My best friend and I went our separate ways after college. We reconnect every year on a trip we call 'bestiecation.'

• When we graduated from college, my best friend and I wanted different lives, so we separated.
• Every year, we plan a vacation together so we can reconnect.
• We think it's important to put our friendship first and show up for one another no matter what.

"This way," our Greek Airbnb host grunted, before winding down an alley and venturing up four flights of stairs. He didn't offer to help us with our bags. It was dark, we were exhausted, and the cobblestone alley was decidedly not suitcase-friendly.

But I was also elated, partly because I was on a Greek island, but mostly because Sena was with me.

I met Sena at university after we ended up in the same dorm and learned we were both pursuing a major in politics. When my degree ended a few years later, we planned our first vacation. At the time, neither of us knew this would be the first of many.

We were both afraid we'd grow apart after university

Back in 2019, Sena cried the night before I left our university town because she was certain that our friendship was coming to an end. A few months later, when I visited her in Johannesburg, and she showed me around the business district and the corporate law firm where she would be working, with its skyscraper buildings, people dressed in designer clothes, and drivers of fancy cars, I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach.

I, too, was dreadfully afraid that our lives would move in different directions, and we'd lose our connection. While Sena had her corporate life perfectly mapped out, I didn't. But I knew what I didn't want: designer clothes, flashy cars, or a corporate job.

Perhaps this fear of growing apart (that we both unknowingly harbored) is why we visited a travel agent on that very trip and planned our second vacation, one year later.

Some years are harder than others

I am not sure when the tradition crystallized, but I suspect that it was fairly immediate. When the 2020 pandemic forced us to cancel our international trip to Morocco, we both implicitly knew that we had to plan something local. By the time December rolled around, it had been a full year since we'd seen each other, and even if our vacation consisted of sitting indoors under lockdown, it was still going to happen.

And so, it did. I took a flight to Johannesburg (while wearing a medical mask and a giant plastic mask over it in the airplane because, yes, I was scared of Covid-19). We then took a short road trip to a nearby town, Hartbeespoort. It was this trip that we coined the term "bestiecation," which sort of became our verbal commitment to show up annually.

In 2022, I moved abroad to Dubai. After immigrating, I struggled to build strong interpersonal connections. That same year, Sena quit her corporate law job and suffered a major burnout. In my eyes, our bestiecation became more important than ever. We needed each other.

Our annual vacations remind us that our friendship matters

Over the past six years, we have visited five different countries together and have continued showing up — even when one of us was navigating heartbreak, a career change, unemployment, or immigration. To manage these challenges, sometimes one of us paid more (or all) of the costs associated with the trip, or we combined the trip with something else (like me traveling home, or Sena visiting the country I moved to).

Logistically, it's never been a question about whether it can happen. Instead, it's always been a conversation on how we can make it happen.

In a society where it's normal to prioritize romantic relationships and leave friendships to happenstance, this little tradition is our way of showing each other that we matter, no matter what else is going on in our lives. We've been doing this since we were 22, and don't plan on stopping.

In Greece, after lugging our suitcases up four flights of stairs and the windy cobblestone alleys, we dropped everything in the room, changed into swimsuits, and walked straight to the pool. Floating on my back in the dark water, I felt the same rush I do every year when I spot her at an airport gate: elation mixed with completeness.