Amer Malas | Fiction & Reflection

I woke up this morning with a moment repeating itself in my head — the way certain memories do when they aren’t finished yet.

Often, when time and distance separate people who once mattered deeply, a sentence surfaces in passing. Something said quietly. Almost casually. I remember drifting for a second — not away from the moment, but inward — as they told me they hadn’t felt safe the way they felt with me.

Each time I return to that sentence, I feel its weight. Not dramatically. Precisely. As if something in me recognized it before my mind had time to respond.

If I had to describe my presence in the lives of the people I love using a single word, I think it would be safety. Or maybe gentleness. Something close to both.

That realization felt like a response to a question that had been circling me for a long time: if I had to name the one thing I truly need in life, what would it be? This didn’t feel like the answer. Just the loose end of the thread. The place where it begins.

Adler once said that to be needed is what gives our lives meaning. I don’t know yet what that looks like in practice. I don’t know what is being asked of me, or by whom. But noticing the direction feels like a start.

I think I’ve been searching for safety — for that sense of being whole and complete — long before I had language for it. But that awareness brings up another question: why does closeness sometimes feel like a burden? Why does the presence of someone who holds me register as one more thing to carry?

When I sit with that honestly, I notice a quiet sense of overwhelm underneath it. Almost a heaviness. I want love and companionship. I want it simply and clearly. And yet my mind keeps asking whether I can afford it — financially, socially, emotionally.

The question keeps returning: is a companion an addition to an already full plate, or an invitation to rethink the story I’ve been telling myself about weight — about what drains me, and what sustains me?

I don’t have an answer.

Only the sense that I’m beginning to ask the right question.

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Originally published on Medium · Witnessing Moments