172. How to be a good long distance friend.
+ how I stopped befriending my bullies.
This morning, I shared a Note on Substack about my friend
and realized I’d written that her friendship is good and true (amistad de la buena y la verdadera). This thought bathed me in a wave of love. It was a moment of realization. A click. An understanding.
A few minutes before writing this Note, I’d finished reading my other friend
’s latest post which, in part, is about people ghosting you and leaving you stranded with no prior notice. Reading this essay got me thinking about some of the “friends” I had in the past that disappeared from my life without me ever knowing why. I sat with it and managed to reconnect with an old, well-known feeling.I often found myself in a repetitive cycle in which I’d make new friends, fall head over heels in love with them, fully invest, and then they’d disappear a short time later. They’d stop replying to texts, ignore me, no longer want to meet up, and be too busy to wish me a happy birthday. The interest would fade, and I’d be stuck with the haunting feeling of “What did I do?” or, better yet, “What did I do to drive them away?”
After reading Andrea’s post, I realized that this hasn’t happened to me for a very long time. Those events and people are distant memories that now belong to the past. The women who are part of my life now, these people I consider my friends, would never do this to me. In fact, they continue to show up, in a myriad of different ways, even when I’m self-cocooning and shutting the world off. They continue to show me their love even when I’m not in my most sociable moments. They show me unconditional friendship and love.
These amigas1 call me to chat for ten minutes on the metro on their way home from work, they message me to suggest a date for an online coffee, they buy plane tickets to spend time with me, they send postcards when they go on holiday even if they’re in Japan, they send presents in the mail for Christmas, they send me the year-old analogue photos they just got developed to show me the ones I appear in, they travel every year to spend my birthday with me, they listen to my deepest feelings without judgment or advice, they send me pictures of the sunrise wishing me a good morning, and they send me videos of their beautiful beaches wishing I were there with them. In short, they hug me from afar without touching me.
Last year, I learned that long-distance friendships don’t depend on extremely long, meaningful, and deep messages or phone calls. They depend on quick, real-life snippets. This type of friendship thrives thanks to tiny specs of “You’re a part of my day-to-day” and “I’m thinking about you,” like when I make a matcha latte and think of
who sometimes works in cafés and orders matcha or chai lattes. Or, for example, when I see a brown cow in a field on my walk and send a photo knowing she will love seeing it. Or like when sends me a message telling me she’s been to a beach she thinks I’ll like when I go to visit later in the year. Or like when Dora rings me on New Year’s Eve after being out with friends to ask me what plans I have. Or like when Gema sends me pictures of her Sunday roast because she knows how much I would die for one.Long-distance friendships depend on the tiny interactions that feel like quick arrows to the heart, filling you with love and reminding you that your friends are thinking of you—that they’re going about their lives with you on their minds in the most silly yet meaningful ways.
“I think you’d love this song,” “I bet you’ll love my outfit today, it’s so you,” “I’m using the coffee machine you got me for my birthday,” “I’m reading the book we spoke about last week,” “I saw a TikTok that debunks electrolytes like we said on our phone call,” “I saw this agenda for 2025 and thought you’d like it,” “Have you seen the film You’ve Got Mail?”
Of course, the long phone calls and deep conversations are another part of friendship, and we do that too, but I used to forget that the small, quick arrows of love are an easy and light way to pop into their day. As a matter of fact, it’s something I want to get better at this year.
However, it wasn’t always this way. I used to be a magnet for bullies at school. I would allow the people who bullied me to be my friends or, worse yet, the friends I had would become my bullies, and I’d go along with it. I was the laughing stock, the constant joke, the person to use to get a good laugh from, and I thought this was a normal part of friendship. I told myself that it was. Years later, I found that it wasn’t normal at all, and nowadays, not one of my amigas has ever done anything similar.
I’m aware that I still have a big people-pleasing tendency, and this has led me to allow certain people into my life in recent years that I shouldn’t have. I let them get too close by being evasive and not assertive enough. I know now that I should have nipped it in the bud and not tolerated certain behaviors and comments, but I guess you could say that this part of my growth is still a work in progress.
The mix of Carlota and Andrea’s (two of my dear and beautiful friends) presence in my life this morning led me to look back and compare the differences between a beautiful, loving, unconditional friendship and one full of envy, criticism, judgment, and belittlement.
The reason I wasn’t able to nip this more negative interaction in the bud is most probably due to the fear of being bullied again, which sounds ridiculous because now I’m an adult. How can I still be scared of being hurt and being the laughing stock? The answer is that I’m scared because I know what they’re capable of. I’ve seen it unfold right in front of my eyes, directed at other people. I’ve already experienced way too many times what it’s like for people to start rumors and tell their own version of the events that aren’t true to reality. I know what it’s like for those rumors to reach you through the grapevine and make you feel like your world is going to end. I guess I just really don’t want to go through it again.
However, I’m not a teenager anymore, and life doesn’t revolve around high school rumors. I now have the tools to be able to communicate in an assertive and respectful way while protecting my peace, but we all know that learning the theory in therapy is one thing and putting it into practice with someone you fear is a whole other story.
Now that I’m sat down going through my inner archive, I think the reason I allowed people to bully me was because I had no self-confidence. This low self-confidence meant that I didn’t have an image of who I was, and I had no clear vision of what my self looked like, acted like, and believed in. This was because I would mold into whatever shape necessary to be accepted and liked, even if that meant people bullying me. I guess I felt safe knowing that if I was friends with these people (my bullies) and allowed them to laugh at me and watched me laugh along while being submissive, no greater danger would come my way. Más vale malo conocido que bueno por conocer, or "better the devil you know than the devil you don’t." For a long time, I preferred to dance with the devil, get scolded, and heal my burns in private where nobody could see me wince at the pain.
Life now is so different, and I am a different person with a considerable amount of self-confidence, but the hardest part is breaking the cycle for the first time. I imagine that once you’ve faced your demons, they become less scary and lose their power, but taking the first step is always terrifying.
To my two amigas that inspired this pomelo in different ways, os quiero.
Andrea who writes Noches Azules and the essay I mention above is called: A little existentialism.
Carlota who writes entreoctubres and inspired me when I wrote the Note I mentioned at the beginning of this essay.
Yeguas Exhaustas de Bibiana Collado Babrera (muy buen libro)
Una defensa de la comedia romántica escrito por
— I discovered romcoms a month ago and have been watching them all, so far my favourites are:
You’ve got mail
When Harry met Sally
Sleepless in Seattle
How to lose a guy in 10 days
Four weddings and a funeral
Notting Hill
If you have romcom movie recommendations, please tell me which to watch next in the comments.
Mis raíces están en google maps escrito por
Cartas que nunca envié escrito por
I worry written by
the wince written by
los propósitos de año nuevo escrito por
— Hay mucho de Carlota aquí esta semana, pero qué le hago si de verdad me encanta lo que escribe? No es mi culpa quererla tanto.
Because nothing makes my heart beat stronger than the word “AMIGAS”.
I have been meaning to write about this very same topic! All my best friends live far away and in the past three years since being away, we have found new ways of building and evolving our friendship. I feel loved by them even with all that distance ❤️
About time is my absolute favorite movie of all time!!! You can't miss with Richard Curtis movies!!!