“Ache”
When I was in first grade, I woke up almost every night with intense growing pains in my knees. (Ironically, I only ever reached 5’3”, and that’s on a good day.) I’ve had over 30 cavities in my life. My cavities have cavities. When sawing through a skull in anatomy class, I was oddly familiar with the smell of burning bone from the amount of times I have sat in a reclining chair with a drill in my tooth. I get stomachaches when it’s cold. I bruise easily and fall off my bike both while sober and intoxicated. Sometimes I fall down flights of stairs at parties. In junior year of high school, I was diagnosed with depression and panic disorder. I didn’t want to be alive anymore, and a few months later I tried to make that a reality.
I have a very intimate relationship with pain. Take that as you will, but I don’t think this is a particularly sad story. This is a story about being afraid of everything and nothing at the same time. It’s a story about only being able to fall asleep at night to the sound of horror movies. It’s a story about a girl who started smoking at 14 and never really stopped. It’s a story about things people don’t talk about because they can’t or they won’t or they know no one else would understand. It’s a story about finding the will to live again. It’s a story about intentionally not looking left and right when crossing streets. It’s a story about trying to find meaning in everything when there is none. It’s a story about a girl who stood in the cold rain naked for half an hour in hopes of making herself sick so she wouldn’t have to go to school. It’s a story about a girl who learned quickly that this doesn’t work. It’s a story about a girl who started painting and couldn’t stop because that was the only way she could make sense of anything.
“Ache” is a collection of paintings about nightmares, memories, and things that never happened. It is about things that I hate and how I grew to love them. I know many people may not understand the counterintuitive mind of someone who spends her time deciding whether she likes existing or not, but I hope that those same people can find solace in the fact that she has chosen to do so anyway.
