I’ve known solitude ever since I was a child.
I got used to it.
For some reason, I spent my childhood without ever making real friends.
I only had friends to play with at school, whether boys or girls.
We only called each other to ask about homework.
That was the type of friendship we had.
We weren’t actually friends outside school.

I hated going out.
I would stay at home all day,
which made it hard for me to make friends outside of school.
I started going out when I was in the 9th grade.
That was when I met the person who changed my life.
Before him my life was empty and I had no life experience.

That person later became my only friend.
We were actually neighbors, but fate brought us together.
We got close and we’d hang out.
He introduced me to other people.
I got attached to him.
He was my best and only true friend.
The rest were just acquaintances.

That’s how I saw things at the time.
With time, problems started to surface between us.
He was a social person,
Unlike me; I only relied on him.
I wanted us to spend all our time together.
I wanted him to treat me the same way I treated him,
although that wasn’t very fair of me.
We faced a lot of issues,
we would sometimes stop talking for a while.
I got mad at him a lot.
Until I finally realized that I was the problem, not him.
He didn’t do anything wrong.
That’s when I started to set some boundaries for our friendship.
I needed a distraction.
And so I turned to what I knew best—solitude.

I stopped going out with him and his friends.
I never got really close to his friends anyway.
I just went out with them because he was there.
That was how I saw things at the time.
I didn’t really think about it.

He left a significant impact on my life.
He was the reason I got out of my bubble,
But at the same time, I became dependent on him.
It was not his fault.
I detached myself from everyone.
I learned to let some things go when I isolated myself.
I became less attached to him with time as we grew older.

Isolation, however, came with its own myriad of problems.
I did a lot of things I’m not very proud of because I was bored.
We are both expats now.

I now live a very lonely life.
No one checks up on me except him.
But I’ve changed.
Something broke inside of me.
I feel indifferent towards people.
I went from being overly attached to him,
To not answering his calls even though he was my only friend.

I’m just incapable of feeling anything anymore.
I no longer believe in God either.
I don’t know how to restore my faith in Him.

I thought isolating myself was a good thing.
I thought I could do without people in my life.
But one still craves human connection, even if people can be stupid at times.

My inexperience and naivety have screwed me over several times.
It still does.
I found out that I developed trust issues.
I’m sometimes right about them and other times I’m not.
I tried to get close to people.
But the same problem persisted,
I am not able to set boundaries for my friendships.
When I get close to someone, I get too close.
And we see each other’s flaws,
And that’s usually the beginning of the end of our friendship.
I’m too scared to get close to people.
My relationships are very superficial.