Sometime during college we diagnosed a condition we named Phantom Friend Syndrome. It is (likely) relevant to mention this was first experienced when some permutation of our extended clique was on psychedelics. It was the panicky moment of being less a thing, like in the way one might—being high—constantly check one’s pockets for a set of house keys, or a wallet, or whatever. (Tickets! Money! Passport!) Where are these grounding items, that connect with a reality that is currently in a ridiculous state of trippy flux?

Phantom Friend Syndrome (PFS) would strike, and we’d do a head count, but there was still, despite solid numerical proof, a feeling that someone was…gone. Someone who we thought was there before, or should be now? Some key ingredient missing from the mix, like tasting a recipe constructed from memory and finding it lacking, but unable to name the lost ingredient. The supposed phantom friend could never be correctly identified. 

The odd thing is that it still occurs, sometimes but to a lesser degree, when the right combination of us get together, like isn’t so and so here to…oh I guess not? 

Which is nice, in a way, to think that even if you cannot be present (like at an upcoming wedding, say, two of which I will be missing this fall) you might be the phantom friend, your presence felt even in your physical absence. Even if you cannot be named outright, there is a psychic friendship residue clinging to the proceedings.