When Your Best Friend Moves Far Away

There’s nothing in this world quite like a best friend. Over the course of time, they become your family. When your best friend is your biggest cheerleader, your go-to person, and your deepest connection with another human being, it’s difficult to process when they move away.

Watching someone move onto the next chapter in their life is indescribable. You know this isn’t the end of your relationship, but things do truthfully change. You both grow in different ways. You share these moments of growth over innumerable phone calls. It becomes difficult to not reminisce right before they leave.

Small towns have a way of bonding two people together. Our friendship was the accumulation of all the aimless driving around, coffee shop adventures that you started working at, the long nights in your childhood bedroom stretched out talking about our dreams, and every trial that being a teenager brought to us. It’s not that there weren’t other people that we had meaningful friendships with. For me, it’s just that you were always there for me. Just as I was always there for you. I can still picture the first time we got into trouble with your parents and the way we giggled after the talk they had with us was done. It’s the late, hazy summer nights walking your dog, the fear of being in the car with you when you first got your license, the support during first heartbreaks. I’m thinking about every homecoming game you dragged me to or the silly pictures we took of ourselves that we laugh at now. It’s not just because we lived in a small town that we’re so close. It’s because the universe knew that we needed each other.

It’s bittersweet, really, when your best friend moves away. You always want the best for them. You want to see them become the best person they can be. When the time comes that childhood ends, and they separate. Of course, you’re going to miss them. Honestly, it does hurt. It hurts more than expected. It’s time for them to spread their wings, fly away, and become the person they were meant to be all along. The pain only comes from love. There are cars, planes, and trains that can get me to where you are, but we’ve always had the luxury of living ten minutes away from each other. I think I drove those same seven miles more than one thousand times in the past six years.

Even if it hurts a little to think of the ease of contact that won’t happen in the future, try to think of these memories and smile while you shed a tear. The bond between best friends is stronger than anything else in this world. Your chosen family will only be at a physical distance away, never truly apart in the heart.