I am so angry at Allah for my lack of friends
Assalamu alaikum 23F
I am feeling very hurt, and I feel like I am in so much despair. For context, I have really bad PTSD. I’ve been diagnosed with PTSD among other conditions, and I have crippling anxiety. I am currently in therapy. Since early 2025, or early last year, I have been praying and asking God for friends because I haven’t had a single friend in over eight years now. It has almost been a decade of not having any friends, and there is so much going on in my life that is hurting me from multiple angles.
There is so much lacking in my life, and believe me when I say I am trying so hard not to look at it from a perspective of lack. I’m already aware of the practice of gratitude, cognitive restructuring, and focusing on the good things in your life so that whatever you lack does not become the most prominent thing and make you feel like you have nothing good. But I have been in crippling freeze mode, survival mode, and my PTSD responses are extremely severe. As much as I try to do these practices, they do not help, because deep down I feel like my nervous system does not believe in them.
What I am currently lacking in my life is the following:
I lack the provision of money. I don’t have a job. Money has always been unstable in my life. I have struggled with financial instability ever since I was 16, when my father stopped providing for us. I have had to provide for myself and work, but with my mental health deteriorating, working has become much more impossible. This means I have to rely on government assistance, and that is not a good place to be in. It means I am being abused by the system, and I am still part of it until one day God decides to restore my mental sanity so I can go back to work.
I lack the provision of friends. As I said, I haven’t had a single friend in eight years. I lack the provision of a good family. I lack the provision of mental stability. I also lack the provision of food. I live paycheck to paycheck. Some days food is hardly available, and I go to bed hungry. So you see how I lack the provision of so many things, and it is making me lose my mind.
But that is beside the point. I want to focus on the friend I made.
I met this girl on the 9th of June. I have been making dua and asking God to bless me with friends. I was very specific in my prayer about what I wanted in a friend and what I was looking for. On the 9th of June, I met this girl, and I was excited. I have been putting myself out there in any way I can, and I am trying my hardest to practice detachment and approach things with curiosity instead of thinking, “This is my person.” I take things day by day so I don’t set myself up for disappointment.
We met, and instantly we clicked. I was really excited. I was so happy when I first met her because among all the girls I had met, she was the first one who matched my energy and was genuinely interested in getting to know me. With the other girls, it felt like I was pulling information out of them, waiting for slow replies, and dealing with coldness. I allow myself a maximum of two days to text someone; if they don’t reply within two days, I end the conversation. Life is too short for this.
So I thought, “Oh my gosh, this is promising.” I wasn’t attached in a “she’s my best friend” way, but I was hopeful and curious to see where it would go. We exchanged phone numbers and started talking every day. We kept growing closer and closer. It was beautiful. We spoke daily for three weeks.
I know this is my fault and my mistake, I got attached too quickly. By three weeks, I considered her a friend, which is too early. I know that, and I take full accountability. I was attached. I considered her a friend and thought, “Girl, you are literally the answer to my dua. God answered my prayer through you.” I was so happy and excited.
On the 22nd of June, she confided in me about the guy she’s engaged to. I helped her, offered emotional attunement and support, and only gave advice after asking her what she needed from me. I was there for her. To my fault, I offered her a lot of loyalty. I realized that I offer loyalty early on to people who have not earned it, and I help them deeply before they have earned it. That is the problem. As a human, I expected reciprocity. Even though I considered her a friend and thought she was my answered dua, she was still a stranger as we had only talked for three weeks.
The next day, something happened to me. I had an argument with my toxic mom, and I confided in her. She responded, but not fully. Her reply felt rushed and not like the support I had offered her. The next day, she sent me a message saying:
“Hey girl, I hope you’re doing well. I’m so sorry. I feel ashamed coming forward with this. I feel very overwhelmed for unknown reasons, and I feel the urge to isolate from everyone. I’ve been feeling sick physically and mentally. I have the urge to isolate from everyone, including family, and not talk to anyone. I’m so sorry. I know I’m a bad friend. I’ve always had issues with friendships. I cannot maintain them. I feel ashamed saying this. I’m sorry I cannot be the friend you deserve. I know you have a lot going on. I don’t want you to feel like you did something wrong. I just want to let you know this. Will you forgive me if I disappear?”
I told her, “Girl, I understand. Take your time. It’s okay. The urge to isolate happens to all of us.” She thanked me for understanding.
That message was exactly 40 days ago. When she sent it, I felt like my entire world crumbled. I tried to regulate myself. I told myself not to send a follow-up message demanding an explanation because it would make her withdraw. I wanted to respect her need for space and check in later without pressuring her.
I kept telling myself she didn’t abandon me, she communicated. She didn’t ghost me, which shows she cares. Someone who cares communicates. I appreciated her honesty.
