Loneliness. I hate the word, yet somehow it has become the one thing that defines my life right now. If nothing changes for me anytime soon, this emptiness in my soul that feels like a force I can’t defeat, will push me into early marriage. Not because I’m ready, but because I’m tired of feeling alone. I’m too young to be talking about marriage even. I’m only 24, fresh out of college.

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I am trying to build something out of my life from scratch. Every day I’m working, fighting, pushing just to find stability. Yet I feel more lost than ever.

I lost my mom twenty years ago. I was only four. Since then, life has never really felt whole. I have siblings, yes, but I’ve walked most of this road alone. I’ve been doing life by myself since I finished primary school. I’ve tasted both sides of the bread: the buttered and the unbuttered. I’ve lived everywhere — with relatives, strangers, and in foster homes.

Sometimes I feel like I’ve lived the life of an 80-year-old trapped in a 24-year-old’s body. I never had the chance to be a child. I was forced to be a man before I even knew how to be a boy. Maybe that’s why I crave love so deeply. It’s something I never got to feel in its purest form.

I imagine my mom sometimes. I imagine her voice, soft and sure, telling me that everything takes time, and that one day it’ll all make sense. “You will be okay,” she whispers to me in my daydreams. God, I miss her. Missing her doesn’t even begin to describe it. It’s an emptiness that language fails to touch.

Now I’m here, in the city doing life alone. No one to call when it gets heavy. No one to sit with in the quiet. People say, “Why don’t you make friends?”

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Well, I have a friend. My best friend and brother in everything. The only thing that differentiates us is blood. We met in high school. He has been my anchor ever since. He understands me like no one else. I love him for that, though we never say it out loud.

I know he’s got my back but I can’t pour all my pain on him. He’s trying to build his life too.

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As for my father’s side of the family… that’s a wound I’d rather not reopen. Some stories just taste too bitter to tell.

All I am saying is, I’m lonely. Deeply lonely. Not for company, but for connection. For someone who sees me, really sees me. Maybe that’s why I’ll end up in marriage before my life is fully together. I am trying to fill the void that has followed me all these years. Maybe someday, I will get lucky and love will grow there. Until then, how do I cure this loneliness?

—Rashid

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