Just A Rant, Or Maybe Not.

So, I’m sitting outside on the gravel in front of my hostel.

Alone,but not fully alone . Pople are still littered around,some girls are at my front, washing and talking about boys. But it doesn't compare to the specific suffocation of six people in one room, where you're never quite by yourself and never quite with anyone either. That in-between space where loneliness and company exist simultaneously and somehow make each other worse.

I needed air.

So here I am.

The past few weeks have been a lot. Except I'm not sure I'm allowed to say that, because if I'm being honest, my life has always been this much. Nothing much ever really changes. I just keep finding new ways to live with it without making noise.

I made a resolution sometime at the end of last year, quiet and private the way I make most decisions: this year, I'm going to be more intentional about my friendships. If something is wrong, I will say so. And a bunch of other things.

I wrote it down like it was simple because was supposed to be.

But it is currently sitting on my to-do list, untouched.

Here is the irony that is not lost on me.

I believe I am a friend that shows up. Or used to. The one you can call when the thing you've been dealing with finally gets too heavy. I will sit with your problem like it's my own, turn it over, help you find the edges of it. I am good at that. Patient with other people's pain in a way I have never quite managed with my own.

But when my friends come around on the days I am not in the right frame, something in me goes completely still. The words are there,fine. The need for a listening ear is there too. And I end up saying nothing.

Not because nothing is wrong. Because something is deeply, specifically wrong and I cannot make my mouth form the sentence

I've been sitting with why.

And I think, if I'm honest in the way I'm only honest with myself at odd hours on the gravel or on the road back from the faculty or on the balcony in the midnight, it's because I can already predict how it goes.

I tell someone. They say one of three things. Either: you're a strong girl( i’ve written something about this before), you'll get through this…which is kind, and useless too, and sends me back to myself with nothing but the awareness that I've now exposed something tender to someone who didn't know what to do with it. Now that I'm writing this, I remember having a writeup about just listening instead of always trying to fix your friend's problems, that's entirely different from this. Or they give me advice that doesn't fit the particular shape of how my mind works. Or they dismiss it. Not cruelly. Just insufficiently. And I'm left holding the original problem plus the new weight of having opened up and not been met.

Maybe I'm being paranoid. Maybe I've written the ending before the story starts. I know that about myself. Everything has to be logical first. I need to understand the risk before I take it, and when I run the numbers on vulnerability, the numbers keep coming back unfavorable.

But here is what I'm slowly, reluctantly learning:

Even when I've identified the problem, traced it to its root, sat with it until I understand it fully… sometimes that isn't enough. Sometimes the human thing isn't a solution. It's just someone sitting across from you saying yeah, that sounds terrible and meaning it. Sometimes the rant is the point. The release is the point. Not because it fixes anything but because living through something alone has a burden that sharing, even imperfectly, reduces.

I know this. I know it intellectually.

And still.

There's something else I haven't said yet.

I'm a little secretive. I'll say it plainly since I'm already out here being honest. I get defensive when people get close to the interior , my experiences, my actual thoughts, the stuff underneath the composed exterior I've apparently been maintaining so well that people are surprised when I suggest I might not be fine.

Part of it is control. If I don't give you the information, I don't have to worry about what you do with it. But part of it is the aftermath. The morning after oversharing, when you see the person in the corridor and you are suddenly, acutely aware of everything you said and you want to fold yourself into a very small shape and disappear.

I'm terrified of that feeling.

So I mostly don't talk.

So,Eid this this year,

I missed the actual prayer. And I spent most of the day inside my own head, watching everyone around me move in groups, doing the thing Eid is supposed to look like. And I just stood there thinking about one of my friends,more like a sister. And the fact that I'm not on talking terms with her right now.

Here's what happened: I messed up our Eid plans. I texted her about it kind of as a joke, she didn't reply, and I just left it. I didn't explain. I didn't follow up.

And she's still mad at me.

And I understand why. But I didn't explain because I was already harbouring something from before. A few weeks earlier, I had opened up to her about something that was bothering me for the longest time,which, if you know me, or if you've read this far, you know is not something I do easily. She was advising me as we walked back to the hostel. We got to my door, she said goodbye and she just kept going. Continued down to her room like the conversation had reached its conclusion, when it hadn't. When I hadn't. And she never asked about it again after then.

I stood at my door and felt stupid for having said anything.

So when Eid came and I messed up and she was waiting for an explanation, something in me snapped. And in a petty way, I just left her.

That's whybwe are here now. Not talking. And I'm not fully happy about it and I'm not fully wrong about it and I don't know what to do with something that is both of those things at once.

The irony of this particular week is that two of my other friends came to me separately with friendship problems of their own.

And I advised both of them. Calmly. Clearly. I told them conflict in friendship is normal, that relationships require navigation, that they needed to talk it out, face to face, actually have the difficult conversations.

Good advice. Solid advice, I know.

And the whole time I was giving it, I was thinking about my own situation. Watching myself prescribe something I wasn't taking. Encouraging an openness I keep finding reasons to avoid.

I didn't mention any of that to them.

Of course I didn't.

What exhausts me most is not the conflict itself. Conflict I can survive. What exhausts me is the mental load of it. The constant calculation , whether to explain or stay silent, whether the silence is protecting me or just prolonging something, whether the friendship will outlive what actually happened or whether bringing it up creates a different problem on top of the original one.

My brain does not rest from this. It just keeps running the numbers.

And underneath all of it is this feeling I keep brushing past and coming back to: I don't think I have anyone who would receive my problems the way I need them to be received. Not dramatically. Just honestly. I look at the people I call friends and I can already predict the response and the prediction doesn't make me want to try.

Maybe I'm wrong. Probably I'm overthinking. I know I'm overthinking.

But knowing that doesn't make the feeling smaller. It just means I'm overthinking and lonely at the same time, which is somehow worse than either one alone.

Eid is supposed to be uncomplicated joy. And I've had those Eids. I know what they feel like. Even if they were far from home.

This one felt like sitting in the middle of a conversation I didn't know how to finish. With my friend. With myself. With whatever friendship is supposed to mean, because I'm genuinely no longer sure my definition of it matches what I actually have.

I don't have a resolution. I had one ready, something about wanting to be known and not just familiar, about wanting the gravel outside at odd hours to be a choice and not a refuge. And I still mean all of that.

But right now I'm just tired.

Tired and quietly heartbroken in the way that doesn't make a sound. The way nobody notices because you've always been the one holding it together, listening, advising, showing up, and so everyone assumes you're fine because you've never given them evidence otherwise. Or maybe everyone's not doing fine too and we're all just pretending. But somehow it feels like I'm alone in my ‘not-being-fine’ness.

This is the end of my rant and thank you for reading. I'm going in to find what to eat then I'll proceed to overwork myself so I won't have time to think about my friendships or anything. And yes, I'm back to posting consistently on here.

Stay safe and sane.🤍

-one of my shots from Eid -