This may be stupid, but I really miss my best friend. Don’t get me wrong, I love college, I honestly do. It’s just that my best friend and I have never gone more than two weeks without seeing each other ever since sophomore year of high school. We did everything together, and oftentimes, people mistake us for sisters. As a freshman this year, I knew it would be hard to be away from my family and friends, but I honestly never thought it would be this difficult.
It seems harder to make friends. I have never been the type of person that could just walk up to somebody and start a conversation, but my best friend is. She is fearless when it comes to that stuff, so without her here to help encourage me, I have found it a little hard to force myself to be outgoing. It doesn’t come naturally to me, but now that I don’t have her to make me feel at least a little more at ease, I have had to work extra hard. Within these past few months, I have had to step far out of my comfort zone to meet new people, but it has helped me grow as a person. Every conversation is getting easier despite the fact that I am having to do it alone. I was able to realize that I don’t need her here with me (although it would be nice) in order to make new friends.
Feeling left out is normal. We both have our own lives with our separate friends, and although we still talk daily, it feels as if we aren’t even a part of each other’s lives. She has an exciting new job and other friends she hangs out with, and I am here with my classes and fun university events. It is hard to see us doing everything separately that we would normally do together, but it’s okay. It’s okay because that is how life works. We can’t always be together and do things like normal best friends do. As long as we still talk and put the effort in, our friendship will stay going strong.
It is nearly impossible to plan times to visit. Between classes and jobs, finding a time to meet up with each other is almost as hard as my calculus homework. She lives in our hometown, which is only two and half hours away from here, but that does us no good if we are both busy every weekend. Usually to hang out, all we had to do was text each other the day of and then meet somewhere, but now, there are so many other factors. We have to take into account our money, jobs, schoolwork, and prior commitments just to pick a weekend to visit. Going from seeing your best friend practically every weekend to barely ever at all is rough. Yes, we have facetiming and snapchat, but nothing could truly replace that face-to-face interaction.
It will make your friendship even stronger. Yes, I did just say that. Despite all of these things, if you can still stay in touch and still call each other family, then it is all worth it. Although my best friend and I are over 150 miles away from each other, our friendship is doing as good as ever. If you and your best friend are struggling, don’t worry. Every friendship has its rough patches, and as cliche as this sounds, if you think it is worth fighting for, then it will all work out in the end. It might even bring the two of you closer together although you are still miles apart.
So yes, it is hard to have a best friend at a different college, but in the end, it is all worth it. Being away from my best friend has given me the chance to grow as a person and learn that I can do things without her. I can meet new people and have fun without relying on her extroverted personality. Not only has it helped me in that way, but it has also helped me realize that she is not just my friend, she is family. I have lost touch with a lot of people that I graduated with, but our friendship is still going strong. That says a lot, and now I know that no matter where we both end up, we will be there for each other.