I am scared, so scared, to enter that place of pain. The place that all year, I work to scrape off of myself

It seemed that, like everything else in camp, Tishah B’Av had somehow morphed into a competition, with extra points if you got a staff member to cry. Especially at night.

Under the dome of darkness we sat, the brightly shining stars a dramatic background to our heartrending tales. Who would win the prize this year for telling the most tear-inducing story? A sister off-the-derech, a four-year-old neighbor suffering from cancer, grandparents’ Holocaust accounts?

Girls stood up, with a bizarre sense of pride, as the words spilled forth from their mouths like wine from a goblet. Sadness rippled among the campers sitting and mourning. It felt right that we should cry, and cry, and cry, over all the tzaros plaguing Klal Yisrael. We mourned, individually and communally. Ayekah? — Where are You, Hashem?

And now, I find myself, years and years later, on the eve of Tishah B’Av, thinking back to those days of mourning... but not with wistfulness or nostalgia, only with a dread of the pain. I am edgy, nervous, as the sun sinks lower behind the horizon and I find myself sinking deeper and deeper into myself. My skin crawls, there is a heaviness in my chest; I am anxious for Tishah B’Av to come and dreading it just the same.

I am scared, so scared, to enter that place of pain. The place that all year, I work to scrape off of myself, the layer of shrink wrap that keeps clinging back to me.