My Soul Hurts

The quiet sorrow of those who feel too much, and the unexpected strength found in saying it aloud.

The First Thing I Tried to Save And the Last Thing I Ever Forgot

That was the first time I lost something I tried to save.
The first time I realized that care doesn’t guarantee survival.
That love doesn’t always rewrite the ending.

And it was the first time I began to wonder—
deep down, under all the hope—
if maybe I wasn’t enough.

It didn’t feel like sadness.
It felt like a fist around my lungs.

It was the kind of pain that made you want to curl inward, disappear, and just let it pass over you.

Like breathing through gauze.
Like grief with nowhere to land.

I didn’t cry because it was sad.
Not the crime. Not the forensics. Not the case.
That’s not what did it.

I cried because this woman—this strange, bright, too-much woman with pigtails and a tremble in her voice—said something I didn’t know I was allowed to say out loud:

“My soul hurts.”

And when she said it, I felt my chest fold inward like a paper bird.
A cold knot formed in my gut, twisting tighter with every word.
My throat ached, a burning lump that wouldn’t go away.

Because I’ve said it too.
Not out loud, maybe. Not in those words.
But in all the ways only people like us say things.
In the pauses. In the over-apologies.
In the way we linger in someone’s doorway, waiting for a signal of warmth before we dare to step all the way in.

I remember thinking, watching her, That’s me.
That’s the me I hide.

The me that sometimes feels too much, too loudly, in a world that often asks us to quiet ourselves.

I’m ADHD. Empathic to a fault.
I feel other people’s pain before they name it.
I walk into rooms and read them like weather reports.
I hug strangers. I overthink thank-you cards.
I notice when someone goes quiet in the middle of a sentence.

People call it sensitivity. Or weakness.
Or, if they’re being polite, “tenderness.”
But I know what it is.

It’s a system that never shuts off.

And for a long time, I let those words – weakness, tenderness – make me feel small. Especially when I was around men who seemed to thrive in a world built for sharp edges and no feelings.

They'd scoff, or joke, or just look away, as if my empathy was a flaw. It took years, and a lot of quiet battles, to understand that I wasn’t the one who was weak. They were the ones afraid of what they couldn’t feel, terrified of the very human depths they’d been taught to deny.

My ability to feel, to connect, to try and mend broken things – that was, and is, my truest strength.

And it started early. Too early, maybe. But clearly. April, 1960. Passover. Montreal. I was four. I found a bird. A sparrow. Broken wing.

It was trying to fly and failing, trying again and failing harder.
That kind of flutter that feels like desperation.
A blur of frantic feathers and tiny bones.

I picked it up, careful as I could.
I didn’t scream. I didn’t call for help.
I just knew it needed quiet.

My little hands made a bed in a shoebox.
I tore pieces of an old towel for lining.
I got one of those tiny cough syrup cups and filled it with water, just a little.
I checked on it every five minutes. I whispered to it.

I named it. I believed that helped.

I believed everything I did was helping.
That love and intention were enough.
That kindness could bridge bone and blood and time.

The next morning, my parents told me the bird had flown away.
They smiled. I believed them.
I walked to the window, half-expecting to see it on the sill.
I pictured it strong. Healed. Grateful.

I was forty-four when my mother told me the truth.
That it died that night.
That they didn’t want me to hurt.
That they thought the lie would be kinder.

But I’d already been carrying the grief for decades.

A quiet sorrow I didn’t know had a name, but felt in every hesitant breath, every unspoken worry.

I just hadn’t had language for it.
Just a shape. A weight. A way my stomach turned every time I saw a bird.
A way my heart seized a little when something small suffered.

Before, I believed love fixed everything. After, I saw the truth: some things break, and they stay broken.

So when Abby sat there, all grown, all brilliant, all beloved, and whispered that she once tried to do something good and it didn’t work—and that it stayed with her, like a splinter in her soul—I broke. I absolutely broke.

Because I knew what she meant.

Some of us don’t forget.
Not because we can’t. But because we shouldn’t.

Some of us are designed to feel the echo, not just the event.
The echo of what we couldn’t fix.
The weight of almost-saving.
The ache of unfinished kindness.

---

People think ADHD is about being scattered. Or impulsive. Or loud.
And sure, it can be all that.

But the part they don’t see is the architecture of compassion that builds itself in our bodies.
The part that notices everything.
That remembers every sad look.
That connects invisible dots and hears what's not being said.
That feels guilt not because we failed—but because we couldn’t succeed at saving everyone.

Abby cracked. Quietly.
Not with drama. Not for attention.
But like a window giving way after years of pressure.

And I cracked with her.

Not because I was sad for her.

Because I was her.
Seventy percent, at least.

We carry our kindness like it’s armor, but it’s not.
It’s skin. It’s nerve.
It’s the rawest part of us.

When I saw her sitting there, confessing to someone who wouldn’t laugh at her—confessing that a single act of failed love haunted her—I wanted to reach through the screen, take her hand, and say,

“Me too.”

Because sometimes, after you crack your soul open in public and whisper “me too,” the universe sends you Roz. Cigarette in hand. Eyebrow raised. Like she just walked in on your grief and wants to know if it’s gluten-free. And somehow… that saves you too.

I’ve held dogs while they died.
I’ve sat with friends in withdrawal.
I’ve gone out in the middle of the night to drop off insulin for someone whose pharmacy closed too early.
And still, some part of me always loops back to that sparrow.

To the moment I learned that trying isn’t always enough.

And yet—still—I try.

Because the alternative is unbearable.
Because the ache of not-saving is still better than the ache of never-trying.
Because I’m built this way.
And maybe that’s not a design flaw.

Maybe it’s a calling.

So if you’re like me—if you feel too much, care too hard, remember every failure, and carry every almost-home in your bones—this is your permission slip:

It’s okay to ache.
It’s okay to remember.
It’s okay to cry because a TV character whispered something you never thought anyone else would say.

It doesn’t mean you’re broken.

It means you were listening.

It means your soul is still soft enough to hear the small things.

And that is holy.

Even when it hurts.

Especially then.

---