But every day, my abandonment wound was activated. I tried to regulate my emotions, breathe through them, and let them take their course.
On the 20th day, I gained some insight. I looked back at our messages and realized:
1. Early on, she told me she sometimes feels the urge to disappear from the world. I didn’t take it seriously because we were joking about it, but the signs were there. She was telling me who she was from the beginning.
2. Her message made me extremely angry. All I saw was self-blame and little accountability. She was drowning in shame instead of taking responsibility and trying to move forward. I used to be like that, but I’ve grown. I communicate now instead of spiraling. Shame pushes you away from people. Seeing it in her turned me off.
She said she tried her hardest to maintain the friendship but couldn’t. I understood, but she only spoke about the past. I saw no intention for the future, no brainstorming ways to stay connected even when overwhelmed. It felt like she wanted to drown in her pain without seeing she was pushing me away.
While she communicated her need for a break, going over a month without a check-in is not okay with me. That is silence. She took the first step, and I give her credit for communicating, but she did not maintain any connection afterward.
I have a rule: after a week or ten days, you check in with your friend and say, “I’m still feeling down, but I wanted to let you know I’m okay and still need time.” That is the least decent thing you can do. If it will be a pattern, you say, “I value our friendship. Can we brainstorm ways to stay connected while honoring our limitations?”
I value friendship. I am high-maintenance in friendship and in everything in my life. I do not do well with low effort friendships where people check in every few months. That is not what I want. That feels like getting updates instead of being involved in each other’s lives. I want a friendship where we show up for each other, prioritize each other, and communicate when we cannot. We brainstorm ways to meet both of our needs. I don’t want to be left second guessing or receiving empty statements.
I am not villainizing her. I am mad at her actions, not at her. I am also mad at myself. If I were to place blame, most of it would be on myself. I gave her full loyalty and emotional attunement that I would offer a long-term friend. I gave her the benefit of the doubt immediately when she didn’t respond to my hurt. I trusted her too early because I haven’t had a friend in eight years. When you are thirsty in the desert and find water even contaminated water, you drink it. It quenches your thirst temporarily but harms you long term. That is the risk of accepting anything that resembles what you’ve lacked for so long 🙁
I also told her early on what I want in a friendship. I hated that she made me feel like things were going well, like she was someone I could grow with. Not once did it cross my mind that she would disappear. Even if she communicated her overwhelm, it isn’t enough. I don’t want a friendship where you say you’re overwhelmed and then disappear for months without checking in, without brainstorming ways to stay connected.
I don’t appreciate this.
I feel sick and tired. During Ramadan, I prayed: “God, please don’t let this be a temporary friendship that teaches me a lesson. Let it be the friendship meant for me.” I am tired of learning through pain. I want to learn through being in a healthy relationship. When will that come?
This friendship has made me feel even more hopeless.
I’ve decided not to continue the relationship. I deleted her number. A part of me is keeping the door open if she responds. If she apologizes, I will tell her what I want and ask if she can meet those needs. If not, I will say goodbye. If yes, I might reconsider, but I don’t know.
For now, I am detaching. I am mentally detaching. All I feel is hurt and sadness.
And this is where my dua comes back again. I told Allah:
“Ya Allah, I am tired. I am tired of temporary lessons. I am tired of momentary friendships. I am tired of pain. I want to learn through stability. I want to learn through love. I want to learn through a blessing that stays.”
This friendship made me feel hopeless. I deleted her number. I am detaching. I am hurt. I am sad. I am exhausted.
I am just really tired. You know what this situation did? It caused my nervous system to fire up like crazy. The other day, when I sat down to make dua and ask God, I swear to God, for a moment I believe I experienced a PTSD flashback. I genuinely did not feel present in the moment. Instead, I felt like I was suddenly present in all the moments in which I have experienced abandonment. I had flashbacks to moments in my life that my brain had blocked, moments I didn’t even know I had gone through.
I was reliving experiences that I had completely forgotten or never consciously processed, maybe because my brain had hidden them from me. It led me to a severe breakdown. I genuinely cannot express how intensely I broke down. It drove me toward self-destruction, to the point where I wanted to leave Islam altogether. For a moment, I was even looking up witches because I kept thinking to myself: at least if someone does witchcraft, I will get answers. God doesn’t give me answers. He responds however He wishes, not with what I ask for. He gives to some people and leaves others wanting more. Do you see the unfair distribution of things in this world?
It enraged me when I learned about God’s names, that He is the Most Generous, the One who loves giving. I kept thinking: apparently He is only generous to certain people, and He leaves the rest of us starving. What is going on? I started comparing God to a human: you’re only generous to people you like, you only respect people you think deserve respect, but not humanity in general.
