Navigating the Joys of Cross-Continental Friendships

“So who are your friends here?” I asked as we cruised down the Magnificent Mile, my older sister figure Tierney at the wheel. She mentioned a few great folks she’d met in the last few years living in Chicago, and then a familiar refrain: “But my best friends are scattered all over.”

We talked about how great a privilege it is that our world is so connected that being from anywhere, we can live anywhere. We can be digital nomads and work remotely while we globe-trot and FaceTime. But also: how there were some lovely perks of a different time and space when all the threads of one’s social fabric lived in the same village. Some younger folks would venture out to acquire more knowledge/education/wealth and then return to re-join and edify the same neighborhood.

I am a 29-year-old Indian-American living in Hong Kong with my husband. I grew up in Washington, D.C. and he grew up in Jaipur. My three best friends from college, who know me better than anyone is likely to know me again, live in New York, Cleveland, and Nairobi. The last time I saw one of them, my “hermano” who calls my mother “Mama,” was during an 8-hour layover in Kenya four years ago. The two closest friends I’ve made as an adult are in Amsterdam and Mumbai, and my sister, my favorite person in the world, is studying in London.

This makes for some really fun visits! Traveling is a privilege and exploring new places is a privilege and reunions are a privilege. But there is an inevitable in-between: in between the weddings or the one-week trips, the wondering, “When is the next time we are going to be in the same place?” As soon as we are out of one another’s orbits and the party is over and we’ve slept in and woken up, returning to the reality that we don’t really know when we’ll meet next. My solution so far has been to hush the question, push it deep down because if I think about it too hard, I will cry.

Video calls are quite a luxury, but you can’t just call up a group of your friends and say you wanna sit quietly in a circle and sink into the couch carefree and watch something brainless and take breaks to roast whoever “that friend” is in the group. You can’t recreate that over-caffeinated excited catchup full of updates and interrupting each other and going on tangents and always (mostly) bringing it back, and at the end just giving each other a hug. It’s hard to make me laugh until tears are streaming down my face on a Zoom call. This one’s on me, but I don’t always video call you because although it makes me so happy to chat with you again, it also makes me painfully aware that we are not in the same room. Time zones are hard and selfishly and illogically, I want being with you to feel as easy as it always has.

But my favorite people, I hope you know who you are. I really truly hope you know I’m a tightly wound ball of emotions and I think about you every day, even if I’m too tired to text you. That when I do message you saying “thinking about you,” I’ve spent the past 15 minutes re-living a lovely memory we shared. That I love you even when you haven’t texted back for weeks (seriously, I get it). I’m not any less excited that you exist than the time we got a tub of Ben & Jerry’s at the pharmacy and ate it with plastic spoons in the middle of the night, or the day you dared me to do something embarrassing in public and I (as always) did it, or the day I met your mom (shoutout Auntie). I am just as happy that you are in this world as when we jammed over a piano, when you mentored me though you didn’t have to, when you complimented the gardenia-scented candles in my apartment, when you showed me around your city. You hold just the same place in my heart and maybe that means that each time I make a new friend I’m scared to move away from, my heart is expanding.

I am also so deeply grateful for the people who share their amazing friends with others: who have introduced me to new cities and coffee shops and ways of being, with generosity and selflessness. Maybe that’s why I love introducing my friends who live in close proximity to each other — if I cannot share physical space with you, here, have a piece of my heart. Take good care of each other.

I’ve noticed two small shifts since the global-ness of my community has started to become more apparent to me. First, I appreciate the hell out of every moment I get with any one pocket of my friends. I’ll be the most excited person at your wedding. If we’re in the same city, I’ll move mountains to see you, even if only for a few minutes. Second, I’ve become a better friend to myself. Because having little pieces of yourself sprinkled across the world can become exhausting, it requires some serious self-regulation and energy-giving practices. I am working on this for my wellbeing, and so I’m ready to be in full form as a best friend whenever we reunite.

The last time I caught up with Dashell, my dear friend from high school who has always had the wisdom of an elder and the texting ability of a toddler, over a three-hour dinner in Harvard Square, I was quizzical when we said goodbye. The conversation had been soul-nourishing and real, the kind of “how are you?” that people ask when they actually care. The last thing I said to him was, “See you…?” And he interjected, “next time. That’s all, Ratna. I’ll see you the next time. We always do.”