When the World Forgot Me

There was no announcement when it happened. No blaring alarm, no flicker of the lights. Just one day, everything went quiet.

People stopped asking how I was. My messages were left on “read,” phone calls unanswered, birthdays unacknowledged. It didn’t come all at once, like a crash—it was more like a slow leak. One by one, the faces faded. Friends, family, colleagues. Eventually, the silence filled the entire room.

I didn’t know what I had done wrong. Maybe nothing. Maybe that’s the worst part.

At first, I tried harder. Sent the “How have you been?” texts. Liked every post, left comments with emojis to say, “Hey, I’m still here.” I showed up to gatherings I wasn’t really invited to, hoping my presence would spark some kind of memory, a flicker of “Oh, I forgot how much I like being around you.”

But it didn’t. Conversations danced around me, eyes glanced past me, and I became the ghost in my own life.

I began to fade not just from their minds—but from mine too. I questioned my worth in silence. Days bled into one another, marked only by meals I sometimes remembered to eat and nights I couldn't sleep. I wasn't depressed in the way movies portray it. I still brushed my teeth. Still folded laundry. But inside, I was unraveling, thread by invisible thread.

The world hadn’t just forgotten me. I had forgotten myself.

I wish I could say there was a turning point. Some powerful “aha” moment that sparked a fire in me. But there wasn’t. Instead, there was a grocery store.

I was standing in the aisle, staring at a shelf of canned soup, trying to choose between chicken noodle and tomato, and I realized—no one was coming. No one was going to pull me out of this. No one was going to remind me who I was. If I wanted to feel seen again, I had to see myself first.

So I bought the chicken noodle. Went home. Ate it.

And the next morning, I did something small: I wrote one sentence in a notebook. It said, “You are still here.”

The day after that, I wrote another: “That matters.”

Each day, one more line. Then a paragraph. Then a page. Until I had a journal full of truths I had forgotten. I started walking again—first just around the block, then through neighborhoods I hadn’t visited in years. I stopped trying to be part of every conversation, and instead started having real ones with myself.

There’s something painful, but also liberating, about being forgotten. You begin to realize how much of your identity was shaped by how others saw you. Stripped of that, you're left with the core of who you are. And sometimes, you find it’s stronger than you imagined.

I won’t lie and say the people came rushing back. Some didn’t. Some never will. But the ones who did—those who noticed I had gone quiet, who asked where I’d been—those are the ones I cherish now. Not out of desperation, but with deep gratitude.

I’m not angry at the world anymore. The truth is, people are busy surviving their own storms. Sometimes they forget to check if others are drowning. And that’s okay. It’s not my job to make everyone remember me. It’s my job to remember myself.

Now, when I meet someone who seems a little too quiet, who lingers on the edge of the room, I smile at them. Not out of pity—but recognition. I see you. I remember what it felt like to be invisible. I remember what it took to come back from that.

And if I could leave one message behind, it would be this:

Even if the world forgets you, even if it falls silent and the lights dim—you are still here.
And that matters.


Thank you for reading this 🥰.