I was genuinely freaking out. I felt like I had lost my mind. I had to leave the house because I had never experienced such a severe breakdown. Everything came crashing down, not just this friend, but the friend before her who only responded every two or three months, whom I removed from my life. And the cousin who left me on read. And another cousin I grew up with, whom I viewed as a brother, who left me on read for 80 days. All of it triggered me.
And on top of that, I am being abused by the system government assistance, instability, everything. It all piled up. I kept thinking: why is God so cruel? What do I need to do so God stops sending me pain? I don’t want to rely on God anymore. I don’t want to ask for His help because His help always comes as lessons, or advice, or things I need to hear, or more healing I need to do.
It felt like God was saying: you are a never-ending project. Even though I created you human, meaning you will have faults until the day you die, you specifically must address every single one meanwhile and I will give everyone else what they need, but not you.
I don’t know. Please tell me where I went wrong. This friend situation has deeply hurt me. I don’t know how to trust God any longer. I am so angry at Him that if I do a good deed, I feel like doing a bad deed just so He cancels out the good one. I don’t want anything good. I hate that I am good. I hate that I am self-aware. I hate that I have all these great qualities people always admire. I hate it. I want to taint my name. I want to tarnish my qualities so people become bored of me and hopefully God as well.
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Response from a “Fatima Counselor”:
Assalamualaikumwarahmatullahi wabarakatuhu my dear Sister!!
I can hear how exhausted you are…. Reading your post, I don’t see someone who hates Allah. I see someone who has spent years begging Allah while carrying more pain than most people can imagine.
You have survived trauma, financial instability, hunger, family pain, loneliness, and PTSD. Any one of those things could overwhelm a person. You’re carrying all of them together. Your friend didn’t create this pain. She touched a wound that had been there for many years. You recognized that yourself when you described the PTSD flashback. That insight is important. Your nervous system wasn’t only reacting to June and July it was reacting to years of abandonment.
There is a difference between living and surviving, and it sounds like your nervous system has been in survival mode for years. One thing I want to say is, many people are afraid to admit thoughts like yours because they fear they will be judged, but hiding them doesn’t make them disappear. Allah already knows what is in your heart. The fact that you are bringing these thoughts into the light tells me that a part of you still longs for Him, even if another part feels betrayed.
I don’t think this is about your friend. Your friend became the trigger, not the cause. When she withdrew, it wasn’t just June 23rd that your body remembered. It remembered being emotionally abandoned by your father, emotionally unsafe with your mother, struggling financially, losing previous friendships, and all the times you reached for connection and were left empty-handed. It was saying, “It’s happening again. I am alone again. No one stays.” That’s what PTSD does. It doesn’t keep pain in the past; it brings the past into the present as though it is happening all over again.
Let’s talk about your friendship. I noticed something that I think is important. You wrote that you are “high-maintenance” in friendships. I actually wouldn’t use those words. From what you’ve described, I think you’re highly attachment-oriented because your nervous system has gone without secure attachment for so long. There’s a difference. People who have experienced chronic abandonment often crave consistency because consistency equals safety. So when someone disappears, even with an explanation, your nervous system doesn’t hear, “She’s overwhelmed.” It hears, “You’re being abandoned. “That’s not because you’re needy. It’s because your nervous system has been conditioned by repeated losses. You expected a level of consistency that usually develops after months or years of building trust together. After only three weeks, neither of you truly knew each other yet. That doesn’t mean your needs are wrong. It simply means this friendship hadn’t had enough time to become the kind of relationship you were hoping for.
Allah already knows every thought that crossed your heart. He knows about the thoughts of leaving Islam, the anger, the comparisons, and the questions. None of those thoughts surprised Him. Bring them to Him honestly rather than running away from Him. Even the prophets experienced moments of overwhelming grief. They cried, questioned, and poured out their hearts to Allah. The difference is that they kept turning back to Him.
One thing I gently want to challenge is this belief that Allah is generous only to certain people. When we’re drowning in pain, our brain naturally notices what we lack and becomes blind to what others are carrying. Many people who appear to have loving friendships may be struggling with illnesses, abuse, infertility, depression, or other trials that are hidden from us. We simply don’t know. That doesn’t make your suffering smaller. It just means comparisons rarely tell us the whole story. PTSD changes the way the brain interprets danger, rejection, and abandonment. It can make Allah seem distant because every loss feels like confirmation that you’re unsafe. That isn’t a failure of faith it’s one of the ways trauma affects the nervous system.
Please tell your therapist about the flashback you described. That sounds significant and deserves attention. I would also be concerned about how overwhelmed you are emotionally. You should tell her therapist or reach out to someone you trusts immediately. You deserves support through this, and you doesn’t have to carry it alone.
