How would you cope with long-distance friendship?
If you look through your call logs or WhatsApp messages, you will realise there are people you only talk to often because you need to get class notes or because they know where the ‘turn up’ is.
What you need to know:
- One sign that you have reached the irreversible stage of adulthood is when your close friends begin relocating to other countries.
- If you look through your call logs or WhatsApp messages, you will realise there are people you only talk to often because you need to get class notes or because they know where the ‘turn up’ is.
One sign that you have reached the irreversible stage of adulthood is when your close friends begin relocating to other countries.
Things are usually easier when you are still in the ‘trial-adulthood’ phase. Your friends are going nowhere because, really, besides the fact that you are all just barely surviving on the lunch money your parents give you, or the internship stipend, there is truly nowhere else to go.
I think many people in their early 20s are connected, as I was, because either they live in the same neighbourhood, or go to the same school. I am sure if you look through your call logs or WhatsApp messages, you will realise there are people you only talk to often because you need to get class notes or because they know where the ‘turn up’ is. This explains why friendships that survive post school become special; it means there is a deeper connection.
Last Saturday was my friend Raj’s birthday. Raj was one of my ‘three-squad gang’ in grad school. The third person in this ‘gang’ is my friend, Lul. Raj was the brainiest and craziest in the squad; Lul was the brightest and wisest, and I will let you guess what I was, seeing as you have been reading this column for a year now.
I dropped Raj a birthday message. A few seconds later, she replied with a thank you and then said: “We [need to take more photos] before I move across the world in two months.” In my birthday message to her, which included a photo, I had lamented that we hardly had any recent photos together.
Raj will be moving to Germany to start a new role at an international think tank that works in the area of mineral resource management. I was excited by the news but also realised the ‘three squad gang’ has been fully dismantled. Raj’s announcement came less than six months since Lul left for the US in August last year to begin her PhD.
For about three years, I was always guaranteed to see Raj and Lul every evening because we attended the same classes, and belonged to mostly the same class projects. In those days, I was under the impression that things would always be like that – that every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday evening would always end with either Raj or Lul giving me a ride home.
These rides always seemed endless with chatter about how our days had been, or how the classes were going, plus our personal stuff (such as the latest crush, or whatever). Unknown to us, we formed a deeper bond that saw us meeting outside school to chat, meet each other’s family and so on.
Therefore, as I celebrate my friend Raj for kicking one more ceiling and taking on a bigger career challenge, I cannot help but feel bittersweet about the fact that in two months, I will have yet another close friend relocating to a distant country.
Raj and I are planning a goodbye ritual with all my friends before they travel. Don’t overthink it; a ritual in my books simply means something I always do in the same way, for example having coffee or dinner – wherever possible. I am sure the catch-up will be pivotal in reminding us that true friends can grow separately without growing apart.
If you read this column regularly, you know that I am very big on friendships. I know that having friends who challenge me to achieve more, to work harder and to always be true to the goals I have set for myself is a critical aspect of my adulthood journey.
That’s why I am very deliberate in understanding my friends and how I fit into their lives so that I also help them grow. It also explains why I am meticulous when admitting new friends to my circle because as that famous meme says “the friends you make today are what your children will call connections tomorrow.”
How do I plan to cope, to conduct a long-distance friendship with my two friends? I will let you know how that goes. Meantime, if you and your best friend live in different countries, how is that going? How do you stay intentional about keeping your friendship bond?
The writer is the Research and Impact Editor, NMG ([email protected]).
