There’s a stillness about them that makes the world feel too quiet, like everyone has someone except you. I lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling, lost in the familiar ache of my own solitude, when my phone vibrated.
“Lonely introvert, what’s up?” Esther’s voice burst through the speaker—dramatic, chaotic, and full of life, the exact opposite of the heaviness weighing me down. She always knew how to pull me out of my thoughts.
“Please, Esther, I’m not lonely. I’m writing,” I said, rolling my eyes even though she couldn’t see me. “Besides, you know I’m an introvert. My social battery is—”
She didn’t even let me finish.
“I’m coming over. Dress up. We’re going out.”
“Esther, biko (please). I have work tomorrow morning. I can’t afford that club—”
The line went dead.
Ten minutes later, I heard that unmistakable voice outside my door.
“Introvert! Open this door o!”
She kept knocking like she was auditioning for a percussion band.
I dragged myself out of bed and opened the door. Esther pushed past me with a grin, already unzipping her small bag.
“Wear this,” she commanded, pulling out a dangerously beautiful outfit—one that screamed confidence I didn’t have. “I picked it because I knew you’d give me one million excuses about what to wear.”
I laughed despite myself. That was Esther. A full storm wrapped in lip gloss.
After almost twenty minutes of arguing, sighing, pleading, and eye-rolling, I finally gave in.
Because with Esther, she always wins. Every. Single. Time.
We ordered an Uber and sat in the back seat. She kept poking my cheek, singing off-key, telling me she would “drag my introverted spirit into enjoyment by force.” For the first time that day, I felt lighter.
But then everything changed.
One minute we were laughing.
The next minute—impact.
A massive truck swerved, coming out of nowhere, and slammed into our car with a force I cannot forget. Metal screamed. Glass shattered. My world spun, broke, and went dark.
That was the last moment I remembered.
I opened my eyes 30 days later.
The lights above me were harsh. The room was cold. My body felt heavy, like I had been underwater for weeks. My family stared at me with a mixture of shock, relief, and fear—like I had returned from the dead.
It took a few seconds before my brain caught up.
Hospital. Accident. Esther.
My heart dropped.
“Where is Esther?” I croaked, my throat burning as if I hadn’t spoken in years.
My mother froze. My father looked at the floor. My brothers exchanged helpless glances. The silence felt like a noose tightening around my neck.
Then my sister whispered the two words that broke me:
“She’s dead.”
Everyone tried to hush her, but it was too late. My entire world collapsed. The room tilted. I fell back into darkness.
When I woke again, the truth came in fragments—like broken glass piercing slowly.
They told me the truck hit the exact side where Esther and the driver sat.
They said the impact was too strong.
They said the car rolled down a small cliff.
They said the rescuers almost gave up.
They said I was barely breathing when they found me.
They said Esther didn’t make it.
She was buried before I even opened my eyes.
I cried with a pain I never knew existed. It was the type of grief that squeezes your lungs, steals your voice, and makes you wish you hadn’t survived alone.
When I was discharged, the world looked different.
Darker.
Quieter.
Incomplete.
I kept replaying her laugh, her stubbornness, her loud knocks on my door, the outfit she forced into my hands, the last joke she cracked—everything.
I fell into a deep depression. Not the kind people post online, but the one that sits in your chest like a stone. I missed Esther. I missed her light, her chaos, her friendship, her way of dragging me out of myself.
I missed my friend.
And somehow, I had to learn to live in a world she no longer exists in.
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