I still don't say that year out loud very often. When I do, it comes out quieter than I expect. Like my voice knows the weight of that year and refuses to add to it.
2022 was the year my world quietly fell apart.
Not all tragedies arrive loudly. Some arrive silently, taking pieces of your life one by one until you wake up one day and realize you no longer recognize the person you have become.
That was what 2022 felt like to me.
It began with loss. Then more loss. And then even more, until grief became something I carried so constantly that it started to feel like part of my body. I carried it everywhere. I slept with it. Woke up with it. Ate with it. Breathed with it.
It was the year I learned how cruel silence can become after losing the people who once filled my life with love, laughter, comfort, and familiarity. Everything that once made me feel grounded slowly disappeared, one after another, until one day I no longer recognized my own life.
I lost him first. Or maybe I should be honest, I let him go.
He was the closest to my heart. The best by far. My best friend. One of the very few people I ever trusted enough to see the real me beneath all the walls I spent years building. He saw parts of me that I kept hidden from the rest of the world. Parts shaped by fear and wounds I never properly healed. And instead of allowing myself to feel safe in his love, I destroyed it with my own fears. I pushed him away because of my own inability to believe that someone could truly love me and stay.
At the time, I did not understand how deeply fear controlled me. I thought protecting myself meant pushing people away before they could hurt me first. So I sabotaged something beautiful with my own emotional wounds. I hurt someone who only wanted to love me. That's a shame I still carry quietly.
Sometimes I still think about him. Not in dramatic ways. More like hearing a song that suddenly reminds me of a version of myself that no longer exists. Like wondering how different life might have been if I had healed instead of running every time love got too close.
And with losing him, I lost another person deeply important to me. Someone who once made my lonely days feel lighter. Someone who used to smiled at me when I sat alone, called me over, included me, and who made me feel seen when I felt invisible. Losing that friendship felt like another piece of my heart being torn away while I was already bleeding emotionally.
By then, I was already emotionally exhausted. But I didn't even know what real exhaustion was yet.
Because then came my mother.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing compares to losing my mother. That was the deepest wound of all.
A mother’s love is difficult to explain until it is gone. It is woven so deeply into your existence that you do not realize how much of your emotional world rests on her presence until suddenly it disappears. Losing her felt like losing the only place in the world where I could always return to and still be loved no matter how broken I was. She was warmth. She was comfort. She was home. She was the person I wanted to tell everything to. The person whose voice could calm me down no matter how terrible my day was. The person who loved me in the purest way possible.
Her love felt permanent. Like something life would never dare take away from me.
And then one day, it did. Suddenly, she was gone.
I still remember the mornings after she passed away. For a few merciful seconds after waking up, my mind would forget. And in those few seconds, life still felt normal. My mother still existed. The world still made sense. Then reality would crash back into me all over again. She is gone. And every single morning felt like my heart was being broken from the beginning again. There is something deeply cruel about waking up every morning and remembering your mother no longer exists in your world. I would stare at the empty spaces she once filled in the house and feel physically sick from missing her. Her room. Her voice. The sound of her footsteps. Even silence sounded different after she was gone. Sometimes I still reached for my phone wanting to call her before remembering there was nobody left to answer.
The world outside continued normally while mine had completely shattered.
People still laughed. Still went to work. Still posted happy photos. Still continued with their routines while I was silently drowning inside grief that words could never fully describe.
Life doesn't pause for heartbreak. I learned that the hard way.
Even after losing her, the days continued moving forward as if nothing had happened. But everything had happened to me.
I carried grief everywhere with me quietly, invisibly while pretending to function normally around other people. There were days I smiled in front of others and then cried the moment I was alone. There were nights when the loneliness became so loud that I could physically feel it in my chest.
And in the middle of all that pain, my career slowly fell apart too.
I could no longer keep up. The emotional exhaustion, the pressure, the office dramas, everything became too heavy for a heart that was already trying to survive unimaginable loss. So I let go of the job I once loved so much. A career I built step by step over the years. A place where I once had ambition and direction.
I left without any plan for my future.
I did not even tell my father that I had resigned.
He had already lost my mother. I could not bear becoming another source of worry in his life. So I stayed quiet and carried the burden alone.
I continued living as normally as I could so he would not suspect anything. I used my savings to survive. I acted like everything was okay even when I felt like I was falling apart inside.
When I lost my job, I lost more than a career.
I lost my daily connection to people. I lost daily conversations. I lost familiar faces. I lost routine. I lost the feeling of belonging somewhere.
Suddenly there were no colleagues around me anymore. No casual conversations. No familiar faces. No best friend at work to talk to every day. And somehow, that made the loneliness even more unbearable.
I tried looking for other jobs, but my heart felt unbearably heavy. Every time I tried to move forward, something inside me whispered, “Not yet. Not yet.”
So for almost a year, I stayed jobless.
Grief had completely consumed me. I was emotionally exhausted in ways I did not even know how to explain to people.
People talk about sadness like it is just an emotion. But deep grief is different. It drains life from your body. It steals your energy. Your motivation. Your hope. Your ability to imagine a future.
As the months passed, my savings slowly disappeared. I watched the money I worked so hard for slowly deplete just to keep myself alive. There were moments I almost sold the assets I had simply to continue surviving.
2022 was the year everything changed.
It changed the way I see love, grief, attachment, and life itself. A part of me feels like I died during that year too. And what survived afterward was simply someone learning how to live while carrying the ruins of who she used to be.
But during those moments of unbearable grief, I often remembered the story of our beloved Prophet Muhammad pbuh during the Year of Sorrow when he lost his beloved wife Khadijah r.a and his uncle Abu Talib during one of the hardest periods of his life. And in the middle of heartbreak and hardship, Allah comforted him through Isra’ and Mi‘raj, and through prayer.
That story became something I held onto quietly during nights I thought I could not survive.
Because even during the moments I felt abandoned, shattered, exhausted, and completely alone, I still believe Allah had not forgotten me.
It is now 2026.
I am not the same person I was before 2022. I never will be.
When I look back now, I realize something that still makes my chest tighten with emotion. Allah never abandoned me. Not even once. There were moments where I could not even imagine a future for myself anymore. But even in those moments, Allah was quietly carrying me.
There were moments I had no idea how I would continue living, yet somehow I survived another day.
The reason I survived was never because I was strong on my own. That was Allah’s mercy. It was because Allah guided me through every moment I thought would destroy me.
He sent comfort in ways I did not expect. He sent people who showed me kindness. His endless blessings.
That is the part that makes me emotional when I look back now.
The older I become, the more I realize survival itself is a form of divine love.
Because there is no way I survived 2022 with only my own strength.
No way.
A broken heart cannot carry that much grief alone without collapsing completely.
And yet Allah allowed me to continue through heartbreak after heartbreak after heartbreak.
He guided me back to prayer even when I could barely find the words to speak.
Alhamdulillah ala kulli haal.
