We didn’t just lose each other. We erased each other. But the ghost stayed.

This person and I are estranged for reasons beyond my control. And don’t go thinking I like them, miss them, or even think of them often... I don’t. I really don’t. But I feel close to them. So close.

It’s like we’ve created a bond that’s stronger than any text, any voice note, any smile. It’s the bond of absence. Of not knowing but still feeling. And maybe that’s the purest form of connection there is. So I’ll leave it there. Silent, but somehow, still intimate.

Sometimes, I think silence used to be quieter. Before we were all online, before updates and photo dumps and “seen” receipts and Instagram stories that tell you someone’s alive, even if they’re no longer in your life. Back then, silence was space. Now it’s static. It’s the absence of a ping that should’ve come. The profile you could check, but... See more

This isn’t about longing. It’s about recognition that even in distance, even in erasure, something remains. Not love. Not grief. Just... presence, suspended. A ghost made of nothing but time and memory.

I just want to believe the space I left behind was noticeable. That it mattered. That I mattered.

I’ve already moved past the person. What I haven’t moved past is the imprint they left. The piece they held in my life is gone. But the outline of it is still there, like furniture that’s been moved and left a dent in the carpet.

And maybe that’s the real grief, not the end of the relationship, but the asymmetry of the aftermath. The possibility that you’re carrying a weight they’ve already put down.