"Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes." -Henry David Thoreau

It’s easy to maintain a friendship in person--you see each other quite often, can go on spontaneous shopping trips or trips to get lunch, spend nights staying up doing laundry or studying together. In college, you spend all your time with your friends, your roommate and your teammates. Having a long distance best friend can be very tough. It’s hard to coordinate two completely different schedules of school, practices and social lives. Not being able to spend birthdays and holidays together are also rough.

It’s been just over a month since we’ve seen each other but it feels like a lifetime. Every minute I spend away from you is hard because no one understands me quite like you do. We don’t live that far from each other, 224 miles to be exact. I could drive to you in about four hours. However, with our previously mentioned crazy schedules, it’s next to impossible to find enough time to make a visit with each other often.

In our case, we spent the entire summer together and then were torn apart from each other after two months of spending all day, every day together for two and a half months. We slept on the floor next to each other, cried with each other, shared our food and laughed until we cried. The transition from sharing every single moment together to seeing each other every two months (if we’re lucky) is hard and I miss you every single day.

Now, we live off of shared Tumblr posts, funny snapchats, tagged Facebook posts, sporadic texts and the occasional FaceTime call. We tag each other in posts such as, “tag someone who you miss” or “tag a friend so they have to open their phone and look at ___.” Instagram posts with the captions, “same,” “accurate” and “need,” as well as fun snapchats are what make our mundane days brighter.

It kills me to be away from you and to not to be there when the big moments happen in your life. I won’t be there to scream and cry with you when you get accepted to college or to show up at your house with chicken nuggets and a hug you when you’re stressed about finals. Though I may not be with you in person, I will still be there to support you in every single way that I can. Even if it’s over text or FaceTime or only in spirit, I will be there for you when you need any kind of support, love or morale boost. Every one of our memories is held so dear to me, from the time we tried to eat 100 chicken nuggets, to when we decided we’d watch all eight "Harry Potter" movies in one shot (we only got through a third of the third movie) and every time we’ve yelled at each other for practicing when we’re injured, to when you slept on me on the bus after stealing my snacks, having late night FaceTime calls and the moment we realized that we were going to be best friends for a very long time to come.

When people reference you in conversation, nothing gives me more pride than to be able to say, “That’s my best friend!” I admire everything about you, from the big things, like your passion and sense of humor, all the way down to the little things like the way you gaze longingly at my food until I share and the way your eyes sparkle with joy when you hear a fantastic joke. You are my person, my sister, my bus buddy and most of all, my best friend. I love you more than words can ever express.