Notes From an Average Girl | Long-distance friendships

Two weeks ago, eager for my spring break trip to Tampa, I ordered an abundance of bathing suits and summery clothes. Now, as I return home from class to packages stacked high on my porch, I’m forced to deal with the consequences of my impulse decision — a decision I made before I considered the damage to my bank account or the minimal room in my bag. This year’s spring break budget cuts consist of returning 90% of my online orders and squeezing an entire week of clothes into what Spirit Airlines considers a “personal item.”

My eagerness came from a FaceTime call from my high school best friend, who is the reason I’m traveling to Tampa. In a recurring tradition, she visits me for a weekend during the fall semester and I visit her during the week of my spring break. Because of her family’s move to Jacksonville, Florida, following our high school graduation and both of us attending college away from home, seeing each other twice a year is about the best we can do. 

After attending school together every day since third grade, moving multiple states away from each other was a big adjustment. It started out OK. We talked on the phone once a week and stayed up to date on each other’s lives, but eventually life got in the way. I started working a new job and she began focusing on her studies. She got a boyfriend and I got wrapped up in my new friendships. Now, we have to schedule calls a week in advance and we’re lucky if we talk twice a semester. 

Long-distance friendships suck. There’s no easy way around them. I miss driving five minutes down the road to show up at her house without warning. I miss getting in trouble for being late to school because we went out of our way to get Starbucks. I miss rotating sleepovers between each other’s houses. I miss disrupting our Latin class with our loud chatter and obnoxious laughs. 

Sometimes it feels like these semiannual visits are the only thing holding our friendship together. I wonder if I hadn’t purchased my plane ticket back in October when she was visiting Pittsburgh, would we ever have coordinated enough to plan it? We’ll send texts and TikToks, many of which go unanswered. I tend to lean on my Pittsburgh friends for advice — rather than the girl I’ve known since I was nine — simply out of convenience. I feel guilty about it until I remember she does the same.

These thoughts lurk in the back of my head, but then she’ll respond to my text a week after I sent it and I’ll know she hasn’t forgotten about me. Our calls may be few and far between, but they usually last a couple of hours. We go months without talking, but when we do, it’s as if nothing has changed since high school.

I can’t say our friendship will last the rest of our lives, because I’m no fortune teller. All I can say is that I hope it does, because she’s worth stuffing clothes in a backpack, returning new bathing suits and braving a two-hour flight on Spirit Airlines.