The Warmth I Assumed Was Mutual

I am not someone who calls people often.

But I think about them. Old colleagues from a project that ended years ago. Friends from a city I no longer live in. They show up in my thoughts, sometimes randomly, sometimes when something reminds me of them. I savor the memory. I smile, or I become a little sad. And then I continue with my day.

No message sent. No call made. Just the feeling, held privately, and then released.

A friend said something once that stayed with me. We were talking about presence, how being seen creates connection, how absence quietly erodes it. He said it almost in passing.

Out of sight, out of mind.

I paused. Turned it over. It was one of those observations that feels obvious the moment you hear it, and yet you had never quite said it to yourself that clearly before.

Most of us who have moved away from home understand this in a particular way. We left. The relationships we had with parents, with childhood friends, with the people who knew us before we became who we are now, moved to the phone. And the phone is only as good as the calls we make.

I think of people. But they cannot feel me thinking of them. The warmth I hold privately goes nowhere. It doesn’t arrive. It doesn’t count.

I hold people in my thoughts like it is a form of tending. It isn’t.

And then I think about the other side of this. Not what I do to others, but what others may be doing to me. Right now, somewhere, someone is thinking of me. Savoring a memory. Smiling, or becoming a little sad. And doing nothing.

I just don’t know who.