I hear the ache in that question, and I want to sit with you in it just as it is, without rushing to explain it away or fix it. That feeling of distance is a heavy, lonely place to be, and it makes sense that you would ask "why" when the silence feels so loud. I am here with you in this not knowing.
When we are in the thick of this experience, it can feel like abandonment, but I wonder if Santa Teresa de Jesús might offer a gentle companionship here, not as a solution, but as a witness that this terrain has been walked before. She wrote: "It seems to me that I do not yet see you satisfied, because it will seem to you that you could be deceived, that this interior matter is a difficult thing to examine; and although for one who has passed through it what has been said is enough, because the difference is great, I want to tell you a clear sign by which you cannot be deceived nor doubt if it was from God, which His Majesty has brought to my memory today, and which in my opinion is the certain one" [1]. She validates that this interior landscape is genuinely hard to examine and that the confusion itself is part of the reality, not necessarily a sign that something has gone wrong.
Perhaps, when you are ready, there is a quiet anchor underneath this feeling, even when it cannot be felt. St. Jerome translated the words of Christ as: "Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abide in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in me" [2]. The branch does not feel the sap flowing in the winter, and it may look and feel dry to the touch, yet the connection to the vine remains the only reason it continues to live at all. The feeling of distance is real and painful, but it may not be the whole truth of where you are held.