“There is a lot of intimacy in never speaking again.”  

An article written in April of this year resurfaces on social media every couple of months or so to reach a new subset of people that are fascinated with its contents – just as I have been recently. The article in question describes how the emotional state we find ourselves in when estranged from someone we once held closely creates – ironically – an even deeper connection to them.  

In concept, this sounds like an oxymoron; one cannot be close to someone while literally being removed from them… obviously. That being true, I also think there is a beautiful intimacy in the silence between two people. To love someone so dearly, understand them so deeply, or surround ourselves with them so completely that their inevitable absence leaves us staring at the space where they once stood is an expression of love within itself; it is beautiful; it is intimate. 

. . .

When my sisters and I were feeling particularly brave as children, we would ask my mother to recount ghost stories about the farm we grew up on – a place that had been passed down in our family for generations. These stories were never stories of vengeful spirits or menacing demons, but of the people who once lived, worked, and loved in the place that we occupied: our family. 

She often theorized that the spirits in her stories wandered our family’s land, just as they did when they were alive. What we knew as their spirits might not have been their souls, she preached, but it was their essence. It was the way that their home remembered the people it once knew so well. The places they spent their lives ached with their memory, and anticipated them even after they were gone.  

The little white house on the hill loved them – even in death. 

. . .

I first started to notice something was wrong when my coffee didn’t taste right. The barista, who relied on muscle memory to take my order at this point, would call out my name and hand me my coffee with a smile, I would take a sip, and it just didn’t taste right. It wasn’t too bitter, or too sweet, or too creamy, or dark; it just wasn’t the same as it used to be. I had ordered this coffee for months. This was my go-to coffee order at my go-to coffee shop made by my go-to barista. Even though everything else was the same, the coffee just wasn’t. 

This was bothersome. Was I sick? Did I need my head examined? It was awfully presumptuous of me to assume the coffee was the aspect of the equation that was different here. It might have been that the coffee wasn’t different, but something was different. Something didn’t feel right.  

It made me start to think. 

. . .

“There is a lot of intimacy in never speaking again.”  

I met an old friend at a party recently.  

We hadn’t seen each other's faces in a while – or at least since he came to pick up the last of his things from my apartment. He looked about the same. His hair was a little longer in the back, and he was slouching slightly more. We were kind to each other. We’ve known each other for long enough that it wasn’t difficult to chat, even considering everything that happened. We joked in the way we used to over the music. I noticed he still laughed loudly and looked at me in the same obnoxious, sort of “I know exactly what you’re thinking” kind of way. I still cringed and looked away, only for him to playfully jab my arm in protest for the thousandth time – but the first in a while.  

I wonder if he noticed that. 

I noticed he was still hanging out with the same shitty friends. 

I wonder if he noticed I got my nose pierced, 

or that I started sewing my own clothes again. 

I noticed he was still trying to grow out his mustache,  

and he wore a shirt from the concert we never went to. 

Maybe he thought about me occasionally – like on my birthday. 

Maybe he wanted to text me when our favorite band was playing a gig in town,

 but he got scared.

I think about his dad whenever I see a bulldog or a case of his favorite beer.  

I think about our friends whenever I see a firework show,  

or when I get a brain freeze from a slushie. 

He might think about me when he sees an apple tree or a ginger tomcat. 

Maybe he thinks about me when someone orders a cherry coke at the movies, 

or gets too upset in traffic.

I still think about him when I make a joke he would think is funny,  

or when I can’t get the words to come out right. 

Maybe he thinks about me sometimes, just to think. 

Maybe he wonders if I think about him too.

We eventually drifted away from one another into the larger group of people and didn’t speak again. 

. . .

In that little white house on the hill… 

The stairs to the cellar creak when no one is around, just as they did when an old woman would inch her way down each step to fetch a mason jar full of beans for her dinner.  

A footpath from the back porch to the barn burns in the grass with no traveler to maintain it, just as it did when a lanky teenager wiping sleep out of his eyes would scurry to bottle-feed his pet calf before walking to school. 

The wooden swing suspended from the great oak tree in the front yard swings from branch to branch with no wind to carry it, just as it did when a little girl giggled as her older brother pushed her.  

The bedroom shutters open on their own when the sun rises in the morning, just as they did when a newly- wed woke to make her husband breakfast before he set off to work. 

I wonder if, now that I am a ghost to that place, it remembers me in the same way. 

. . .

My next clue was when I realized my eyebrows had begun to grow at an astounding pace. It seemed as though I was constantlypoured over the sink, face embarrassingly close to the mirror, trying to achieve the best view of my forehead so that I could pluck, shave, shape, primp, or trim them in some fashion. I had developed the ungodly superhuman ability to regrow facial hair within unprecedentedly small intervals… they might put me in the circus, I thought. Finally, I just decided to give up and let them grow. They were completely uncouth! 

Even more disheartening, the overwhelming care my eyebrows demanded began to spread to other aspects of my person. At an alarming and unmanageable rate, my nails needed to be trimmed; my legs needed to be shaved; my hair needed to be combed; my teeth needed to be brushed; my face needed to be washed; my laundry needed to be folded; my room needed to be cleaned … it seemed as though at every turn another aspect of my life grew in difficulty of care. 

