The Day My Shadow Walked Away"

I remember the exact moment it happened.

The morning sun had just begun to paint long golden streaks across my apartment floor. I was brushing my teeth, half-asleep and already tired, when I noticed the empty space beside me in the mirror. My toothbrush paused mid-stroke. The usual silhouette that mirrored me—slightly slouched, quiet, obedient—was missing.

My shadow was gone.

At first, I thought it was a trick of the light. I turned, squinted, even opened the blinds wider. But no, it wasn’t there. The floor remained clean. No trailing form, no mimicry. Just me and the brightness that somehow made me feel more hollow than seen.

I stood still for a while, waiting for it to come back. Shadows don’t just leave, right? They’re tethered to you like breath, like memory. But mine had disappeared, and in its place was a silence I hadn’t heard in years—a silence inside myself.

That day, I dragged my body through the routine like a mannequin on strings. Work emails, small talk, microwaved lunch, pretend-laughter. No one noticed the absence. No one noticed me. Perhaps they never really had.

It wasn’t just the shadow that vanished. Along with it went my sense of weight, of direction, of contrast. I didn’t realise how much it grounded me until it wasn’t there anymore. Without it, I was only half of a thing. I was light without texture, motion without meaning.

That night, I lay on my bed and whispered to the ceiling, “Please come back.”

There was no reply. Only the hum of the fridge, the occasional creak of the floorboards, and my own heart—beating like a tired drum that didn’t believe in music anymore.

Over the next few days, I searched for it.

I checked places I used to love—sun-dappled park benches, the quiet aisle in the bookstore, the street where jasmine bloomed in spring. I looked in mirrors, in puddles, in the eyes of strangers. I even stood outside at noon, where the light is loudest and shadows have no choice but to show themselves.

But I remained blank. Flat.

I began to think my shadow hadn’t walked away. Maybe it had run. Fled. Escaped from a body that had become too heavy to carry. I hadn’t been kind to it lately. Late nights. Deadlines. Swallowed feelings. Smiles I faked until my cheeks hurt. Maybe it had grown tired of pretending I was fine.

It’s strange—how easily people mourn things like lost keys or missed calls, but no one warns you how to grieve the quiet disappearance of your own self.

One evening, weeks later, I found myself sitting on the rooftop of my building. The city stretched below me in flickering silence. I closed my eyes and let the breeze comb through my thoughts.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I didn’t know I was hurting you.”

I don’t know who I was speaking to—myself, the shadow, the exhausted core of my being. But as the sky darkened, something in me cracked, gently.

A memory surfaced: me at age ten, running barefoot across summer grass, laughing so hard I couldn't breathe. The sun on my skin. My shadow dancing beside me, hand-in-hand with joy.

I wept quietly for that child. For the lightness I had lost. For the parts of me I had buried under deadlines and expectations.

That night, I dreamt.

I stood in a field made of soft dusk. And there, a few feet away, stood my shadow. Watching. Waiting. It didn’t look angry. Just… tired. Like me.

“I missed you,” I said.

It nodded.

“I won’t run myself into the ground anymore,” I promised. “I’ll rest. I’ll breathe. I’ll feel again.”

The shadow stepped closer. Slowly, as if testing the sincerity of my words. Then it stretched, yawned, and merged with my feet once more. I felt whole, not in the loud way of fireworks—but in the quiet warmth of a light left on for you in the hallway.

I woke up before dawn. As the sun cracked the sky open, I looked down.

There it was.

My shadow, curling around my toes like a loyal dog, quietly returned.

Not as a symbol of darkness—but as a reminder of depth. Of contrast. Of the truth that even light needs shade to be seen.

Since then, I’ve walked slower. I write letters I don’t send. I let myself feel things without decision —grief, joy, hunger, emptiness.

And every time I see my shadow beside me, I smile. Because now, I know: it never truly left.

It just waited for me to notice I was missing, too.