closest friends live over two hours from me and I hate that.
This isn’t a new phenomenon for me. In the first grade, my family moved from California to North Carolina, and suddenly all my friends were over 2,000 miles away. I got used to traveling to see friends and having to plan phone calls early on in life, but it wasn’t until I left for college that I had to say goodbye to friends again.
We sat on one another’s floors and watched as each of us packed up our childhood bedrooms. We gave long hugs and said our ‘I love yous’ through big tears as we said goodbye to this chapter and one another, promising to call every week.
I said a few more goodbyes this summer as I left the camp in the middle of nowhere, Colorado. I didn’t know a single person there when I arrived and by the time I got on the plane to go home no one was a stranger. Once again, I hugged my sweet friends goodbye, held on tight, and promised to talk every chance we got.
It has been about a month since I talked to my camp friend and three months since I saw my high school friends. My mom reminded me the other day that sometimes it’s not about a lack of trying, but an understanding that we live such different lives. Each of us understands that often we simply lack the time to sit on the phone and talk for hours or the ability to drop everything and get on a plane to spend the weekend together - despite that being all we want to do.
Things are different now, how could they not be. We’re not in kindergarten running barefoot on the beach, or sitting at the lunch table in our high school, or waking up before the sun to start working at camp. Each of these friendships are ones I cherish, but we all know that it’s different now.
The months following camp have been consumed with voice memos about new jobs and boyfriends, links to songs that remind us of the summer, and countless hours on the phone updating one another one day to day life.
It is the best we can do right now and it may not be much, but it is always the highlight of my day.
