people i no longer speak to

i found an old screenshot in my gallery a few weeks ago. nothing important in it really. just a conversation with someone i used to talk to everyday. i stared at it longer than i should have. mostly because it felt strange that there was once a time where talking to them was the most normal part of my life and now they exist almost entirely in my memory.

i still think about people i no longer speak to. not in a way that ruins my day. they just appear sometimes. in the middle of something ordinary. walking home. staring out of a train window. halfway through a song i forgot they once loved. and for a few seconds they exist beside me again exactly as they used to.

with enough time, the reasons you stopped talking start to feel trivial. the argument goes blurry. the distance becomes harder to explain. what stays clear is that at some point this person knew the shape of your everyday life. they knew what kind of mood you were in from the way you typed. they knew the stories you repeated too often. they became such a normal part of your routine that you never imagined there would be a version of your life without them in it.

and now they exist mostly as fragments. a sentence they used to say that survived longer than the friendship itself. a habit you inherited from them. a song that still feels strangely attached to their name no matter how many years pass.

sometimes i wonder where they are now. how much they’ve changed. whether our lives would even make sense to each other anymore. if they still listen to the same music. if they still disappear for hours before replying. or if life slowly rearranged them into someone i wouldn’t recognize anymore. and sometimes i wonder if they ever think about me too. just briefly. while hearing a song i showed them once. or passing somewhere we used to talk about going. the same way they return to me now. suddenly. in the middle of completely ordinary days.

someone once told me that when a random person suddenly crosses your mind, it means they’re thinking about you too. i don’t know if i believe that, but i like the thought of it. it makes those moments feel a little less lonely. so whenever someone returns to my mind, i usually pause for a second and quietly hope life is being kind to them wherever they are.

i think what feels strange is realising not everyone holds onto people this way. sometimes i’ll remember tiny details about someone years later and if i mention them they look at me like i remembered too much. but i can’t help it. certain people stay in my mind with unusual clarity. not because i’m unable to move on. but because once someone matter to me deeply enough, parts of them just remain.

it happens with old friends mostly. but also with people who were only present briefly and still left something behind anyway. my high school maths teacher is one of those people for me. i think about him every once in a while because he believed in me in a very quiet and unceremonious way. no speech about potential, no dramatic moment. just consistency. and whenever he comes to mind i find myself hoping life has been kind to him. it’s strange how someone can become entirely absent from your life and still continue existing somewhere permanently inside you.

i think part of growing up is realising how many people you lose without ever consciously deciding to lose them. there’s rarely a final conversation. no clean ending. life just keeps moving quietly forward and eventually the distance becomes routine. one missed reply becomes a week. then months. then years. and at some point you stop expecting their name to appear on your phone again.

what gets me sometimes is how ordinary the last time usually is. there’s no feeling attached to it while it’s happening. no awareness that this version of your life is about to disappear. you just reply a little later each time until eventually the conversation stop renewing itself altogether.

i still reach out sometimes. even knowing it usually won’t feel the same. texting someone after years is strange now. conversations dry out quickly. both of you type a little too carefully.

somewhere in the middle of it you realise you’re both trying to reconstruct a closeness that only existed naturally at a certain point in time. and when that happens it feels a little like revisiting a place you loved after it has already changed. you recognize it immediately, but it no longer fits the version you remembered.

but every once in a while, someone replies warmly. and for a moment the distance collapses completely. the conversation slips back into its old rhythm without either of you forcing it there. and suddenly you remember that closeness doesn’t always disappear. sometimes it just changes form. people stop being part of your everyday life and become part of the way you remember certain years. certain songs. certain verions of yourself that still feel attached to them.

i think that’s why i still care about the people i no longer speak to. not because i want everything back exactly the way it was. but because at one point they mattered enough to shape me. and i don’t think that kind of impact fully disappears just because contact does.

maybe that’s what growing up actually is. learning that people do not always stay, even when they mattered deeply. learning how to carry them differently afterward. not as active parts of your life, but as evidence that you lived one.

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