the intimacy of never talking again

a confession about memory, silence, and someone who will never read this (and that’s the point)

The phrase devastates.

I read it this morning, and it stuck with me all day. I don’t know why, but I’d blame it on the fact that it happened to be the best day for it, an estranged person’s birthday.

There’s a sick kind of closeness in silence. Why does it feel more intimate to never speak to someone again than to text them “Happy Birthday!”? Someone I used to know is a year older today. I know that not because we still talk (God no), but because my brain is a haunted archive of useless information about men who always end up in relationships the second they’re done picking through the folds of my brain and the crevices of my body.

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. Closer than I do to that one ex who’d come up to me in public with that awkward, yet familiar half-smile, like he just saw a ghost he once made out with. Or closer than to the people I grew up with and naturally grew apart from, those who knew me best and whom I’ve parted with amicably. It’s strange. This person and I ended on bad terms. So bad, in fact, that I can’t even pinpoint where it all went wrong. But somehow, I still feel more connected to them than anyone else.

I feel closer to them now that I don’t have any social media to stalk, friends in common to interrogate, or micro-acts to pick up on. I feel as if no one in my life is closer to me than them. At least, not right now. The act of letting go, erasing, and never speaking to someone again brings you together in ways I have a hard time putting into words.

There’s something sacred in the quiet. Something twistedly tender about knowing that we are both carrying the same memories, unspoken and untouched, like a weird little time capsule we buried and agreed never to dig up. That is real intimacy. Not a soft launch. Not a photo dump. Just shared silence, heavy as hell.

And yet, while I’m writing this, I catch myself wanting to ask, “Do you think of me?” but I brush the thought off five seconds later, as if they’d somehow feel it. As if they’d know I’m breaking the unspoken vow of nonexistence. But I won’t. Because the silence is louder.

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 don’t. The knowledge that they’re somewhere out there, living a life you’ll never see, and the choice to stay blind anyway.

It’s maddening how loud it gets. Because even when they’ve vanished from your feed, your phone, your orbit, they still exist. They’re not dead. They’re just… invisible. And there’s something unhinged about knowing someone is out there breathing, laughing, eating birthday cake, and you don’t get to know anything about it. Not a photo. Not a status. Not a tagged location. Just blank space where a person used to be.

I don’t have photos. I don’t have messages. I don’t even have mutual friends to casually mine for updates. And somehow that makes the silence heavier, not lighter. We didn’t just lose each other. We erased each other. But the ghost stayed.

Sometimes, I catch myself trying to picture it, what they look like now, if they still use my lingo, if they still have a hard time parking or still overcompensate for shyness with humor. I build entire fake lives for people I’ll never speak to again. And maybe that’s the real intimacy. Not the knowing, but the imagining. The quiet, ridiculous belief that you still know them, even if you don’t.

And there’s a kind of violence in that, the way someone can go from being the most familiar person in the room to a complete unknown. How a voice you once heard every day becomes something you can’t even remember the shape of. How you used to know exactly what they’d order for lunch, and now you don’t even know what city they live in. It’s disorienting. That kind of loss doesn’t come with a funeral or a goodbye. It just… happens. One day they’re a person. The next, they’re a silence you carry around.

But the worst part, the part I try not to say out loud, is wondering if they think of me too. Or if the silence only feels sacred on my end. What if they forgot my birthday? What if they’ve never once replayed a moment in their head the way I sometimes do, involuntarily, like a scratched record? What if, to them, I was just a brief interlude… a chapter they skimmed and never re-read?

It’s a strange kind of ego to assume your absence echoes in someone else’s world the way theirs does in yours. But when you’ve built a shrine out of silence, any hint that it might not be mutual feels like betrayal. I don’t need them to miss me. I just want to believe the space I left behind was noticeable. That it mattered. That I mattered.

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.

I don’t want them back. I don’t want a conversation, a reunion, or a final word. I’m not waiting. But I still want to understand why the silence feels so full. Why something that’s supposed to mean absence keeps showing up. Why the quiet feels louder than closure ever could.

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’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.

So no, I don’t miss them. I don’t even think of them often. But sometimes, I still feel the shape of what used to be.

And maybe that’s why silence feels so intimate, because it never really goes away.

Because maybe never talking again really is the most intimate thing we ever did.

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