2022 - The year my world collapsed

2022 was the year my world 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. It was the year I learned how cruel silence can become after losing the people who once filled my life with love. Everything that once made me feel grounded slowly disappeared, one after another, until one day I no longer recognized my own life.

It was 2022

I lost my best friend. Or maybe I should be honest, I let him go. He was one of the very few people I ever trusted enough to see the real me beneath all the walls I spent years building. And instead of allowing myself to feel safe in his love, I destroyed it with my own fears. At the time I did not understand how deeply fear controlled me. I hurt someone who only wanted to love me. 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. And with losing him, I lost another person so deeply important to me. 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 then came my mom. Nothing. Absolutely nothing compares to losing my mom. That was the deepest heartbreak. My heart shattered completely. She was home. She was the person I wanted to tell everything to. I can never imagine my life without mom. And then one day, suddenly, she was gone. 

I still remember the mornings after she passed away. For a few seconds after waking up, my mind would forget. And in those few seconds, life still felt normal. My mom 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. Its cruel. Waking up every morning and remembering your mom no longer exists in your world. 

Her room. Her voice. Her scent. 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 went to work. 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. I let go of the job I once loved so much. A career I built step by step over the years. I left without any plan for my future. I did not even tell my dad that I had resigned. He had already lost mom. 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 decided to leave, I just want to leave everything. leaving my job also meant losing my connection to people. Suddenly there were no colleagues around me anymore. No casual conversations. 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...” I just can't move forward even though I knew I had to. Grief consumed me. People talk about sadness like it is just an emotion. But grief is different. It drains life from your body. It steals your energy. Your motivation. Your hope. 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.

So yeah, 2022 was the year everything changed for me.

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 guess 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. And the reason I survived was never because I was strong on my own. That was totally by 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. 

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.