Something was definitely different. This made me think even more. 

. . .

“There is a lot of intimacy in never speaking again.” 

I got a birthday card in the mail this year from an address I didn't recognize; the name of a girl I hadn’t heard from since the last was printed above it. 

I didn’t realize you had moved until I called my grandmother to ask about it. She told me the most recent gossip from your grandmother – news I used to receive directly from the source. I guess the paint in your room looked a little different in your new profile picture, now that I think about it. My Instagram feed is constantly clouded with pictures of you standing next to faces I don’t recognize. These are your new friends, I suppose… what are they like?

There was a time when our barbie dolls would try on each other’s outfits while we laid on our stomachs underneath a dusty pew in the back of the church house. It makes me laugh now to think about it. Our mothers would only let us sit next to each other if we agreed not to whisper over the preacher, even though they knew we weren’t going to live up to the promise. Teachers were even more fond of that habit. 

I remember when elementary school finally started. You patiently taught me how to braid hair, and in exchange I taught you how to turn a piece of yarn into a cat’s cradle and a teacup. We sat underneath hot picnic tables, cross-legged and giggling while you let me pick from your sticker books and I begrudgingly lent out my sparkly gel pens.  

You were the first friend I ever made, and I was yours…but you know all of that. As the years go on, and texts become fewer and fewer, I watch your life in pictures and hear your stories in echo, but I know you’re somewhere out there doing the same.  

You’re still my favorite person.

. . .

I wonder if that little white house still thinks about me… 

I wonder if the tiny window in the attic that lets out onto the roof opens by itself every now and then, just as it did when there were sisters to climb out onto cold shingles in the middle of the night and watch the stars.  

I wonder if doors slam periodically with no reason, just as they did when a big family that never ate dinner together got home from their long days in the world.  

I wonder if the gravel kicks up in the driveway late on Saturday nights, just as it did when there was a giddy teenage girl getting home from movie dates, running inside to call her best friend.  

I wonder if the kitchen floorboards shudder early in the morning, just as they did when there were three little girls scurrying out the door to get to school on time. 

I wonder if the closet light in the upstairs bedroom stays on no matter what, just as it did when there was an awkward kid there using its glow as a nightlight to read in a sleeping house. 

I wonder if my essence lives on in that place, even though I do not. 

. . .

The next sign was the most glaring: my alarm clock. No matter how loud the volume was, no matter how many ringtones I cycled through, no matter how many alarms I set, nothing would wake me up in time for work, school, an appointment – you name it. Is every single thing in my life suddenly defective? One might acknowledge that I always seemed to be occupied with this or that late into the night, tossing and turning for hours – but I just blamed that pesky alarm clock.  

Juggling this new challenge on top of everything else, I began to fall behind in more and more areas of my life. I began to skip classes and events, arrive late to work without bothering to call, and make excuses at every turn.  

Worst of all, I began to stop making excuses. I began to not worry so much about being late – or being anything at all. I began to not care. I forgot to clean my water bottle for a month and didn’t care. I accidentally broke my favorite mug and didn’t cry. I took all the posters off of my walls and left them rotting in boxes under my bed. I used to love being surrounded by beautiful things. I let the phone ring when my grandmother would call, when my sister would call, when my best friends would call. I just didn’t feel like talking. I didn’t feel like doing anything. 

I thought about all of these things long and hard, and eventually, I came to a conclusion. 

. . .

“There is a lot of intimacy in never speaking again” 

Since that first sip of coffee tipped me off, I don’t think I’ve been able to have a serious conversation with myself.  

I’ve discovered that I have become estranged from myself in ways I didn’t think were possible. My spirit, my mind, and my body are completely isolated from one another – like lovers in heartbreak. My spirit is firmly planted in the past, obsessed with what once was; my body lives in the present – simply going through the motions – and my mind is left floating in the space in between. The three can’t seem to find one another, or coordinate in any sort of meaningful way that would make up a whole person. 

Just as the essence of those that once lived in that little white house still open windows and creak floorboards, my favorite meals find their way out of the pantry and onto a plate every evening, even though I’m not there to savor them; lecture notes from classes I am enrolled in appear on my computer screen throughout the day, even though I’m not there to learn from them; a fresh cup of coffee finds its way into the cupholder in my car a few times a week, even though I can’t seem to taste it.  

Depression is curious like that. It creates a dissonance of the self. The world feels different, but in reality, one just longs for the return of the pieces of themselves that have been removed. As if they miss an old friend they’ve long been estranged from, all the three aspects of myself would like no more than to find one another – to combine essence with spirit, mind with body, and return the feeling of the world to what it once was.  

This longing recognizes what once was. It is sweet; it is the silent realization that to be whole is valuable, and to be without is painful.  

In this pain, in this silence, there is appreciation; there is beauty; there is intimacy.   

. . .

“The world has turned and left me here / Just as I was before you appeared / And in your place, an empty space / Has filled the void behind my face / Do you believe what I sing now?” 

– Weezer, 1994