Insight of a Kenyan Girl

I laughed today, but not the happy kind. It was the kind of laugh that slips out when you’re caught off guard, thin, almost hollow. Someone I used to know a long time ago called me. A voice I hadn’t heard in years, a name I had tucked somewhere far from my daily life.

He said it casually, like it was the most ordinary thing in the world:
“Just checking in and saying happy birthday.”

For a moment, I froze.
“You remembered?” I asked, genuinely stunned.

And he said, “It has been in my calendar since way back.”

I didn’t know what to do with that.
A date I never expect anyone to care about anymore has been quietly sitting in the memory of someone who is no longer part of my life. Someone who should have drifted off with the rest of the past.

The strange part?
My people… the ones here, the ones present, the ones I speak to all the time… forgot. My friends forgot. Even my family forgot. And that cut deeper than I wanted to admit. Because I remember theirs. I always do. I carry their dates, their moments, their small joys and big days like little beads threaded through my mind.

So yes, it hurt. That kind of quiet hurt that doesn’t spill tears it just settles in your chest and sits there, heavy.

And yet, out of all people, it was him.
Someone almost like a stranger now. Someone whose chapter closed years ago. He’s the one who remembered.

It’s strange how life works. Sometimes the people we lean on forget, and the people we’ve let go hold on to pieces of us we no longer expect anyone to keep.

His call didn’t fix anything. It didn’t erase the ache. But it softened the silence of the day. It reminded me that even in the spaces where I feel unseen, someone, somewhere, had kept a small part of me with them.

And for that alone, I am quietly grateful.
Not joyful just grateful in that lonely, subdued way that doesn’t brighten the room, but keeps the darkness from swallowing it whole.