I’m 26 and I just deleted the group chat for my high school friends. All twenty-seven of us, gone. Poof. Like it never existed. And the truly fucked up part is that I don’t feel sad, not really, just this weird, hollow relief, like I finally gave myself permission to admit that something died years ago and I’ve just been performing CPR on a corpse. Pathetic, right? The last message in there was from Mark, asking if anyone wanted to do a Zoom beer night, and it had been sitting there for three weeks, unread, no one even bothered to give it a thumbs up emoji. I swear to god I almost laughed out loud at the sheer comedic tragedy of it all. We used to spend every single weekend together, every summer, shared everything, and now… silence. Crickets. It’s like we all signed a secret pact the day after graduation to just quietly phase each other out. It’s not even that I haven’t tried. I’ve tried. Oh, I’ve tried. For years I was the one sending out the texts, suggesting the catch-ups, trying to coordinate schedules that felt like a diplomatic negotiation between rival nations. "Hey, anyone free for brunch next month?" *crickets*. "Thinking of grabbing drinks if anyone's in town!" *one vague 'maybe' from someone I haven't seen in four years*. I even tried to organize a goddamn weekend getaway to a cabin we all loved, thinking a change of scenery would reignite something, anything. I spent weeks on that, pulling together dates, finding a place, sending out a meticulously planned itinerary. And you know how many people committed? Two. Two out of twenty-seven. I just sat there staring at my phone, picturing myself arriving at this huge empty cabin with just two other people, looking like some kind of sad, failed cult leader. It was absolutely hilarious in its futility. I guess the hard part is seeing them all, or at least some of them, still hanging out with each other. Little pockets of the old gang, still connected, still posting pictures on Instagram from some bar or another, laughing, living. And I’m not there. I get it, they went to college together, they built new connections, and I was stuck here, glued to this house, watching my mom slowly fade away, day by day. It’s not like I could just pack my bags and go live the glorious college experience. Every time I even thought about leaving, her memory would slip a little further, or she’d get confused about where she was, or she’d call me by my dad’s name, and then all those grand plans for my own life would just evaporate. So I stayed. And they moved on. It’s not their fault, really, but god, it still stings. It’s just… a gut punch to realize that for them, I was just a chapter. A high school chapter, closed and filed away. For me, they were my whole world for so long. And now, I look at the old photos and I don’t even recognize some of the faces, let alone the person I was back then. That person had dreams, a whole future laid out, a support system that felt impenetrable. Now I’m just… me. Alone. Wiping up spills, reminding Mom to take her pills, answering the same questions for the tenth time in an hour. And the thought of trying to explain all of that to someone who just wants to "catch up" over a quick beer feels utterly pointless. What would I even say? "Yeah, my life’s a fucking blast, just trying to remember what day it is." So, yeah. The group chat is gone. And maybe that’s for the best. No more agonizing over unread messages. Just… quiet. A different kind of quiet than I’m used to, but quiet nonetheless.