You asked Allah for a lifelong friend. You met someone who, unfortunately, may not have the capacity to be that person. That doesn’t necessarily mean Allah answered your du’a with a “lesson” instead of a blessing. Sometimes it means the answer is still unfolding, even though the waiting hurts terribly.
I know you’ve waited a long time. Eight years is a very long time. Your exhaustion is understandable.
When you’ve lived through years of instability, your brain begins collecting evidence that confirms the belief, “Good things don’t last. “Unfortunately, that belief can slowly become, Allah doesn’t let good things last. Do you see how the wound gradually became attached to your understanding of Allah? You wrote that after doing a good deed, you wanted to do a bad deed so Allah wouldn’t reward you. Because it tells me how deeply hopeless you’ve become. Hopelessness often says, If I stop expecting good, I can’t be disappointed. In psychology, we call this protective resignation. It’s your mind trying to protect you from more pain. It’s saying, Don’t hope anymore. But hopelessness is not peace. It’s simply pain wearing armor. Reading your post, I almost sensed that you’ve begun treating healing as though it were a contract: If I become better, Allah will bless me. Then when the blessing doesn’t come, the conclusion becomes, “I’m still not enough. “That is such a heavy burden to carry. Allah never asked you to become perfect before deserving His mercy.
You can quietly ask Allah by this Du’a
رَبِّ إِنِّي لِمَا أَنْزَلْتَ إِلَيَّ مِنْ خَيْرٍ فَقِيرٌ
Rabbi inni lima anzalta ilayya min khayrin faqir.
“My Lord, I am truly in desperate need of whatever good You send down to me.” (Qur’an 28:24)
This was the du’a of Musa (AS) when he was alone, exhausted, without family, money, or security. Shortly afterward, Allah opened doors for shelter, work, marriage, and a new beginning. Everything will be fine Sister. In Shaa Allah !!
And dear sister, you deserve support, not shame. May Allah provide you with righteous friends who are emotionally available, trustworthy, and consistent. May Allah ease your PTSD, provide you with halal provision, bless you with stability, and replace your loneliness with companionship that brings you closer to Him. Ameen!!
Warm regards,
From your Sister in Islam,
“Fatima MV”
Here are some additional posts on this topic that you may find helpful: https://www.stonestobridges.org/tag/friendships/
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Anonymous
Walaykum assalam my dear sister,
I hear you and empathize with the frustration you are feeling at your lack of having close relationships in your life.
I am a similar age to you and have been finding it difficult as well to find people who want to maintain a connection. I’ve also struggled with having friends who I reach out to first most of the time, otherwise we would never speak.
I’ve heard that making friends as an adult is harder due to the fact that everyone has something going on and the world today is not what it used to be like. Social media and technology can feed people’s anxieties are in competition to real life human connection. This shows in how we connect with each other in the modern world.
With that being said—it isn’t impossible to make a good connection, but it might just take time.
In your post, it sounds like the friend you met is also going through her own battles and struggles. When I read this part:
“Her message made me extremely angry. All I saw was self-blame and little accountability. She was drowning in shame instead of taking responsibility and trying to move forward. I used to be like that, but I’ve grown.”
It made me think that perhaps there are similarities in both of your struggles only she hasn’t reach the level that you are at. You described that you also used to be similar to her in that you struggled to take accountability and would self-blame. Although you have moved away from this your friend has not. You are holding yourself to a standard that she does not (or perhaps is unable to at this moment in time).
One thing I have realized from my own life experiences is that it is not fair to hold someone else to your own standard. This creates unrealistic expectations of another person which will always result in some sort of disappointment, hurt or frustration.
Your friend has her own worldview from which she operates from. Alhamduillah you are in therapy, you know that you have PTSD and Anxiety and maybe your friend has similar struggles and conditions but she is unaware of them. She could have a relationship in the past who she was left scarred by and does not know how to heal from. Her message to you shows that she can recognize that something is wrong and that she respected the relationship enough to send a message to you but it still doesn’t take away from the shock and hurt that you must have felt. None of this is said to take away your pain and struggle. This is only to give a perspective—a possible explanation—not an excuse.
Maybe in time your friend will begin her journey of healing and growth, but in the meantime your biggest source of recovery is to focus on the things you can control. Your therapy and self-discovery path are important and have great value.
They say that the best things in life take time, perhaps the prayers you have been making are nearer to you than what you think. Don’t give up on them because it seems far-fetched.
May Allah ease your difficulties and bless you to be with people who you feel uplifted by.
All the Best,
Your Sister in Faith,
Peer Support Volunteer NL