30. this reminded me of you
goodbye, again
I often run into friends from past lives. Friends who were main characters in previous drafts, now running along the periphery. Not for any traceable reason; we were just on paths that diverged, but not so far yet, I still see them once and again if I peek over.
They float in and out of focus; float in when they need something, float out when there’s nothing left to talk about. “We should keep in touch,” we say.
There’s an intimacy in the relationships that don’t quite make it. The people who knew me so well, almost. The ones time-capsuled into parts of my life, now saved into digital silhouettes and old inside jokes, the places we went, the people we were together.
“We should keep in touch.”
A promise that was never really a promise, but also not quite a lie. Dignity in the parting. These relationships still leave fingerprints on my life that comprise a canvas of pasts that make up the now.
“Just a gentle reminder: it’s okay to be soft.”
I think seasons are the right metaphor for this. Cyclical nature (of) leaving and arriving. Inevitable, just in time, constant but imperceptible change. Endings that are beginnings, and so on so forth.
Keeping in touch suggests continuity. That we can preserve the connection, freeze it like amber. But I change, and so do they. Isn’t there completeness to that?
“I don’t know how to say goodbye, again, but I do, again.”
The point was never to make it. It was to walk together for a little while, not anywhere in particular; maybe we were even headed to different destinations, but we just happened to be walking in the same direction.
So we had laughs, we shared food, and we carried each other’s bags as we wandered together, not worried about the time it would come to an end.
“I always end up liking the parts of trips that weren’t supposed to be the main event. The walk to the museum, not the museum. The late-night snack run. The idle wandering. The way everything slows down when you don’t need it to be anything special.”
There’s a Japanese phrase, ichigo ichie, which roughly translates to “one time, one meeting.” It captures the idea that every encounter is unique and will never happen the same way again. Even if I see the person again, this exact version of me meeting that exact version of them is unrepeatable. We are all just passing through.
There’s an invisible archive I carry, of group chats that went silent, people whose faces I recognize but whose names I can’t remember. They may not think about me anymore, but they are part of my constellation.
“Some days I just want to be a quiet background character in my own life. Just for a little while.”
No, we didn’t keep in touch. But for a while, you were part of my life. Connection doesn’t have to be permanent to be profound.
“It’s strange to be in a moment you know you’ll miss while you’re still in it.”
I’ve been struggling to come up with the best first thing to say to someone that I once knew well. I think I have it now, thanks to a friend I didn’t keep in touch with, who recently said this:
“This reminded me of you.”
To be reminded of is the deepest compliment. Crossing someone’s mind for no particular reason is amazing. It’s like being in multiple realities, being part of the grand design, and being noticed — oh, I saw something and thought of you.
“I think I’m constantly homesick for people.”
Tether between souls, stretched across time zones and many years of silence.
“Sometimes I think the most important parts of life are the pauses. The empty spaces between big things. The quiet stretches where nothing dramatic happens. The margins.”
Presence without proximity, emotional landmarks recalled. I don’t even remember the faces of my childhood friends sometimes. I don’t remember people in their entirety. Just the feeling of being with them.
Do the things that remind me of someone also remind them of me? You left a shape in my world.
As an aside, you must be wondering where these quotes are coming from.
Thank you for asking.
I’ve rediscovered what I love to read while writing for the last 30 days. Grasping for things to write about, topics I care about, reminded me of the first time I read my favorite book in a sunny San Francisco café with my favorite person (who I, thankfully, have kept in touch with).
My favorite book, Goodbye, Again. And thank you, Jonny, for writing it. This book sits patiently on your shelf for months until one quiet afternoon when you finally crack it open, and someone is speaking directly to the most tender part of you.
It’s also a meditation on the smallness of being alive. Jonny doesn’t give you epiphanies but offers you his company instead, which is far better. This is not a book to be finished but to be revisited.
“I’m trying to give myself permission to enjoy small things that don’t lead anywhere. Things that don’t build. Things that just are.”
Writing has been one of these small things. And writing about anything I care to write about. I’m sure I should be niching and monetizing and advertising. But I don’t care for that, for right now.
“I don’t want to be productive. I want to be peaceful.”
I’m in search of emotional honesty in its purest form. Writing in public has gotten me a little closer to that. I’m scared that if I stop writing, I’ll disappear. That if I rest now, I’ll just be forgotten.
“I feel like I have to keep doing things so I can prove that I exist.”
Some of the best things happen when no one’s watching. The center of the story is rarely where the heart is. The heart is somewhere off to the side, in the background, humming along.
I’m paying more attention to the parts of life that don’t ask to be noticed. To the footnotes, the margins of my mind that want to be written down.
“I like the quiet things. The little things. The slow things. The overlooked things. The things that aren’t loud enough to make you stop. The things you only notice if you are already still.”
Some days, all I do is exist, which feels good. Not everything needs to become something. Some things are beautiful simply because they happened.
Tonight is day 30, a promise I kept to myself. I said yes, without certainty, to something I was really scared to do. Thank you for being here.
I don’t always say, “We should keep in touch,” anymore. Sometimes, I just say, “This was great,” or “I’m glad we did this.”
Maybe I gain more from the finality, the sincerity of it. The beauty of finity. To arrive, to enjoy, to have been. To leave open the possibility of,
“This reminded me of you.”
I’ll be back, or maybe you will, or maybe we’ll find each other again, somewhere new. It’s a comma, a pause, a goodbye, again.
👁️👄👁️me reading this after i just wrote a piece about staying in touch with my ex
come back to the meetups tho!! Or will see u in another life 🫡
To somewhere new,