There are some people we no longer call, yet we never even had a fight.
Nothing major happened. There were no harsh words, no argument—no moment when we said it was over. We just started talking less often one day. First a few days go by, then a few weeks, and eventually you realize you no longer know what’s going on in that person’s life.
And yet there was a time when you knew everything. You knew what was troubling them, what made them happy, what they were planning, and what they were trying to hide when they said everything was fine. Life doesn’t always tear us apart through arguments. Much more often, it’s work, family, fatigue, and obligations—none of which, on their own, seem significant enough to lose someone over, but over time they add up until we start living completely different lives.
Then we meet up. We hug each other sincerely, ask how the other is doing, and say we need to sit down, have some coffee, and catch up on everything we’ve missed. At that moment, we probably mean it. But the next day, the obligations start all over again, and a few more months go by.
It’s not the strangest thing that some people have left our lives. What’s stranger is that some are still here, that we still love them, and that a call from them would genuinely delight us—and yet they’re no longer part of our daily lives.
Perhaps that’s what we notice most as the years go by. Not by looking in the mirror, but by the number of people with whom we share an entire past, yet almost no present.
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