One day, when I was 13 years old, I made my first internet friend. Now, this sounds dangerous—and trust me it probably was—but I promise it’s not that bad. In an Instagram comment section, I met a girl my age from Wisconsin, USA. Eventually after lots of DMs and safe FaceTime calls, we became close friends. Now, here’s the twist: her best friend (at the time) and I became super close, and the girl I originally became friends with fizzled out of the picture. No hard feelings or anything, she just found a new crowd of people—everyone is still friends, so no drama here! Anyways, this is a story for and about Autumn, the best friend whom I interestingly became close with. It was funny because thinking back at it now, her and I didn’t have many common interests. I’m not sure how we even got along so well to begin with.Â
Moving on, it was really fun having an internet best friend living 733 km from me. We talked about anything and everything. It was nice telling her about Canada and her telling me about America, because both of us had never been to the other country. I learned a lot about her family, friends, childhood, career plans, and everything in between. It just felt so normal that we had never met and it never affected our friendship in any way. Instead, it really helped solidify our bond and made our connection stronger. When we were 15 years old, she sent me a cute care package filled with clothes, American food, and childhood photos of her. I was ecstatic when I received this package in the mail because to me, it was as if it was my first time meeting her and having stuff she’s touched before. It was really cool thinking of it that way. It’s also really funny because in the package, she sent me a matching friendship bracelet and then lost it a month later in a duck-poop-filled pond. I will never let her live that down, because to this day I still have the bracelet and wear it.Â
Autumn and I always wanted to visit each other over the summers but with both of our passports being expired, it was never possible. I honestly don’t know if we’ll ever meet. Whenever I think about it, I wanted to meet her so badly when I was younger, but now, I am convinced it would be awkward. She laughs at me every time I say that we wouldn’t get along in real life, because we’ve been friends for so long already. I just can’t imagine her in real life, because to me it seems like she’s a celebrity I’ll never meet and I’d be in shock if I did.
We have so many memories together despite having never met, and I’ll tell you one of my favorites: Autumn and I have been workout buddies for the past 6 years. We used to facetime constantly and create different workouts we could do together at home. It helped keep both of us motivated and it was also a lot of fun. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, we would FaceTime every morning and do a workout together then go on a run afterwards. We would track our runs on an app and we were each other’s only friend on the app. Our exercise surge went on for about 3 months before we became exhausted. To me, this is one of our best memories because we would start our days off together every morning.Â
Fast forward a few years, Autumn and I remain internet best friends. We’re now even farther apart than we were before because she moved to Lithuania for university. I love how low maintenance our friendship is and has always been because we both know that no matter what, we will have each other at the end of the day. It doesn’t matter if I’ve gone 3 months without talking to her, nothing will change between us.Â
And Autumn, I know you’re going to read this and I just want to let you know that you’re my best friend and I love you. Thank you so much for teaching me how to be a better person and friend. Our friendship is one thing I’m most grateful for because you’ve brought a different perspective to my life and how I should be looking at it. No matter the distance between us, we will always be friends.
Love you always,
Sabrina