Not Broken, Just SubOptimal

I do not complain about the life I am living.
I do not point fingers at the surroundings anymore.
I used to do that, a lot, but I stopped. now I look inward and stay there. and sometimes a quiet question rises.
what if I never stopped blaming the world and allowed it to carry my pain for me.
what if naming the environment was easier than naming myself.

I am good at building a small bubble where I have autonomy.
I choose carefully.
I cherry pick moments, people, ideas.
but nothing I pick is born in a vacuum.
everything comes from the same environment I claim to rise above.
even what feels good can be suboptimal.
and I adapt.
I cope.
I wear the mask of being fine while parts of me are not.
relationships become suboptimal.
experiences become suboptimal.
life itself feels slightly off.
not broken, just quietly less than it could have been.

sometimes I wonder if distance and detachments are not only about fear of intimacy.
not only about the warmth that scares me because it asks me to stay.
to be present.
to soften.
maybe there is another reason.
a belief that even if I stayed, connection would always be uneven.
that the other would love me more than I love them.
that they would value the relationship because I help them, not because they see me.
I do not want to be helped.
I never asked for it.
and part of me believes they are too naive to understand why.

most people around me feel shaped by a culture that cannot hold my projections.
so I keep them out.
not out of hatred, but out of exhaustion.
even when they try to understand, they feel too simple for the weight I carry.
because they can’t relate and connect the dots I’m saying. and that confusion has been with me since I was young.
why these are the things I’m feeling. why being seen never feels complete.
why understanding always stops one step before it reaches me.

this is what makes it heavy.
I am not where I want to be in this life.
this is the truth I avoided for years.
I coped by moving through places without questioning them.
but I know now that some people are not good for me.
they take more than they give.
what excites me means nothing to them.
there is nothing for me to learn there.
and learning has always been my way of staying alive.

most lessons people offer me feel old.
like echoes of things I learned long ago.
I do not blame them.
they are trying. I appreciate that. And I make it harder. harder to know how to help me, or where to even begin.
because even if I said everything out loud, no one could really help.
I do not want empathy.
I do not want emotional support.
sometimes I speak to explain myself.
sometimes to help them.
sometimes just to keep the silence from swallowing the conversation. And maybe I’m making it harder How could they know.

when I look back at my writing, my photos, the quotes I kept,
I see a long detachment from the world.
a distance that never closed. friends with everyone, attached to none. people and I moving like parallel lines.
never intersecting.
they never looked like me.
they were never enough me.
and only now, while writing this, I see it clearly.
I was always alone, and I confused it with loneliness.

maybe I am both.
I have drowned in everything on my own.
nothing ever felt fully real.
I never felt found.
and I do not want to process this part.
it is too heavy.
it makes my heart race and my chest tighten.
and I sit with it anyway,
quietly,
because this is the only place it knows how to exist.

maybe if I changed places.
not as an escape, but as alignment.
maybe if I moved toward people who look like me on the inside, or at least recognize me.
people who inspire me without trying.
people insane enough to challenge my creativity and strict enough to challenge my discipline.
maybe then I would feel stimulated again.
and maybe connection would surface on its own.
not forced.
not rushed.
just happening, quietly, the way breathing does.

there are people I met before.
people who could have stayed.
good ones.
some from high school.
some from the University Of Khartoum.
some from work.
real potential for friendship, for shared ground.
they were there.
and I was not.
not present for them. not present for myself.