It used to be that when I looked out my window, and let my eyes scan the steeples, slated roofs, and the tops of lit high-rises and sky scrapers, I could feel him in this city with me, hear his heart beating above the din of sirens, hoodlums, and hookers. An understanding of his presence was mine. Whether I had seen him recently or not, this was the case.

For the last three months, when I survey the city from height or depth, I do not feel his soul, or have an understanding that he might be anywhere near me at all. I have stopped knowing him inside, and cannot perceive anything about him from the distance of the scant few miles that separate our homes, except the potential for bad news.

This is what it’s like when a friend removes himself from your understanding of the world. Hundreds of pieces of imperceptible data pile up until all you are to him is a stranger—someone unmentioned, not thought of. Too many new things to catch up on, you can never catalogue what you’ve missed. So many hours of internal processing gone by that he thinks he told you things—big things he’s decided since he saw you last. Because after so many days, weeks, and months, it is too exhausting to recapture even phenomenal events, because you had to be there. And if you weren’t, then it is all lost to you. You will never recover those days, and metaphysical doors have slammed shut, never to be opened.

Paradoxically, you’ve been so absent you might as well have been there, because that is how he knows you now, by the utter lack of yourself. This is also your experience of him. “Being gone” is the new “being there.” Sometimes all you can offer someone is your absence, and it helps a little if you can think of it as the new shape of the love you still feel.