From A Distance

I believe it’s important to make a strong first impression. Two years ago, I learned if you get it right, your life could turn upside down in an instant, and it could even alter your entire identity. One evening, as I was browsing through the Instagram account of a friend from my high school, I came across a photo that caught my eye. It was her with two other girls, and both of the other girls’ profiles were tagged in the caption. Both profiles had the same last name. Perhaps being a little too curious for my own good, I looked at their profiles, wondering who they were and how they knew my friend. One of these girl’s profiles stuck out to me, as her bio linked to a second Instagram page where she posted updates on her life as a type 1 diabetic. I knew I had to reach out to her, so I followed her diabetes update account and sent her a message through it.

“Hi!! You don’t know me, but I wanted to introduce myself for a particular reason. My name is Jamie. I’m a friend of [name redacted]’s. I found your profile in the comments of one of her photos and I saw something in your bio that particularly caught my eye. I followed this account and now wanted to see if I could talk to you. Why? Because I’m a type 1 diabetic, too!”

I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes on September 1st, 2013. Managing the condition while transitioning into middle school was already incredibly scary for me. The idea of talking to other type 1’s at my small mountain school (ignoring how few went there anyway) or going to diabetes events or joining social media groups terrified me more because, frankly, I wanted to think about diabetes as little as possible. But then this girl popped up. A girl my age that I could talk to as a diabetes buddy whenever either one of us needed support. It was my junior year of high school, I’d been diagnosed for almost five years, and I was comfortable with the idea of reaching out to someone about it at that point. I figured sending that message couldn’t hurt.

This was May 20, 2019. After two months, no response. She hadn’t even seen the message. On July 18, I sent her another message, a simple “Hey!” Once again, it wasn’t even marked as read. On August 9, I decided to try one final time and sent, “Hey, fellow T1D!!” This time… she saw it. Even better… she answered. She confirmed she was my high school friend’s cousin, told me that she was going on a trip the next day, and promised to reach out to me in the near future.

Two days later, she reached out again. We made small talk, conversing about college, movies, and superheroes before moving from Instagram to Snapchat after experiencing some technical difficulties. While the majority of the early Snapchat messages have disappeared, I still have all the Instagram messages from that first conversation that started a connection.

After about a month of talking, we realized our dialogue was starting to become flirtatious, and we decided to see where things went. Unfortunately, there was a pretty big problem. I live in Colorado. She lives in Pennsylvania. But we didn’t care. We were willing to see what happened if we attempted a long-distance relationship. Over the course of a year and a half, we’ve started and ended a relationship three times without ever labelling ourselves boyfriend and girlfriend… and without ever meeting in person.

No matter what has happened over the course of that time, whether it was dealing with our own individual confusions or anxieties, not talking for prolonged periods, or even rethinking our feelings in general, I’ve never once considered her anything less than my best friend since the first month we started talking. We’ve talked on the phone and on video chat for so many cumulative hours, I’m sure the total time would add up to weeks, if not months. We’ve gotten to know each other inside and out as much as possible without having once met in-person, and she remains beyond important to me.

She helped me drop my over-the-top, consistently hyper high school persona and find the real me hidden under it. She gave me self-confidence that someone as kind and beautiful as her could make me feel comfortable just being myself. Most of all, she was the first girl I ever truly fell in love with. I prioritized her personality over her looks or my romanticized fantasies for the first time in my life. Who knows what kind of person I would be today if that first message had given her the wrong first impression?