For Three Years, I Haven't Really Known Anyone

I noticed recently that for three years I haven’t really known anyone. I haven’t let a single person into my life since 2023. I have been building the walls higher, without even fully registering it was happening. and the part that stops me when I sit with it is this: I didn’t want to know anyone. there was no longing or craving to know anyone, even tho there is distance. no part of me reaching toward people and being held back. I simply had no interest. not in forming relationships, not in initiating, not in letting anything grow into something nameable .

This was never me. even as a child. I was never someone who despised people, I just respected them from a distance, moved in my own world, thought somewhere else entirely. but what I’m describing now is different. this isn’t introversion or preference. maybe these are the just the walls I were building. and then forgot I had built.

It started, I think, somewhere inside the days I still don’t understand . I don’t remember making a real friend since then. I meet people. I can laugh, I can be present enough, I can function in a room full of humans. but I never gave anyone the chance to come closer. and when I look back I can see how many times I made sure of that, a girl who tried to reach past the surface of where we met, the friendships that wanted to become something more, the connections that were leaning toward a name. I killed them all before they could get there. without cruelty, but with a kind of precision that scares me, I was decisive in killing these before they grew. this precision is terrifying in the past three years of my life. now that I can see it

The numbers are what frighten me. three years. not a single person let through. and when I search myself for the discomfort I expect to find there, for the longing or the grief, I find something harder to name. I find that I want it this way. I do not want to be known by anyone. maybe I should question that is wisdom or damage. but to me it is wisdom. I do not want to be known by anyone not anymore, nor I wish for anyone, that they be with me.