Relationships

This realization came to me at twenty one, and it was not gentle. it hurt to admit. I come from a spectrum of people who were never fully able to see others clearly , but I was not one of them. I was always good at analyzing people. I understood patterns, motives, insecurities. I even played the therapist role many times in my life, something I wrote about briefly here . understanding people was not magic. it is a basic human feature if you pay enough attention. the contradiction that confused me for years was this: I could understand almost everyone, yet I struggled to truly connect with them.

This question is by far the hardest for me to answer. I’ve tried for years, and every attempt was prone to failure. A big part of the struggle wasn’t just about identity itself, but about how strange my relationships were, unstable, confusing, always shifting. It’s hard to know who you are when the people around you don’t stay long enough , for you to see your reflection in them.

I remember coming back to Sudan from Saudi Arabia when Abd Alwahab told me he had secured a scholarship in India and might travel to pursue it. After a lifelong friendship, growing up in the same district our entire lives, the time had finally come for him to leave for his undergraduate degree. I don’t recall thinking deeply about it at first, because it seemed that he hadn’t fully made up his mind yet. When I returned to Sudan, I got busy with university, and suddenly things became real on his side.

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