Life Of Salma Muhammad

<h4 style="text-align: center;">Page three: Max</h4> Dear Diary,If Page One was about being “the bad person,” and Page Two of my diary was about Jennifer, then Page Three is about Max.Max was my best friend.And unlike most people in my life, he didn’t feel like someone I had to decode. He just… existed near me in a way that made things quieter.Max didn’t talk much about his home life at first.Not because it was mysterious, but because he didn’t like giving people access to it.But people still knew things.His father had been involved in drugs. Everyone in school knew that version of the story, even if nobody said it directly to his face. It was one of those truths that floated around people quietly, like smoke.Then his father died.After that, everything about Max changed—but not in the obvious way people expect.He didn’t become loud or broken or dramatic.He just became quieter.Like he decided that showing pain was optional, and he simply opted out.That’s probably why we got along.We were both good at not showing things.We sat next to each other a lot in school. Sometimes we talked, sometimes we didn’t. It didn’t feel awkward either way.With Max, silence didn’t feel like rejection. It just felt normal.He never asked me too many questions. And I didn’t ask him the ones that mattered either.We kind of agreed, without saying it, that we would just exist around each other.But Max had his own battles.And I think the hardest part was that nobody really noticed.People saw him as “fine.” Functioning. Present. Funny sometimes even.But I saw the gaps.The moments where his face would change slightly when he thought no one was looking. The way he’d zone out mid-conversation. The way he’d laugh a little too quickly, like he was trying to move past something before it caught up to him.He never talked about his father directly.But I think that absence followed him everywhere.Around that same time, Max started figuring things out about himself.Not in a dramatic way. Not as a reaction to pain or anything like that. Just… slowly realizing who he was.He told me one day, very casually, like it was just another fact.He said he thought he liked boys too.Not “became” anything. Not “turned into.” Just that he was starting to understand himself better.I remember nodding like it was normal, because to me, it was.Max wasn’t changing into someone else.He was just becoming more honest with himself.And honestly, I think that was one of the few times I saw him look lighter.Not fixed. Not healed. Just… a bit more real.We didn’t make a big deal out of it.We didn’t turn it into a moment.We just kept being friends.That’s what Max and I were good at—continuing without making everything feel like a ceremony.Sometimes I wonder how two people like us ended up close.Both of us carrying things we didn’t fully talk about.Both of us pretending we were more okay than we actually were.Maybe that’s why it worked.Because we didn’t ask each other to perform being fine.But even with Max, I still didn’t fully understand myself.I don’t think I understood anyone properly at that time.I just knew that life kept moving, and I kept moving with it.And Max… he was one of the few people I didn’t feel like I was losing myself around.

Life Of Salma Muhammad

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