Where to place your ache.
I laugh and then I start to cry when I think about myself.
When I was a teenager, I would spend hours deep into the night scanning the internet in search of distractions. These distractions came in many forms. Slice of Life anime. Lily Allen’s extensive discography of. Papa’s Pizzeria and its thousand iterations. Pokémon Sapphire Version walkthroughs. All these distractions to keep me from thinking about all the new things I was learning about myself and the world surrounding me.
Why do I keep thinking about girls? That’s not right.
Why did the police kill that man? His hands were up. He was unarmed. What if this happens to my brothers?
Will becoming a vegetarian make me skinny?
To keep these thoughts at bay, I watched the screen glow until I fell asleep.
I would rest and then repeat the next evening.
These distractions were not always enough, sometimes I would become so overcome with emotions, my body would be sent into a panic. Sweat would drip down my brow as I screamed into my pillow. Sometimes I pinched myself to come back to reality. I knew that if I let my body fully express how these thoughts impacted it, it would not be accepted. I knew it was not okay to show my aches.
As I grew older, I came to realize more than ever that society does not want to see your aches. You are supposed to share them with your loved ones and sometimes, even that’s too much. This is despite your aches as an adult becoming more severe.
Thoughts still rush through my brain with no sign of stopping.
Do I want to stay in this job?
But then how will I pay my bills?
Will my endocrinologist listen to me about my nerve pain? I feel so rushed.
Systemic Racism is killing us.
Capitalism is going to be the nail in the coffin.
But instead of letting them linger, I still find solace in my distractions.
Replaying tracks by Tyler the Creator. Binge-watching trashy reality television shows on Netflix. Playing 2p Battle Tetris online. Keeping myself from thinking about the new things I am learning about myself and the world surrounding me.
But the body can only take so many aches.
Sometimes I wonder how many aches I can bear.
When will the distractions stop working?
When will I have to face my aches head on?
If I can’t bear my aches,
who will bear them with me?
Can I return the favor?
How can I take on other people’s aches?
Am I going to explode?
When my aches feel as if they are becoming unbearable.
When I know the distractions are not working.
When the sweat comes, the screams caress my lips, the tears stream.
I breathe.
I remind myself that my aches are not only for me to bear.
My aches are held by my ancestors,
By those who exist close to my heart.
We take turns bearing each other’s aches,
Through laughs, screams, affirmations, cries, hugs and kisses.
For my aches are not only for me to bear,
And I’m responsible for the aches of those around me.
Hold yr ache 2 my ache captures the ways in which your body experiences these aches, how the systems around us create spirals in our bodies. How these emotions do not just remain in our thoughts, but surge through our veins. How our aches send surges into the veins of those we love, how our aches are not borne in isolation. It lays bare what exists in all of us, exposing the discomfort bearing witness to what these aches reveal, but through this process brings comfort in knowing one is not existing alone.
I laugh and then I start to cry when I think about myself.
Tayla Myree is a visual artist, curator and historian from Atlanta, Georgia, USA and is based in Vienna, Austria. Their work explores themes such as identity, politics of memory, public space, racialization and power structures through the mediums of film, video installation and text. They hold their master’s degree in comparative history from Central European University and are currently studying as part of the video and video installation studio at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.