Your Page Will Always Be Folded

“Your Page Will Always Be Folded”

There’s a kind of grief we don’t often name. The grief of people who are still alive, just not in your life anymore. No falling out. No big dramatic ending. Just a quiet drifting, a chapter that closed without punctuation. And yet, there’s this ache when you think of them. That moment they were your person. Your favorite text. The plot twist that made your story feel alive.

Even though you didn’t stay until the last chapter, I’ll always have your page folded at the corner. Because for a time, you were my favorite part of the story.

That phrase has been echoing in my head lately. Probably because life has felt like a series of changing chapters. People enter like characters bursting onto the page. They bring light, color, perspective, and a plot you didn’t expect. Suddenly the days are brighter, the conversations deeper, the laughter louder. They add something to your world that wasn’t there before. You don’t just like who you are around them. You remember who you are. They pull out the parts of you that had been buried under routine, disappointment, or responsibility. They make you feel known. Sometimes, even seen for the first time in a long time.

And then time, being what it is, turns the page. Without warning. Without explanation. And maybe they weren’t meant to be a main character. Maybe they were just a beautifully written paragraph in the middle of your story. Maybe their purpose wasn’t to stay. Maybe it was to teach, to heal, to remind, to spark, or to awaken something in you that had long gone quiet.

Still, I keep their page folded. Not to relive what no longer fits, or to wallow in what didn’t last. I do it to honor what was. To whisper, even now, you were here. You mattered. You changed the story.

The world doesn’t always make space for that kind of memory. We’re told to move on too quickly. To heal faster. To unfollow, block, and delete the thread. To pretend they were just a phase. But I don’t believe in erasing someone who once brought joy. Someone who helped me laugh when things were heavy. Someone who saw me when I felt invisible. Someone who sat beside me in silence when words felt too fragile to speak.

That page in my story was sacred. Even if the book kept going without them, the whole arc is better because they were in it at all.

Maybe this is permission—for you, and for me—to stop feeling guilty for still caring. For still remembering. For hearing a song and thinking of them. For driving past an old place and wondering if they remember it too. For folding the page and never unfolding it, even as you continue to read.

Some people are not full chapters. They are verses. They are the sentences you underline. They are the fingerprints on the margins. They are the reason you paused. They made you feel something you didn’t know you were missing. They helped you remember something vital. That connection, even if it was brief, was never meaningless.

So to the ones who didn’t stay until the end of the book—thank you. Thank you for the season. For the memory. For the love, the lesson, the laughter. I won’t rewrite you. I won’t resent you. I will just keep your page folded.

Because you were my favorite part.

And I will always be grateful that, even just for a little while, we shared the same story.

—Dr. Nick 📖