Let’s start with a confession.
There are people I adore who I haven’t spoken to in months.
Not because I don’t care.
Not because we had a falling out.
Just… life.
Schedules. Distance. The steady erosion of time by small logistics. The slippery slope from “I’ll call her this weekend” to “Has it been a year?”
And the thing is, I think about them all the time.
Little flashes. Songs. Memes. Inside jokes no one else would understand.
They live in the background hum of my life.
Not loud. Not urgent. But present.
This post is for them.
And maybe for you, too.
The friendships that don’t need maintenance, but deserve it anyway
There are friends you see all the time.
The daily texters. The dinner party crew. The ones who know what your Tuesday looked like.
And then there are the others.
The people who live somewhere else now.
The ones you used to see in shared seasons, grad school, early motherhood, that one job that nearly broke you both.
The ones who knew you when you were messier, or louder, or slightly more dramatic.
You still love them. Fiercely.
But they’ve become a file you open less often.
Not because they stopped mattering.
But because the apps keep changing and the calendar keeps filling and you still haven’t figured out how to balance groceries, ambition, taxes, and human connection in the same week.
It’s not you. It’s the century.
Modern adulthood is a full-time job.
Not just the work part. The life part.
We are expected to maintain careers, households, romantic relationships, fitness regimens, skincare routines, financial portfolios, meal plans, and inbox zero, while also being effortlessly present, emotionally available, and digitally responsive.
Friendship used to be simple.
You showed up.
You called.
You walked over.
Now it’s a fragmented stream of notifications.
Happy birthdays in Stories.
Heart reacts in DMs.
The occasional text that says, “Let’s catch up soon!” with no actual plan to do it.
We’ve replaced presence with proof-of-life.
And it’s not the same.
Some of us are just bad at staying in touch (It can't really be just me, right?)
Let’s call it what it is:
Friendship takes effort.
Even the good ones. Especially the good ones.
And some of us? We’re not great at it.
We don’t return texts right away.
We cancel plans because we’re tired.
We take too long to call back, then feel awkward about it, then wait longer because now it feels weird.
But we still care. Deeply.
We still celebrate your wins.
We still want to know what’s going on with your job, your dog, your weird downstairs neighbour who always waters her plants in a cocktail dress.
We just… forget.
Or flinch at the effort.
Or convince ourselves you’re too busy, or we’re too late.
The friends who know you without explanation
You don’t need many. But you need them.
The ones who’ve seen the full arc.
The ones who knew you in your chaos years and your self-righteous phase and your period of inexplicable bangs.
The ones who don’t require a catch-up deck before the conversation can begin.
You text them out of nowhere, and it lands.
No apology. No recap. Just: I saw this and thought of you.
These are the chosen family.
And they’re worth holding on to. Even badly.
Aging changes the shape of friendship
When you’re young, friendship is proximity.
Same class. Same office. Same bar on Thursday nights.
Then things shift.
People move. Marry. Divorce. Change cities. Have kids. Don’t have kids. Join culty workout programs. Leave jobs. Start companies. Disappear into caregiving. Reappear changed.
The axis tilts.
Friendship becomes something you choose instead of something that just happens.
And that choice gets harder when you’re juggling 86 tabs in your brain and a sleep deficit you may never recover from.
But it also gets sweeter.
Because when you do make time. When you have the dinner, send the voice note, show up. It means more.
You didn’t stumble into it. You prioritized it.
That’s real.
The emotional math of showing up
Friendship is the rare thing in adult life that doesn’t scale.
There’s no passive income model for it.
No delegation strategy.
No automation tool.
It requires time. Energy. Follow-through.
And if we’re being honest, it often gets bumped.
Because unlike work, it doesn’t scream.
Unlike family, it doesn’t demand.
Unlike deadlines, it doesn’t punish.
Friendship waits.
Which is both beautiful and dangerous.
Because the longer you wait, the easier it becomes to let the silence stretch. To tell yourself you’ll call next week. To convince yourself they probably don’t even notice.
But they do.
Just like you do.
We all want to be chosen, even once in a while
Even the low-maintenance friends.
The “we can go six months and pick up where we left off” friends.
The “you don’t have to explain, I get it” friends.
They want to be remembered.
They want to be the person you thought of at the bookstore.
The name you reached for when you were spiralling.
The number you called when something funny happened on the way home.
They want to matter.
Not in the constant sense. In the real one.
So what do we do?
We stop pretending we don’t have time.
We stop telling ourselves we’re bad friends and start being decent ones—imperfectly, inconsistently, honestly.
We write the awkward message.
We send the dumb meme.
We say, “I know it’s been a while, but I miss you.”
We don’t wait for the perfect moment.
We don’t need a three-hour brunch to qualify as connection.
We make the call while folding laundry.
We send the voice note from the car.
We show up—not because we have time, but because we made it.
Friendship doesn’t require performance. Just presence.
You don’t need to be impressive. Or articulate. Or fully caught up on their life.
You just need to be there.
To say,
I thought of you.
You crossed my mind.
I miss our friendship and I don’t want to let it disappear into “life.”
That’s it.
That’s everything.