you don’t realise it at first. you think you’re just drifting, going through the motions, staying afloat. you think the isolation is just consequence – of circumstance, of grief, of other people’s distance. you don’t see the softness in it yet. you don’t see the mercy. you don’t hear the invitation.
because it doesn’t sound like an invitation – it sounds like silence.
and silence feels like abandonment when you’re used to the noise of attention, affection, affirmation. you keep checking your phone, replaying old conversations, hovering at the edge of memories. you don’t want company – you want thecompany, the one you lost. but Allāh doesn’t replace that loss with distraction. He doesn’t fill the void with noise. He lets it echo – until you’re ready to listen.
because nearness doesn’t happen in the crowd. it happens in the cave.
and not everyone is meant to walk in with you. not every love, not every friend, not every version of yourself. there are seasons where Allāh cuts the line between you and the world, not to punish you – but to close the distance between you and Him. and sometimes, the only way to draw you near… is to take everyone else away.
not forever. not cruelly. just enough for you to realise how far you’d drifted.
you start to notice it in small ways. the way your chest softens when you raise your hands in duʿāʾ. the way the Qur’ān sounds different when there’s no one else around. the way your eyes sting during sujūd, not from pain – but from recognition. you start remembering who you were before the world got so loud. you start seeing the traces of a Lord who never moved away from you, even when you were sprinting in the other direction.
He was always near. you just weren’t still enough to feel it.
isolation slows you down. it pulls you into the present. it strips the layers of performance and posturing, until your worship isn’t curated anymore – it’s just raw. your duʿāʾs stop sounding like arguments or requests. they sound like confessions. like surrender. like “i don’t know what i’m doing, but i want to come home.”
and Allāh doesn’t turn you away.
the people might’ve left, the plans might’ve failed, the timeline might’ve collapsed – but the door of nearness never closed. you just stopped knocking. and now, even the knock is unnecessary. because you’re already inside. already held. already seen.
this is what nearness feels like: not a high. not a sign. not a perfect prayer. just a quiet knowing that you’re not alone in the ache. that the emptiness is actually full – of mercy, of forgiveness, of the unseen ways He’s holding you together when nothing else can.
so stay a little longer.
don’t rush to fill the silence. don’t numb the solitude. don’t beg to be rescued from the nearness that will one day be your only comfort in the grave. sit with it. hold it. breathe in the mercy disguised as distance. and remember: the One who drew you into isolation did so to draw you back to Him.
