To Whom It May Concern,
This is a formal note of appreciation for your continued lack of invitations, updates, or attempts to socially engage with me. Your commitment to my social exclusion has not gone unnoticed.
Just this morning, I took the stairs to avoid my neighbors, of course. In Sweden, even mild social friction could jeopardize your residence permit.
At the mailbox, I braced myself—not because I expected an invitation. God no. That would imply I still existed.
I checked anyway, as a ritual. Just to confirm that no one, anywhere, thought to include me in anything.
And once again: nothing. Not a card. Not a flyer. Not even a save-the-date from a distant relative who doesn’t know I left the country ten years ago.
So I’m writing to say: thank you.
Thank you all for not inviting me.
Years ago, I might’ve cared about being left off the group chat. Now? True freedom is never having to pretend I care about your crypto-adjacent lifestyle brand pivot, your post-exit founder sabbatical strategy, or which country club is letting you pay them to exist.
We didn’t move abroad for culture. We moved to become a memory that never gets tagged in anything. In Sweden, you don’t make friends. You enter into mutual non-aggression pacts of polite indifference.
The highest form of connection is when someone lets you borrow their hacksaw wordlessly and never mentions it again.
It’s not cold—it’s blissfully frigid. A safe haven of no invites, no small talk, no forced birthday group chats.
We don’t have kids, so naturally we don’t want to go to your kid’s party. Or their school play. Or anything involving folding chairs.
It’s amazing what 4,000 miles can solve.
I’m sure Isabella was brilliant in her third-grade Wizard of Oz. Shame I missed it. Oh, you posted her whole part on Instagram? Thanks for giving me something else to avoid.
Your wedding? You won’t notice I’m missing. Your baby shower? I promise the baby won’t care. Our high school reunion? Everyone already knows how humbled and honored you are about your latest career move from LinkedIn.
Also, please don’t invite me to the group trip.
You know the one—the annual pilgrimage where ten of you from college, plus assorted spouses, rent a house in Scottsdale to “reconnect.”
Where Tyler insists on grilling, someone suggests a board game, and someone else cries about “that amazing night in Charleston”—the one that ended with two people passed out and an Uber driver forcibly adopted into the friend group.
At dinner, the richest ones take turns ordering the most expensive wine, saying, “It’s all good,” until the end, when they go, “We’ll just split it, right?”
Also, please exclude me from your baby’s half-birthday picnic, your pre-divorce brunch, your “surprise” engagement that comes with a drone photographer, and any event involving a bounce house and charcuterie board.
I no longer know how to engage in small talk. I can’t “pop by.” I’ve removed the words “let’s catch up soon!” from my vocabulary. I’m free now. And the air is so, so quiet.
I don’t want to sound negative. There’s so much I love: silence, sleep, reading, and the radical freedom of having no scheduled fun.
I can organize my sock drawer whenever I choose.
Sometimes I alphabetize my spices.
Sometimes I stare at the wall and feel superior.
Both are better than a bottomless mimosa brunch.
In this noisy, connected world, your ongoing disregard for my whereabouts and availability means more than words can say.
Please continue to leave me out.
It’s the most thoughtful thing you’ve ever done.
About:
Scott Monaco is a writer based in Sweden. He writes about people, places, and the quietly absurd moments that reveal how we move through the world.
Illustration by Scalar Comet. Based on Original Photography by Lilia Maria via Unsplash
