On living alone

A gift i long for.

I don’t think I have ever been alone long enough to actually know myself properly and that thought has been sitting with me more than I expected. I’m nineteen and I have never been away from home, away from my family, for even three weeks, and the more I think about it, the more I realize how much that has probably shaped me in ways I don’t fully understand yet.

Because what does it even mean to exist without constant interruption? To wake up and not immediately hear someone calling your name, to not be needed, to not be told what to do before you have even gathered your thoughts for the day. I don’t know what that feels like. I don’t know what it feels like to sit in silence that belongs entirely to me, to hear my thoughts clearly without them being cut off halfway by something or someone else.

And I think that has built something in me. Something that feels like anger, but not the loud kind. More like something that has been sitting quietly for years, building in small moments where I wanted space and didn’t have it, where I wanted to think and couldn’t finish the thought, where I wanted to just be but had to respond instead. It makes me feel like I am very close to exploding sometimes, not in a way that anyone else would notice, but internally, like there is too much in me that has nowhere to go.

I keep thinking about what it would feel like to live alone. To wake up in the morning and not speak if I don’t want to, to go the whole day just existing with myself and only hearing my own voice if I choose to. To move slowly, to not feel rushed or pulled into things that don’t feel like they belong to me. To actually sit with my thoughts long enough to understand them instead of constantly pushing them aside because something else needs me.

But then I look at how life is set up and it doesn’t feel like that space exists for me. It feels like there is an unwritten path that goes from your parents’ house straight into your husband’s house, and somewhere in between all of that, you are expected to just know yourself, to be settled, to be ready to share a life with someone else.

And I don’t know how that makes sense.

Because who am I outside of all of this? Who am I when I am not constantly responding to people around me? Who am I when I wake up without urgency, without noise, without that underlying tension that carries into the rest of the day?

I don’t know.

And that scares me more than I thought it would.

Because I used to be the kind of person who wanted to get married immediately, like it was something I was waiting for, something that would change everything for the better. But now when I think about it, my mind is not at ease in the same way. It feels unsettled, like I am about to step into something huge without ever having stood on my own properly.

And I keep thinking, don’t we all need that at least once? To be alone in a real way, not just physically but mentally, to understand what we like and what we don’t like without being interrupted or influenced or pulled in different directions. To wake up gently, to move through the day without being called or rushed or expected to immediately give something of yourself.

Because sometimes it feels like I have been living in reaction. Reacting to voices, to needs, to expectations, to everything around me, and I don’t know where I begin outside of that.

I think that is what I am longing for more than anything. Not distance in a harsh way, not disconnection, but space. Real space. The kind that lets you return to yourself without noise.

And I don’t know if I will ever get that, but I hope I do. I really hope that if Allah has written marriage for me, He also writes a space before it where I can be alone, even if just for a while. Long enough to understand myself, long enough to hear my own thoughts without interruption, long enough to meet the version of me that has been buried under everything else.

Because I don’t want to enter something that big without ever knowing who I am when everything is finally quiet.