Surviving Long-Distance Friendships

For all my friends, near and far.

Even as I’m writing this, several of my friends are sitting in a plane, headed for Egypt. Over the next few days, many more will be off to Egypt and Jordan. A few months back, four of them had left for Syria.

These are the friends who’d spent hours talking with me before we finally drift off to sleep at night (countless nights); laughed at the sight of me sporting a friend’s high-heeled white sandals to the dining hall; surprised me with a shower of shampoo, loose powder and cold water before showing me to a room filled with friends, cake, junk food (and the words “Mary 19” spelt out in jelly cups on the floor) on my birthday; let me use gallons of Dynamo whenever I run out of laundry detergent; consoled me whenever I go half insane over an exam question that I’d answered badly; obligingly suggested places to search OR pull exasperated faces every time I lose something; waited long, long minutes for me to clear my plate every single time we eat together; friends who, even, had seen me cry. (Excuse me? HAHAHAA oh man.)

All of them won’t be coming home for years. None of us is certain when we can next meet up again. And when we do see each other again someday, chances are most of us will have changed in some way or other.

Then why am I not fretting or losing sleep over their departure?

Because I know long-distance friendships do work.

Because for the past eleven/twelve years of my life, I’d been sharing everything that had ever happened to me with someone whose existence I only know of through her letters and e-mails (and now, YM, blog, Facebook, etc. And, truth be told, I don't even do Facebook, so we can cancel that point out). [OK OK, I know for sure Aneesah exists, but I haven't seen her "in 3-D" for such a long time that the Aneesah I write to could be someone else impersonating Aneesah for all I know. Oh forget I said that. This is so hard to explain.] *And! Here the chemical engineer wins, unfortunately. Oh don't smirk.

We’ve written to each other through childhood, girlhood, (near-adulthood – I still can’t stand the word “womanhood” and we’re not women yet anyway are we? MUAHAHAA), through home-moves, changes-of-schools, UPSR, PMR, SPM, INTEC, Darul Quran, and now UK and IIUM…through boredom, happiness, anger, frustration, confusion, helplessness, joy, successes...you name it. But since about ten years ago (or more, I’ve lost count), we haven’t met each other at all.

I even have no idea how taller or shorter I’d be compared to her if we stood side by side.

And we’re best friends.

I won't lie and say that the question of physical distance had never bothered us. Once, when we were discussing about furthering our studies (via snail mail) Aneesah said something like, "isn't there any chance that you'll study someplace [somewhere around UK, I assume] so that we'll be more geographically close to each other?" Something like that. But the word "geographically" was there. By now, both of us are more or less conditioned to our one-of-a-kind long-distance bestfriendship, but at times, we'd (rather vaguely) talk about meeting each other because that's what friends do, right? And then end up not meeting at all.

But Aneesah still knows me more than anyone else does.

I know how strange this sounds to others, but it's true. And I believe that there must be a reason why Allah has arranged for our friendship to happen this way.

* * *

But strangely, when Auni and co. left for Syria in June, I was afraid for our friendship. This was different from the Nabeelah-Aneesah case, because with my Darul Quran friends, we’d practically lived with each other through three years. It seems like we'd just breathed our way through six semesters of our studies (and everything that came with it) and then very suddenly, we realised that "three years" can never guarantee "forever". Naturally each of us would finally go our own way, and separation was clearly inevitable, but the way we saw it at that time, separation was simply unthinkable. Long-distance separation felt even worse.

However, it turned out that everything went okay. Admittedly, we feel her absence very keenly every time we have sleepovers or gatherings. Each time we meet up, someone would eventually say, “Rasa tak cukup sebab Auni takde…” or, “Lain ah rasa bila takde Auni,” or simply, “Auni…”

Now I’ve made us sound gila bayang. Over Auni. Haha!

But after the initial shock of “losing” Auni (temporarily), my mind and emotions gradually conditioned themselves to accept this new order of things as naturally as I had accepted the way I and Aneesah communicate. Suddenly, I realized that this was something that I could definitely live with. I’d been living through a long-distance (best)-friendship nearly all my life – so I have no reason to believe that distance will make us and Auni lesser friends!

And it’s true: our friendship survived the distance.

So long-distance friendships really are possible.

However, if this feeling of incompleteness is a sign that our friendship is actually not just plain friendship but ukhuwwah, then I’m glad that we’ve come this far.

Sure, when all of you go away, there’ll suddenly be holes here and there in my life, in all those spaces that you’ve filled up before. But in the end, my thoughts can’t help returning again and again to the words, “Wa ardhullaahi waasi’ah…” "And God's Earth is wide". There’ll always, always be places to go and people to meet. We’re all still very young, able, each hanging on to our own dreams, and, (in the words of America’s Declaration of Independence), “in the pursuit of happiness”.

This is the chance of a lifetime. By all means, go for it.

And may Allah be with you through it all.