I Hate Long-Distance

Alyssa Pendon (she/her)

Editorial Team Member

No one prepares you for how distance feels when it comes to making friends. 

I hate the people at my school. Okay, I’m being dramatic, but in general I don’t really enjoy hanging out with the people at my school even though I do have friends. I just don’t feel as connected to them as I do with my other friends outside of school. Forced proximity can only get you so close to people, until you have the weekends and summer break. 

But when I make friends outside of school from summer programs, sports or conferences, or even online (which, don’t hate on me for that), I automatically feel more connected and closer to them. Maybe it’s the fact I just make friends easily, or that most of the friends I make come from places where you're “forced” to talk to people. But the people I meet outside of school always feel more fun and interesting. 

This past Friday, I randomly got to see one of my friends from Chicago at a leadership conference I went to for school. I was minding my own business when I heard someone yell out “Alyssa?” from across the ballroom. It was my friend, and I sprinted over to her to give her a hug.

I hadn’t seen her since a summer program. And maybe it’s because we're similar and spent three days together, but it really sucks that she lives far away and that we don’t go to school together. There were other people we were both friends with and we all go to different schools and are extremely busy. But those three days we were together were some of my favorite memories from over the summer, as we spent them going through different activities and we never knew what was on the schedule between group bondings and community service.

I always feel that I can never get the same experiences with my school friends like my outside-of-school friends. But I have to remind myself that I’m stuck in different situations with my outside-of-school friends and that’s how we became friends. And that I still do like my school friends, I will just always crave the high of meeting people not from my school. Unfortunately, what comes with friends from outside of school is distance. Because at the end of the day, my school friends will eventually become my hometown friends when I leave for college.