There had been no fight. No rupture. Just a slow fade that neither of them stopped, and then it was two years and it felt too late to restart without acknowledging that two years had passed, and neither of them knew how to do that.
She thought about him regularly. When things were funny. When things were hard. When she saw something he would have noticed. She still reached for the phone and then remembered.
Some people exit our daily lives without exiting our inner ones. We stop talking to them and keep thinking about them. The friendship has gone dormant but the bond underneath it is still running quietly, like a program left open in the background. They’re still part of the way we process the world. We just aren’t part of each other’s weeks anymore.
I have people like this. People I stopped talking to without deciding to, who I still reference in my head when something happens. It’s a strange kind of presence. Invisible but there.
She thinks of him when things are funny. When things are hard. He probably doesn’t think of her as often. Or maybe he does. She doesn’t know. That’s the whole shape of the problem.
Two years. Too late to text, or just long enough to make the text worth sending?
The friendships that fade without a reason are often the ones that could come back with the least explanation required. There is no wound to navigate. Just time. Just the gap that grew because nobody closed it.
The text that starts with: I know it’s been forever would probably not be strange. It would probably be welcomed. Neither person can know for sure without sending it first.
She’s been thinking about sending it.
Some things worth sitting with:
- Is there someone who has left your daily life but not your inner one?
- What’s the cost of waiting another year to send the message you keep meaning to send?
- What’s the worst thing that could happen if you reached out to someone you’ve lost touch with?
You might also find yourself in They Grew Up Together and Apart and Didn’t Notice Until They Were Strangers..
Inspired by a real story shared anonymously online.