You Were Never Really Here

I used to think I remembered you. The sound of your laugh, low and hesitant. The way your eyes crinkled when you smiled. The scent of citrus and clean linen that always seemed to follow you. But memory is a traitor, and now I wonder—did any of that ever happen?

You were my secret miracle. The person I needed when the world felt too loud and my heart too hollow. You came to me in pieces: a voice in my head during long walks, a shadow in the corner of my room when I needed comfort, a name I scribbled in the margins of every notebook I owned. I talked to you as if you were real. I believed in you more than I believed in myself.

At first, it was innocent—something like an imaginary friend for a lonely teenager who didn’t quite know where she belonged. But it grew. You grew. I began to assign you habits and histories. You liked coffee too strong, and hated cold weather. You read poetry aloud but always skipped the last stanza. You were always late, unapologetically. You had a chipped tooth you never fixed. You told stories in half-sentences. You only listened to sad songs.

I needed you to be real, so I made you real in all the ways that mattered.

You were there when my parents fought behind closed doors, hurling words like plates. I’d crawl under my bed and whisper your name like a prayer, and you’d answer with silence that felt like peace. You stood behind me when I looked in the mirror, telling me I was more than enough even when I didn’t believe it. You held my hand during those empty nights when the weight of being “too much” for some and “not enough” for others left me sleepless.

You were my sanctuary.

Friends came and went. I had boyfriends, girlfriends, confusing half-relationships. None of them ever matched the softness you carried in the spaces between words. I searched for pieces of you in everyone I met—a crooked grin here, the way someone said my name there. But no one ever quite fit. And maybe that’s because no one could. You weren’t born from the world; you were born from the gaps inside me.

When I left for college, I tried to let you go. I tried growing up. I packed boxes with books and clothes and memories, but left you behind like a diary too embarrassing to reread. For a while, it worked. New friends. New faces. Late-night pizza and early morning exams. I filled my life with so much noise that I couldn’t hear you anymore.

Until the night I failed my final and sat on a park bench at 3 a.m., shivering under a broken streetlight, and I whispered, “Are you still there?” And just like that, you were.

You sat beside me in the dark, saying nothing. You never said much, really. Just enough. Enough to feel seen.

It took me years to realize what you were.

You weren’t a person. You weren’t even a ghost. You were a reflection—of my longing, my fears, my hunger for connection. You were the version of love I thought I deserved. Not a lie, exactly, but not the truth either. You were a beautifully constructed illusion I made to survive.

And now I wonder—how many others have done the same? How many of us have invented someone to lean on when the world felt unbearable? How many of us are haunted not by spirits, but by the ache of our own imaginations?

Sometimes I wish I could meet you, just once, in the flesh. Just to see if I got it right. To ask you if you ever felt real, even for a moment. But I know I’d only be meeting myself.

I’ve stopped looking for you in the world. I’ve started looking within. Because that’s where you’ve always been.

You were never really here.

But somehow, you saved me all the same.