The People We Forget to Remember

There are people in your life you don’t think much about until they’re gone. Not the ones who leave you devastated, and not the ones you fought to hold onto. I’m talking about the quieter ones—the background characters. The NPCs. They move through your life almost imperceptibly, orbiting just close enough to leave a mark, but never so close that you notice them slipping away.

I knew one of those people during high school. We had so many classes together that avoiding him was impossible, though I probably would’ve tried if I could. He was that guy—always talking, always making some sarcastic comment, always finding a way to turn everything into a joke. It drove me insane. He was loud, restless, and so sharp with his humor that sometimes it felt like he was laughing at life itself.

And yet, he made me laugh too. Not in a deep, soul-altering way, but in the kind of way that made those endless school days feel just a little bit shorter. He annoyed me, yes, but he also entertained me, even when I didn’t want to admit it. I didn’t think about him much beyond the confines of the classroom, and when we graduated, I assumed I’d forget him entirely.

But I didn’t.

It’s not that I miss him, exactly. It’s that I miss the version of me who existed when he was around. The person who laughed at his dumb jokes, who found relief in his irreverence during those heavy, suffocating days. When I think about him now, I don’t just remember the way he made me laugh—I remember who I was in those moments. And sometimes, I wonder if it’s him I miss, or if it’s the version of me who found it so easy to be entertained by someone so simple, so unguarded.

That’s the thing about these people, the ones who fill the edges of your life. They’re not just part of your story—they hold up a mirror to a part of you that doesn’t exist anymore. They don’t just fade out of your life; they fade out of who you were. And when you think of them, it’s not just them you’re mourning. It’s the way they reminded you of yourself.

If I reached out to him now, I wouldn’t know what to say. Hey, remember that year we spent annoying each other in every class? I think about you sometimes. It feels strange, impossible even, because the truth is, we wouldn’t recognize each other anymore. I don’t think we were ever meant to carry each other into the next chapter of our lives.

He existed in that specific moment, and I existed alongside him, and that’s where we’ll always stay—frozen in those shared glances across the classroom, those rolling eyes, and those reluctant laughs. To reach out now would be to break something delicate, something sacred. It would mean confronting the truth that the version of me he knew is long gone, just as the version of him I remember probably doesn’t exist anymore.

That’s the hardest part. These people—these NPCs—they don’t just remind you of themselves. They remind you of a life you’ve left behind. A life where you weren’t so guarded, where it didn’t take so much to make you laugh, where the weight of everything wasn’t quite as heavy as it feels now. They remind you of the effortless moments, the ones that didn’t feel significant at the time but now seem like they held the whole world.

I think about him sometimes, not because I want him back in my life, but because I want to hold onto what he represents. The simplicity of that time, the unspoken connection of two people who shared space without ever really knowing each other. I want to hold onto the me who existed then—the one who didn’t realize how fleeting those moments would be, who thought people like him would always be there, filling the gaps.

But life moves forward, and people like him aren’t meant to stay. They’re meant to brush up against your world just long enough to leave an impression, and then drift away. And in their absence, they leave behind something surprising—not a hole, but a reflection. A memory of yourself, unguarded and unfiltered, laughing in a classroom without thinking about the years ahead or the distance that would grow between you and the person sitting next to you.

I guess that’s why I miss him, or people like him. Not because they were special, but because they made me feel like I was. Because they showed me a version of myself that felt lighter, freer, unburdened by the complications of growing up and moving on.

So when I think of him now, I don’t think about where he is or who he’s become. I think about the me he left behind—the one who laughed without hesitation, who didn’t think so much about what it all meant, who existed fully in the moment without realizing how rare that was. And I wonder if he ever thinks about me, not as someone important, but as someone who filled the background of his own story. Someone who, in her own quiet way, made him miss a version of himself too.