Internet Friends

Lana Del Rey. 2014. Twitter, when it was still cool. Friendships, lesbianism, and group chats. “Stan life”. These are the buzzwords that come to my mind when I think about some of the most formative years of my early adulthood. If you’ve never had the pleasure of having an internet friend, imagine this: someone who you connect with initially over your intense shared interest, but quickly come to realize you have so much more in common than just that. Think of someone you’d stay up on the phone with overnight and chat with all day during school hours. You become so close that you talk about being soulmates and joke about marriage. Even though you have never met face to face due to cross-country or even different country residences, this bond makes you feel loved, and is also a source of so much laughter and fun.

I know not everyone experiences internet friends in this exact way, but I think of these bonds as some of the good luck I’ve happened into during my lifetime. As many friendships do, these relationships have ebbed and flowed over time and as life got busy. Communication became a bit more sparse, although I’ve had the additional luck of meeting various internet friends throughout my travels, and still hold some of them dearly with a monthly giant-text-block update. For the most part however, these bonds were of the past, a beautiful memory. It wasn’t until recently, two days ago to be exact, that my friend Maja reached out letting me know that she was getting the band back together.

Fast-forward two days and we’re reunited in a four person group chat, and it feels as though nothing has changed. Sure, all four of us have grown tremendously, as people do in their 20’s. But something about the bond feels so timeless. We don’t just catch up, or talk about our lives individually, but rather come together in a shared language, a flow that we created more than ten years ago. I feel renewed; this was a reunion I did not expect. Throughout the past ten years I had plenty of different friendships from plenty of different sources and even different states. However I must say there is a unique quality to this crew, one that I’ve missed dearly.

Life is full of sudden surprises, and when you’re given one, a true positive twist that you were not expecting, you hold it close and thank your lucky stars for it.