No Matter the Distance
Pam and I have been friends since we met our sophomore year of high school. We love to share a good laugh as we think back to that year and the fact that an ex boyfriend introduced us. She had just moved to Northern Kentucky from Dallas, Texas and was looking to find a group of people to click with. I knew Pam was ‘the new girl in town’ but we hadn’t officially met until the night of her sixteenth birthday party. Some of my girlfriends and I had been sitting at a restaurant waiting on our guy group to join us. We called them when they hadn’t shown after an hour. I remember my boyfriend saying, “Sorry, we’re at this girl Pam’s house for her birthday party. We don’t want to leave, but you girls should come here!” After initially feeling stood up and a little hurt that we weren’t told this ahead of time, we figured it couldn’t hurt to meet someone new [especially this girl who was becoming friends with my boyfriend] and enjoy a little ice cream and cake while we were there.
When we got there we were instantly greeted with a huge buffet of food and parents that were so eager to give their daughter the best birthday. I guess everything really is bigger in Texas, I thought to myself as I looked around. Then I noticed that our guys were the only ones there and my boyfriend pulled me aside and said, '“We felt like we couldn’t leave because we’re the only ones here. It’s her birthday, we wanted to be nice.” I instantly changed my mantra. No one, absolutely no one, should feel like they’re alone on their birthday. This poor girl was just moved across the country and was away from her friends that were probably wishing they could be there in that moment with her.
Pam and I clicked that night. We exchanged phone numbers and I left her house excited that I now had a new girlfriend. Pam no longer ate alone at lunch and it didn’t take long before I was letting her eat the crust off my peanut butter and honey sandwiches every day… ha! It was an instant connection. I knew that this girl was going to be my friend for a very long time. We went to dances, football games, and even toilet papered houses together. All those silly things you do as a teenager. I love the memories [and the super embarrassing photos] we have from those years.
Our senior year Pam made the decision to move back to Texas and experience her last year of high school with the friends she had known since birth. I tried not to let this decision make me feel like our relationship had any less meaning. I was just one person compared to many, many others. I knew we would still see each other at least a few times a year because her mom still lived in Northern Kentucky. We would try to call each other regularly to update the other on our life. We would talk about the good stuff and cry together during break ups or anything that we felt didn’t go the way we wanted it to. It was much harder back then to stay in touch, when FaceTime and texting weren’t really a thing yet. Anyway, we did it.
I went away to college and Pam came back to NKY to spend more time with her mom. We were an hour and a half apart, but at least we weren’t on two separate parts of the country. We were making progress! I would go home to visit or she would come down to visit me at school and experience some of that authentic college life. Shortly after celebrating our twenty first birthdays, Pam made the decision, again, to head back to Texas to be with her then boyfriend [now husband] and finish her degree.
Over the next few years Pam made regular visits back to NKY. I made my first visit to Texas for a long weekend to celebrate her and Tyler’s beautiful wedding. At that point we were only seeing each other maybe once a year. After that weekend it was still clear that our friendship was going strong. The following year, Pam and Tyler made the trip to be a part of our wedding. It has seriously been an additional benefit that our husbands have become friends too. Sometimes we even catch them playing each other on Call of Duty late at night. Distance has nothing on us!
Our friendship began more than 14 years ago. In the last seven years, as we have started lives with our husbands, had kids, and moved several different places, we have continued to stay in touch. Now that Pam and her husband live in Georgia we make it a yearly thing to meet up at my family’s place in Hilton Head, South Carolina. Any other chance we get to make a trip to see one another it is an added bonus. Everyone needs to have a friendship like ours to go through life. We may have very different lifestyles these days, but we respect and cheer each other on in anything we do. Each time we get together it’s like no time has passed between us. We are able to pick up right where we left off and just enjoy every moment. We laugh, we cry, but most of all we’re a safe haven to share whatever is going on in life.
Our friendship has been defined by the distance, but it has not kept us from continuing our lifelong friendship.
XO,
Sarah