Placed in the deep

Welcome to the quiet place where we keep our longing, 

There’s a special kind of silence that settles in when we think about the things we cannot have or regain. It is not an empty silence, but a heavy, crowded one. A silence where the ghosts of missed opportunities, distant places, and people who are no longer ours to hold. We call this space yearning, but the word itself is often too small to contain the vastness of the feeling.

To understand the true weight of this concept, we had to look closer.

We asked people what yearning felt like for them and here are three stories from those who remain in that place…

Winnie, 19

I wanted this book real bad, "The Giving Tree" by Shel Silverstein. I was eight at the time. I would read cards at the grocery store just to entertain myself while Ma shopped. Ma couldn’t afford things like books. She saved every penny for rent and groceries and the machine that fixed all the rips in our clothes. She’d take pieces from other clothes and patch ’em right onto another. Sometimes she’d shape ’em like a heart just ’cause I liked it. Ma was sweet like that.

The kids at school, though? They hated it. Called me raggedy Winnie. Word got around about things goin’ on at home and Fairy Lassey appeared. Lassey Green, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. She showed up one day and took me to the park, and we’d talk for hours. Mostly about life at home and Ma. I never thought anythin’ of it and neither did Ma. She was a good mother, did everythin’ in her power to make sure we were good.

One afternoon Lassey promised to take me to the library up the street from Ma’s house. It was two days before Ma’s birthday. She was so excited for me to get this book and read it to her. Even if that meant readin’ the whole book without stutters. But when Lassey showed up, somethin’ didn’t feel right. Ma seemed off, givin’ me a big hug and a kiss just for goin’ up the street, and Lassey was too adamant on gettin’ me into the car.

The library was just up the street, we could’ve walked. When I finally got in, there was a big trash bag in the backseat where Lassey had me sit. I didn’t think nothin’ of it until we passed the library. Then the park, and my school. I remember askin’ Lassey where we was goin’ but she didn’t answer me. When the bag next to me fell over from a hard turn on the highway, a pair of jeans with a heart-shaped patch fell right into my lap. I held it in my hands and just knew. I knew I wasn’t goin’ home. I had this feelin’ in my bones.

She dropped me at this residential program for kids who were taken just like me. I haven’t seen Ma since then. It’s been eleven years since I last saw her, heard her voice. It’s been fourteen years since she patched me up a heart on my torn-up clothes. I never got readopted even though that was my goal. I hoped and prayed it was God’s goal–so when we finally got back together again, I would be her daughter again and only hers. Not shared or borrowed by another, but hers.

I still wait on that very day to come. I’ve looked everywhere for her and haven’t found any trace. When I went back to her house, it wasn’t even hers anymore. Hadn’t been for a while. No trace of her in the system. But I promised myself I wouldn’t give up on her, on us.

Gia, 26 

As a kid, you grow up assuming life will stay just as it is. Y’know? You believe the tooth fairy is real forever, you pray snow days never end, and you hold onto that quiet magic waiting for Santa to come down the chimney. Y’know? You remember when money felt like it grew on trees and getting fast food was the ultimate reward. People used to tell me, “Don’t grow up too fast, Gigi!”—and honestly, looking back, I think I did. I’m not sure I was ever fully in the moment or truly appreciated it while it was happening, and I wonder if that’s something I can ever regain. Y’know? Simple things like riding my bike or playing a game of Monopoly make me wonder where’d all that wonder and excitement vanish to? Y’know? I can’t pinpoint the exact moment everything shifted. Every winter (and Christmas has always been my favorite) I find myself chasing that old feeling, Y’know? It constantly escapes me. Now, all that remains is this bittersweet ache of longing for a gentler time. Winter used to mean pure joy and building snow angels. Having snowball fights and when they cancelled school. Even sipping piping-hot chocolate. I can still recall burning my tongue because I was far too impatient to wait, especially when it was filled with marshmallows. It breaks my heart knowing those exact moments are gone for good. Y’know?

Jared, 52

The house had finally gone quiet. Sarah had taken the girls to bed an hour earlier, leaving only me and the hum of the dishwasher downstairs to keep each other company. It was a familiar, safe soundtrack of the life we had built. Clara had a soccer tournament that weekend, and Lily needed help with her algebra. I was a father, a husband, a provider. On the surface, I was a successful man. But that night, the silence in the room felt incredibly heavy. It weighed heavy on me, bringing me back to that familiar, low ache I spent most of my days running from.

I remembered looking at Sarah while we were watching TV, The smurfs. I loved her, and I loved the life we had forged out of twenty years of shared bills, mortgage payments, and parenting hand-offs. But when she reached over and touched my arm, a wave of profound, hollow sadness had hit me so fast it almost made me dizzy. It was the guilt of knowing that the touch she was offering, the standard, comfortable intimacy of a long marriage? It wasn't what my body was screaming for.

There was a side of me, a specific kind of sexual landscape, that had stayed locked in the dark since back in my twenties. Back then, I thought it was just a phase, or a fantasy I’d outgrow once I settled down. Instead, it had grown with me, a phantom twin living inside my skin. A thought placed deep in the depths of my mind. My crave? disgusts me. I was craving for a dynamic, a specific kind of intensity and connection, that I had never once experienced in the real world. I was forty-five. I remembered staring at the back half of my life, realizing after all these years with a terrifying clarity that I would likely go to my grave without ever knowing what it felt like to be touched the way I wanted to be touched. I’ve never had it and I don't think I ever will. To express the poetry of what actually aroused me, to have it met and returned by someone who spoke the same language, seemed completely impossible now. It felt like mourning a ghost.

I wondered how someone could passionately miss an intimacy they had never actually known. How did you grieve a betrayal that hadn't happened, simply because your mind was constantly wandering to a life you would never live? I looked at the framed photos on my desk. The one with the girls grinning on some beach in Maine, and I knew I would never destroy what we had. I was determined to keep playing my part, to be a good father and a steady partner. But that night, the truth just stared back at me in the dark: a whole continent of myself was going to die completely unexplored, and I just had to find a way to be okay with that. I don’t know if I've become okay with it just yet.

Lyle, 30

It hits me almost every afternoon, usually around three o'clock, while staring mindlessly at another glowing spreadsheet on my desk. I turned thirty recently. Looking around at this relentless, hyper-connected cycle we are all trapped in, I constantly ask myself how we ever accepted this routine as normal. We constantly rush through our weeks, replying to urgent notifications late into the night, absolutely drained, all to pay for living spaces we rarely get to enjoy. I have no desire to climb any corporate ladder. I just yearn to escape this endless grind entirely.

What I truly long for, what keeps me awake in the quiet hours. An existence that feels slow, grounded, and completely removed from the grid. When I close my eyes, I imagine a small cabin nestled deep within the woods of the Pacific Northwest or Maine. A sanctuary remote enough that cell service fades away long before reaching the front drive.  I crave a daily routine. I like the idea of chopping logs before the winter cold settles or watching early morning mist drift across the valley, rather than tracking arbitrary quarterly targets. I want to construct things with my own hands and fully submerge myself in the quiet. I ponder that sense of calm during my morning commute, knowing deep down I am simply waiting for the moment I gather enough resolve to step away and leave it all behind. I pray that one day, I obtain it.

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One of the many things we have in common is our ability to feel deeply. What do you yearn for? Loved one? The past? A second chance? Time?