I Ache

Clare Vogel

I measure intense emotion by way of heartache. In the same way someone might cry from happy tears, sad tears, or angry tears, I ache internally for all these reasons and more. I sit in my room and ache for my 16 year old self. It is a lonely, deeply dreadful feeling. I try watching a show, rereading and annotating an old book, listening to my favorite songs, but to no avail. I start to think I will have this chest pain for the rest of my life, that I am just going to be a girl with a pit in her heart. If I take a second to think about how many times I’ve felt this way in the past, I would remember that it does go away– it always comes back, but it does always go away. 

I feel a bittersweet ache for my family. They will always reside in the largest chunk of my heart. I try to imagine what my parents were really like when I was a child; consider what my memories of running through the botanic gardens on Yom Kippur were like for them. I worry about them constantly. I only wish to know about the good parts of their life. I wonder who they might have been at 19. I think about my brother and how I used to idolize him. I think about how he would dribble his soccer ball down the busiest street in Chicago, walking from summer camp to my mom’s office and how mad it would make me. I ache to think he is the same person he was and that I am the same person I was. 

I am so grateful that it nearly breaks me. Gratitude journals simply aren’t practical for girls like me because it would waste too much paper. Instead I am forced to think about how lucky I am to be alive which makes my body go into overdrive. This heartfelt ache extends to humankind as a whole. Seeing a family playing in the park or a stranger giving up their seat on the train is simply too sweet to stand.

I think about how I want to be loved and it hurts. I ruminate on the people from my past and I might as well be swallowing a wooden bench the way my insides twist and contort. There is a space in me designated for romantic love. I try to fill it with love for my family and friends – which I have an abundance of – but there is always a gap at the top. I wish I could fill it with knowledge, inside jokes with myself or photos on my phone, but it is only suited for one thing. My logical brain knows I’m not worried about its vacancy, but my body feels differently. Instead of being full of feeling like I was with my gratitude or thought towards my family, I am just empty. 

Sometimes I use my rage towards the men who have harmed me as motivation as I run on the treadmill. Anger makes me restless and when I’m restless, I need to understand it in my corporeal form. It is not enough to clench my fists, feel my face get red, and hold back tears. I have to let the rage bubble inside of me. It simply must burn a hole within me. 

My adolescence has been filled by these physical feelings. Maybe I’ll ache for my future self and she will look back and laugh at how foolish I am to know nothing else. Maybe she will feel joy in a different way. Maybe she will experience true love and it won’t be draining. Maybe she will think of our childhood and it won’t feel like a ceramic bowl has been shattered inside our body. No matter what happens in the future, I will never regret feeling my emotions for all the intensity they have to offer. Being emotional or sensitive is often portrayed as a weakness, but it's not. It is empowering to be in tune with your state and feel the fullness of being human.

Edited by Diya Aneja and Elisabeth Kay