the friends i've made abroad are scattered across countries

I live 24 minutes by public transport from Frankfurt Airport. One of the biggest and busiest airports in Europe, with flights heading off in all sorts of directions, and close enough that getting there is the easy part. I find that slightly frustrating at the moment because I have friends in several of those directions and I don't have the money to go and see them.

When we lived in Salzburg, the situation was almost the opposite. The airport was dinky donky, with a limited number of destinations, and for many journeys I would’ve needed to travel around three hours by train to Vienna before I could even fly anywhere. Now I have all this access almost on my doorstep and cannot really make use of it.

I was talking about this recently with one of my close friends, a British woman who still lives in the Netherlands. We originally met when we worked for the same company in Amsterdam and, despite both of our lives changing considerably since then, we have remained close. A large part of that is probably down to her because she’s usually the one who instigates the video calls we have every few months.

During our latest call, we got talking about how Dennis and I have increasingly been doing things separately and how I'd love some of that separate time to include travelling to see friends. She remembered how, when I worked in corporate, I was regularly heading off somewhere for a weekend, exploring cities and places simply because had the money and freedom to decide I fancied going somewhere and I just went.

These days, many of the people I'd most like to get on a train or plane to see are scattered across different countries. There are people I love in Northern Ireland, the Netherlands, Scotland, Barcelona and Salzburg, and other parts of the world; people who belong to different periods of my life and who have remained in it to very different degrees. Some I speak to reasonably regularly. Others I can go months, sometimes much longer, without speaking to at all. There hasn't necessarily been a falling out or some definite moment when the friendship changed. Life simply keeps happening in different places. People move. I move. Sometimes neither of us is particularly good at keeping in touch.

I can still remember the first time I experienced that sense of someone disappearing from the life I'd built abroad. It was during my early years in Amsterdam. I’d been there for only a relatively short time when my boss, a fellow Brit, announced that she was moving to Australia. We weren't best friends. She was my boss during the week, so there was always some distance between us, even though she was also the person who had practically welcomed me into the social side of Amsterdam by telling me about a group, which included her, going out on the Friday evening and encouraging me to join them. I can still remember how shaken I felt when we were called together in the office and told she was leaving. I wanted to cry, while simultaneously telling myself that I shouldn't be so upset because we weren't close friends. I couldn't quite understand why it hurt as much as it did.

Over the nine years I worked for that company, it happened repeatedly. The office was predominantly international, and we expats worked hard and played hard together. Then somebody would leave. Another country, another job, another stage of life. I lost a lot of people I cared about that way, although at the time I don't think I considered what would happen to all those relationships over the following twenty years.

Some survived remarkably well. My school friend in Northern Ireland and her husband, for example, got their first passports so they could come and visit Dennis and me when we lived in Switzerland. Later they visited us in Austria as well. My university friendship group once went around ten years without seeing one another, then met for a weekend in London and somehow it felt as though we’d seen each only yesterday.

Other friendships have changed more quietly. One of my best friends when I lived in Amsterdam now lives in Barcelona. Back then, he was there for me and I was there for him, whatever the time of day or night. We used to message occasionally after our lives moved elsewhere, however more recently he might reply to my first message and then the conversation stops when I reply again. Increasingly, staying connected means me seeing something he has posted and clicking like. There’s been no ending. I still consider him somebody who was hugely important in my life, and I still care about him. I can simply feel the gap growing between us.

Another of my closest Amsterdam friends now lives in Scotland. I was her husband's ‘best woman’ at their wedding, and when I married Dennis, she was the person I asked to ‘tend for me’ during our wedding day. Yet since she left Amsterdam around 2010, we have seen each other only a handful of times. Neither of us is particularly good at staying in touch, and she’s very private online, so there isn't even the background connection that social media can provide. Our friendship, it seems, has been reduced to an occasional email or a year's worth of life squeezed into a birthday or Christmas card. That friendship is wittling away because neither of us is very good at staying in touch, and that makes me sad.

Perhaps that’s why I’ve been thinking so much about the FWOGS since moving from Salzburg to Frankfurt last year. I physically left them behind, yet for a while the distance remained manageable. My Deutschlandticket gets me to Salzburg without an additional fare if I use regional trains rather than the ICE. ‘Only’ eight or nine hours each way. Until this summer, I’d been returning roughly every eight to ten weeks. In late May, I spent two weeks near Salzburg dogsitting for one of the FWOGS while she and her family travelled to Japan. I saw her before she left and managed to see the others while I was there too. Then, about a week after returning to Frankfurt, I flew to Northern Ireland and stayed there from early June until the middle of July. By the time I came home, I needed a haircut and would normally have returned to Salzburg, where I still have my hairdresser, combining that with seeing my friends. Except the hotel I usually stay in was around three times its normal price during August. I checked September. Still expensive. I’ve wondered about staying with one of the FWOGS and her husband (I know I’m welcome), however for now I am only toying with the possibility.

Meanwhile, one of the Canadian FWOGS may move to South Africa in the coming months. Another person potentially moving further across the map. I suppose that’s what feels different about friendship after so many years abroad. Distance isn't necessarily what ends a friendship; distance asks something of it. Somebody has to send the message. Somebody has to suggest the video call. Sometimes somebody has to spend eight or nine hours on regional trains, buy a flight, find somewhere to stay or make room in their home. Making the effort is huge, and it's needed from both sides.

Money becomes part of that too, in a way I don't particularly like admitting. Having enough money to get on a train or plane to spend time with somebody I love doesn't feel like a nice-to-have when those friendships are already scattered between countries. Life for everyone is busy and moves on. If you don't remain in contact and see each other, at least occasionally, some friendships naturally begin to wittle away.

That can be one of the more subtle things women living abroad can find themselves carrying: people who still matter deeply, yet who belong to lives now separated by borders, finances and whatever comes next. It’s the kind of thing that can surface in Personal Support sessions too, particularly when the life you’ve built across countries has left important relationships, responsibilities and parts of yourself in several places at once.

I don't know where Dennis and I will move next, or whether we will move at all. I don't know whether the FWOGS will all still be in Salzburg a year from now. I don't know when I’ll next see my friends in Scotland or Barcelona, and there’s something uncomfortable about knowing that caring about someone doesn't, by itself, keep a friendship present in your life. For now, Frankfurt Airport is still 24 minutes away. The destinations are there. So are the people I would like to see. What I don't have, at the moment, is the freedom to close some of the distance between us.