If No One Remembers You, Do You Still Exist?

What a Woman Who Never Knew Men Taught Me About Existence

Photo by Alexandr Bormotin on Unsplash

There’s a certain kind of loneliness that goes beyond being alone. It’s not just the absence of people—it’s the absence of being known. Of having your emotions reflected back at you, your presence acknowledged, and your existence confirmed by someone outside yourself.

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman captures this isolation in its purest form. The protagonist has never known companionship, affection, or even the most basic human connection. Raised in an underground bunker with other women, guarded by men who never spoke to them, she was denied any sense of identity or history.

Then, one day, the guards vanished, leaving her and the others to fend for themselves in a world they had never seen. She exists in solitude so absolute that she begins to question whether she exists at all. Her thoughts, stripped of external validation, echo some of the same questions I have found myself asking—questions Harpman explores through passages that have stayed with me long after reading.

“Sometimes, I used to sit under the sky, on a clear night, and gaze at the stars, saying, in my croaky voice: ‘Lord, if you’re up there somewhere, and you aren’t too busy, come and say a few words to me, because I’m very lonely and it would make me so happy.’ Nothing happened.”

That question—whether something is real without an audience—has stayed with me. If no one sees you, remembers you, or thinks of you, do you still hold the same weight in the world? We often measure our lives through relationships, through the ways we leave impressions on others. But when stripped of that, what is left?

I think about the times I’ve asked for a sign, searched the silence for an answer I didn’t even know how to phrase, wondering whether someone, somewhere, is listening. The protagonist’s longing to be witnessed, to have proof that she matters, feels painfully familiar.

“Is there a satisfaction in the effort of remembering that provides its own nourishment, and is what one recollects less important than the act of remembering?”

I think about the memories that feel essential to who I am. Sleepovers with my childhood best friend, giggling in the dark while my mom messages us to shut up. Sunny Carnavals in Brazil, a houseful of family packed into a space that felt too small but always alive. Holidays that mattered, not for any single moment, but because they made me feel like I belonged. A song that doesn’t just bring back a memory but a version of myself that only exists in the past. If no one else remembers these fragments of my life, do they still hold meaning? And if I forget them too, do they disappear completely?

“The reader and I thus mingled will constitute something living… because my story, added to their mind, will then become part of their thinking.”

This might be my favorite line. The idea that writing lets us be witnessed—even after we’re gone, something of us stays in someone else’s mind. Maybe that’s why we tell stories—not just to preserve the past, but to prove that we were here.

Reading I Who Have Never Known Men made me reconsider how much of my identity is shaped by others. Loneliness, time, memory—do they mean anything in isolation, or do they only become real when someone else sees them?

I don’t have an answer. But I keep coming back to one question: If no one remembers you, did you ever truly exist? Or is existence its own proof?

💡 Check out my Etsy shop, Mental Nesting! Thoughtfully designed mental health-inspired mugs, tees, and more to inspire self-care and connection. 👉 Visit here