This morning, sitting in a coffee shop with the warm hum of conversations and clinking mugs around me, I find myself thinking of you. Again. The same way I’ve thought of you so many times over the last ten years. It doesn’t make sense—every logical part of me tells me to let go. You don’t write back, you don’t call much, and the talks that used to stretch for hours now last mere minutes.

It’s been years. Four, to be exact, since I’ve seen you in person. And yet here I am, sipping my coffee, thinking of you, missing you. I miss how our conversations flowed, how natural it felt to be around you, how in those moments, I felt something shift in me. I felt safe, seen, and held. I miss how the early morning phone calls would wake me up, not just from sleep, but from whatever heaviness or worry had been lingering in the corners of my mind.

So, what is this thing I’m missing? What is it about you, about us, that makes it so hard to let go?

I’ve asked myself this question for a decade now. I’ve tried to understand what it is that ties us to these kinds of friendships—these connections that feel more like home than any house, more like safety than any lock or key. It’s not that I don’t have other friends, other people who show up in my life consistently, people who return texts and make plans. It’s not that I’m lacking in love or connection. And yet, there’s this specific ache, this emptiness where you used to be.

Maybe you were a soul friend. Maybe the connection we shared touched something so deep within me that nothing else has been able to replace it. Or maybe it’s that feeling of being truly seen, of being known, without the need for explanations or justifications. You just got me, and that’s a rare and beautiful thing. It’s like a feeling of being understood at a soul level, a sense of belonging without effort.

I wonder if that’s what keeps me tied to the thought of you—the comfort, the ease, the way it felt to be in your presence. Even when I try to let go, to move on, I keep coming back to this unnameable comfort I found in you. Maybe it’s the idea of you, or the memory of who I was when we were close. I don’t know for sure.

And maybe I don’t have to fully understand it. Maybe this ache, this longing, is just part of loving someone who left a lasting imprint on my heart. Maybe letting go isn’t about forgetting or moving on, but about making space for the feelings and memories without needing them to be anything more.

I don’t know why you stopped calling or why our connection faded, and I may never know. But what I do know is that what we had was real, and it mattered. Maybe that’s why I still think of you. Maybe that’s why, despite the distance and the silence, I still miss you.

I miss you because, for a while, you were my home. And I think we all long to go back to the places where we felt most at peace, most understood. Maybe that’s what it is—the memory of home. And maybe that’s enough.