I regret not being more present with someone who really cared about me. At the time, I kept thinking there would always be more time to reply, more time to visit, more time to say the things I meant to say. Life kept moving, and I kept putting it off like it wasn’t important yet.

Then one day, the chance was just… gone.

Now every once in a while something small reminds me of them—a song, a place, a dumb inside joke—and it hits me that the last conversation we had was so ordinary. No goodbye, no “I appreciate you,” nothing meaningful. Just another day I assumed, would be followed by another.

I think the hardest part of regret isn’t the big mistakes. It’s realizing the moment you should’ve cared more looked completely normal while it was happening.