Just a Story (Essay)
The Voice of Solitude
Some lives grow within silence. No echoes of a mother’s voice fill the walls, nor does the shadow of a father fall upon the memories of childhood. He was as lonely as the world he grew up in. Walking through the gray streets of a forgotten city, there was no one to even call his name. Yet within him, there remained a warmth an ember of hope, like the comforting aroma of freshly brewed coffee. Every time he fell, he brewed that cup of hope and began again.
He ventured into endeavors, wove dreams, only to be swept away by storms that shattered them. But whenever he crumbled, he told himself, “I need to make coffee.” That coffee was more than a drink; it was a ritual of rebirth. Yet, one day, the heart that had weathered the fiercest winds broke not by the storms of fate, but by the betrayals of people, by daggers thrust into his back by those he called friends. Trust, once broken, is like a glass heart shattered into a thousand pieces. You can gather the fragments, but it will never be whole again.
Then she came.
Like a drop of water falling into the desert of his life. Loving her felt like breathing for the first time. A feeling unknown crept silently into his heart. It wasn’t just love; it was the desire to build a home. In her smile, he found a family; he dreamed of children’s laughter echoing in a warm household. He fought for her, not just with his love, but by baring every corner of his soul.
But life has a cruel way of letting the ones you love the most carve the deepest wounds. As her tears fell, each drop pierced his heart like a blade. The pain was more profound than any physical agony it was a hemorrhage of the soul. For it is not loss but the feeling of being misunderstood that truly hurts. Learning your worth only after you are gone teaches you the harshest silence.
In the past six months, he had grown accustomed to being used, to the merciless world that strikes the fallen. But wounds inflicted by loved ones carve a different scar on the heart. As the writer says, once trust is broken, doubt seeps through the cracks and takes root in the soul, a poison impossible to cleanse.
He couldn’t solve it.
But he still loved her.
Because love sometimes lives not in being together, but in a moment etched forever in the heart.
“Love is the ignorance of the all-knowing, the blindness of the all-seeing.” – Ibn Arabi
As Ibn Arabi said, love is an ocean of the unknown; it pulls one away from familiar shores and into depths never explored. To be lost in those depths is sometimes the only way to be found. Love is a mirror where the self dissolves, only to be reborn in the reflection of another. In that mirror, he saw his own fractured reflections. When he looked with love, he didn’t just see a face; he saw the projection of his wounded soul.
In another of his words, Ibn Arabi says, “You are seeking love, while love is seeking you.” Perhaps, while he thought he was searching for love, he was, in fact, love itself. In every moment he thought he was lost, he was actually drawing closer to himself. Because love is not a destination; it is a journey. On that path, there is pain, there is sorrow. But every broken piece is a window to the truth within.
And now, as he gazes through that window, he knows that pain, too, is a part of love. For love is a journey that sometimes shatters your heart, only to rebuild a new self from the fragments.