The First “Hi” That Followed Me for a Year

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We were in the canteen.
He was pouring coffee and talking on the phone.
That’s when I realised we were from the same cultural background — same country, even from adjacent districts. His hometown was just an hour drive from mine.

I don’t know if there was a real connection or if my mind just built one…
but I felt something.

I’m an introvert.
The kind who keeps personal things tightly sealed, hidden inside.
But in professional spaces, I can talk — I manage.
So I asked him, “Are you from “[his town]“ “?
And he said yes.

Then came the usual questions — how long he’d been here, what brought him.
He asked me the same.

I didn’t feel anything unusual in that moment.
No spark. No thunder.
Just a conversation.

It was later — much later — that something started to shift inside me.

Self-doubt comes naturally to me.
Not something I’m proud of — just how I’m wired.
So now, when I look back, I wonder:
Was there really a connection?
Or was it just homesickness?
Was I missing home so deeply, wrapped in a life that had felt heavy for far too long?
that I projected meaning onto someone who just simply felt familiar?

Would I have felt this connection if I had been truly happy in my life at that time?

Maybe I was just searching for grounding.
Maybe he reminded me of something I lost.
Or maybe…
Some connections have no logic at all.
No neat beginning. No clear reason.

Just a feeling that won’t leave.

It’s been over a year now.
And yes, I still think of him —
not with yearning, not with bitterness…
just with this strange, heavy ache that I lost something.
Or someone.
The saddest part?
I never even got to hold it.

What I feel now isn’t the kind of love they write about in books —
not that soul-burning kind.
It’s quieter.
A remembering.
A wondering.