Describe an old friend you are still in contact with.

I’d like to talk about my old friend, Mina, who’s been in my life for well over fifteen years now. She’s a software engineer these days, living in another city, but to me she’s still the same slightly quirky, endlessly supportive girl I grew up with.

We first met on the very first day of high school. I remember walking into this noisy classroom, feeling totally out of my depth, and she was the only person who actually smiled and waved me over. We were paired up for a science project, spent way too many late nights finishing it, and somewhere in between the experiments and the gossip, we just became inseparable.

These days, we mainly keep in touch online. We have a running chat on WhatsApp that’s basically a mixture of voice notes, random memes and serious life updates. We also try to have a proper video call every couple of weeks, and whenever she comes back to our hometown for holidays, we make a point of meeting in our favourite café and talking until they practically have to kick us out.

I think our friendship has lasted so long because there’s a really deep level of trust and acceptance between us. We’ve seen each other at our absolute worst, but there’s never any judgement, just honest advice and a lot of patience. Even though our lives have taken very different directions, our values are still aligned, so conversations never feel forced. In a way, she’s become more like family than a friend, which is probably why distance and time haven’t managed to push us apart.