If your best friend lives 13,343 kilometers away from you

‘Candy, you’re going to hate me, sorry.’ That’s how it went about a year or a year and a half ago. Mr. announced shortly after a few glasses of wine that he would be moving to Cape Town for at least two or three years. And so it happened.

Candy, as we call each other, is now about 13.343 kilometers away from me and that is becoming quite unpleasant. When your best friends suddenly decide that Amsterdam is ‘a bit small’, that ‘living abroad is such a cool life experience’, and that ‘Cape Town is super close, man’, you can’t help but feel bummed. And indeed hate him a little bit, yes. Because of that inevitable missing, so to speak.

Because a long-distance friendship is just not the same. At first, it still feels like someone is just on vacation. Then it becomes a long vacation. But at some point, the days and weeks slip by and you think: wow, we haven’t been able to have coffee together for 126 days. Haven’t been able to eat pasta. Haven’t been able to order white beer. Haven’t been able to laugh and chat and hang out. Then it gets stupid. Then it gets long. And then you know: it’s not a vacation. It’s the new reality.

The tricky part now is mainly that I won’t be very flexible in the coming years to just fly back and forth to Cape Town. And also tricky: he’s doing amazing work over there and he’s improving the world, so he doesn’t really miss Amsterdam that much. Except for that pasta (scroppino) at our regular spot. And of course, it’s especially sad now that he’s missing so much of this special time in my life. And that he’s only going to see my kids when they are already months old. How crazy is that. Because he should practically be standing next to my hospital bed on the day they are born.

But having a friend living far away also has its advantages. That whole missing thing, it’s a rotten feeling, but also a beautiful feeling. Ultimately, you get to know better every day what you have in each other and you also know if that friendship indeed survives those thousands of kilometers. So we still text about every rain shower that falls on my head, about the scorching heat he’s experiencing over there, about what his cappuccino costs and about my oat milk latte to go at the station, what time I go to bed with my baby bump and how early he has to get up to give poor kids a better life. In other words: daily stuff. We just ignore that we haven’t seen each other for 126 days and act as if he’s still just sitting a few streets further in Amsterdam. That makes me feel good. We do the same as always. We can handle those kilometers, so.

Unfortunately, there’s still a year or so to go. But we’ll just ignore that for now. I can’t wait until it’s 2020 – and he knows that. No need to text.