I don’t know.
The pain is so bad I feel like I might vomit, and so I go back upstairs, leaving her to deal with plates and napkins and glasses and drinks and sharing the food with Nate, and get back into bed, as flat as possible, waiting out the worst of the pain, waiting for a bit of relief that may or may not come after being flat for an hour, to counteract the fifteen minutes I was up, lying very, very still, as still as glass, and hoping this is not a thing that will break me.
There was a time when glass was a new technology. We don’t tend to think of glass as something technological now, as we exist in a world where glass is pervasive, commonplace, and unremarkable. But there was a time when it was new, and its mysterious nature was a source of fascination for people. It’s transparent, yet solid. It connects us—there, visible, is the world outside the window—and yet separates us—there is the window. It can be a vessel: Hold it carefully and you can drink from it. And yet it is fragile: Become careless and it shatters. It can magnify, and it can shrink. It can focus light and also diffuse it. It can reflect, allowing you to see yourself, and can also let light pass through, making things visible, allowing you to see past yourself.
As the technology of glass began to become more widespread and accessible to people, it brought with it the paranoia that always seems to accompany new technology, no matter when its invention. In the late Middle Ages in Europe, this took the form of what came to be called the “glass delusion,” a very specific kind of depression and anxiety in which the sufferer believed themselves to be made of glass. A person afflicted with the glass delusion became fearful of movement, as they worried they might shatter, and coped with this by wearing layers and layers of clothes, or carrying pillows with them wherever they went, or remaining very, very still. The French king Charles VI was said to suffer from this, and refused to let people touch him, lest he shatter into a million pieces.
I feel an empathy for these glass people, the way they feared they couldn’t move or else they would break open, the way their chosen metaphor was so transparent. This is what I do, too: I reflect back at people what they want to see. I focus the light on others, becoming the conduit for someone else’s clarity. Or I take in the light and refract it, separating a beam of light into a spectrum of colors, illuminating a previously unseen reality. I, too, become a complicated thing that’s easy to take for granted, that’s strong but vulnerable, that people forget about the fragility of until it finally shatters.
“Why do you need a lawyer?” my husband asks, early into our separation process. “This is something we can figure out together, there’s no need to make it complicated, we can have an amicable divorce.” But I remind him that this is how this has always worked, that when he has an argument in mind, he voices it, and I freeze, and he wears me down until I give in or say yes just to make the arguing stop. I remind him that this is what happens with us, even when things are amicable. “You always win,” I tell him. “I need someone to argue for me. I need to have someone to help me fight instead of giving up.” This is me trying to unfreeze, and he concedes, finally, letting me win this small battle.
My marriage is a kind of Cinderella’s glass slipper I have tiptoed around in, ever mindful that stepping too hard or too carelessly could break it, lodge a splinter of glass in my foot. I’m hobbled either way.
He shows up one night after work, months into my illness, home for a rare moment, and comes into my dark room, flipping on the lights, startling me. “What do you want me to do?” he asks. I’m confused by the question. I don’t even know how to begin to answer it. He hasn’t been here for days, I can’t be upright, even lying flat the pain never goes away, I can’t do anything. It’s not even a question of what I want him to do; I need him to do everything. Anything. Parent his children. Feed the cats. Clean the litter boxes. Take care of the house. Make food. Get the mail. Dust, vacuum, take out garbage, wipe counters. “I don’t know,” I say, unable to articulate any of this, the indignity of being unable to do things, the indignity of having to explain the basic concepts of living in a household, the indignity of being myself helpless and still having to help. “Look around,” I say. “Pick something. Do it.” He nods, says “Okay,” then just stands there. After a while he says, “I hope you start to get better.” I begin to say, “Me too,” feeling the relief of some brief compassion, until he continues: “Because we really need to get this divorce settled.”
The way we think about ourselves protects us.
The way we think about ourselves becomes a reality that we protect.
There is an account from 1561 of a Parisian patient suffering from the glass delusion who was, himself, a glassmaker. Aware of the power and fragility of his creation, he became entranced by it, and was convinced that he, himself, was the literal embodiment of the glass he made. Fearful of shattering, he carried a pillow with him wherever he went, to sit on, in case the movement of lowering himself to sit would cause him to splinter into a
