Dear Best Friend Who Goes To Another School,

*sighs*

I knew it wouldn't be easy.

Although you're only 30 minutes away from me, spending time with you can be challenging. Sometimes one obstacle I encountered was the public transportation from your school to mine which is for lack of a better word, the curse word meaning a "female dog." As an amateur train rider, I was unaware of all that could go wrong on my commute to see you.

Apparently it is very easy for me to get on a train that seems right, but is actually going in the opposite direction. Then you are quick to figure out that you screwed up but when you ask for help, the person is either a tourist, gives you the wrong information, or claims to "no hablar inglés." And then when you speak to them in Spanish they run away shamefully. Then you end up cold, hungry, alone, and feeling guilty for not sharing your spare change with the dozens of beggars on each side of you. Then you tear up a little and wait 30 minutes for the train that may or may not be the right one, but you haven't been right all day so you're faced with unfortunate odds.

So...the train finally comes. You get on it. You feel a little more at ease but you still feel on the edge. You get off at your next stop which was (finally!) the right one, and you're ready to take that last train. Then, of course, you see that your train is arriving in about two minutes. You say a curse word out loud and use that one month of previous track experience to sprint to that final train.

You miss it.

Then you debate ordering a $20 dollar uber at this point. You take another long and obnoxious sigh and sit down to wait for the next one, which is arriving in an hour.

Then I sit and text you the entire time I'm waiting. It almost feels like you're suffering on this bench right beside me, but sadly you're not. Instead, there's a semi-attractive well-dressed male refusing to make eye contact with me.

It sucks.

The long and confusing commute doesn't suck, but the fact that you weren't with me did. I'm not writing this to make you emotional or dramatize the slightly long-distance relationship we have. I'm writing this because it's crazy to think that I used to spend pretty much every day with you and now it's so difficult to see each other for solely a night.

You used to always be there when I had a funny story to tell or rant about my life issues. Now I can only text, call, or facetime which may not happen often because we both live such busy lives. And the unfortunate truth is that you're only 30 minutes away. Imagine if you were hours away? Across the state? Across the world?

I can't imagine how difficult it is for best friends to separate after college and be so far away from each other. They wouldn't have to deal with multiple confusing train rides, but they would have to spend hours on a plane to only see their friend a few times a year.

The only bright side of this long-distance predicament is that it made me realize how much I value our friendship. In the past, I've always considered long distance relationships with people to be difficult to deal with. My sister moved to the San Francisco area two years ago, my brother lived in Los Angeles for a while, and my best friend since I was five-years-old went to a different high school than I did. So, I have had my fair share of coping with the struggle of missing people. However, I have learned that missing people causes you to appreciate the role that they play in your life. You are emotionally hurt when they're gone, but the fact that you are willing to take four different trains just to see them makes your relationship stronger.

I hate that I wrote this long and sappy confession of my love for you because I typically stray away from getting sentimental. However, when you have to wait an hour and a half for a train to come, there is nothing else to do but think about it all.

So yes, it sucks. I wish we were at the same college. I wish you were sitting next to me waiting for that train. I wish I wasn't so scared of being even farther apart from you in the future because I don't know what I would do with myself. However, I know you'll always be there. Whether you're a train ride away, plane trip, or sitting next to me at the train station, I know we're always going to be best friends.

Much Love,

Your "BFF" (more like sister)