Imagine, the glassmaker himself, imprisoned by his conception of himself as a glass man, a kind of human glass prism.
But he found himself cured when his physician visited one day and gave him what was described as a “severe thrashing.” When the glassmaker cried out in pain, the doctor asked him if it hurt. And when the glassmaker replied it did, the light finally shone through him as he realized that if it hurt, then he could not truly be made of glass. Because, whatever else its qualities, glass cannot feel pain.
The glass delusion was a way to protect himself from pain. From feeling vulnerable.
If he’s glass, he feels no pain.
If he’s glass, he doesn’t have to suffer.
This is the story I tell Emi when she comes to me, terrified, in December, nine months into my illness, three months after her dad moving out, the month the divorce was final, weeks before I was to go to North Carolina to, hopefully, be cured. She’s freezing, she says—not cold, but motionless. She would freeze, and then time would telescope, and she would feel not-real, but also intensely real, and like nothing mattered, and also like everything mattered, and like she didn’t care about it, but she really did. She would freeze, but underneath the frozen ice was panic, her heart racing, her mind racing, a noodly feeling in her arms and legs like she might pass out, and yet a curious detachment, an observance of this about-to-pass-out-ness. It has been happening daily, for months. Sitting in class, taking a test, talking with friends, having fun. There’s no trigger, no warning. Just, suddenly, everything is not-real, and she feels very far away from herself, and at the same time completely at the mercy of her body, her heart hammering at her to pay attention, to realize this feeling of nothing being real is actually real.
She finds herself in the nurse’s office, unable to explain what is going on. It feels impossible to say that she feels as though nothing is real, that everything is made up, because if that were true, then why is everything so horrible? If she’s making up the entire world, imagining it in her head, then shouldn’t the world be better? Shouldn’t it be a better place? Shouldn’t she be feeling normal? Shouldn’t her parents not be divorcing? Shouldn’t I not be sick?
So I tell her about the glass delusion. About the ways in which glass was alluring yet terrifying—how could it be so strong, yet so fragile? How could it be bent to make a cup or a bowl without breaking? How could it look smooth as liquid but actually be solid? How could it keep the world out while allowing us to see what lies beyond the walls? I tell her about the glassmaker, the man who understood better than anyone the powers of glass, the ways in which it could be controlled, the mysteries of its existence, and how, for a time, he believed himself to be made of just such fragile stuff. I told her, for comedic value, about how he believed his butt was made of glass, and how his doctor literally kicked his ass to make him realize he was not a glass person, but an actual person. A person who felt pain.
The glass delusion—standing frozen, barely moving, trapped inside his own imagination—was a way to control the uncontrollable. It was a way to protect himself from vulnerability. From pain. From grief. From sadness.
“I think this is a little bit like what’s happening to you right now,” I tell her. “You’re freezing, and feeling like everything isn’t real, because the alternative is to feel how angry and anxious and sad you really are.”
At this she collapses in my arms, sobbing, the glass broken.
“Everything is so awful,” she says. “And I just feel so scared all the time.”
“I know,” I say, holding her.
“I’m hurting all the time,” she says. And I want to say, “Me too,” but this isn’t about me, and isn’t about my pain.
“I know, I know, I know,” I say, instead. “Pain is terrifying. And it feels like if you let it in for even a moment, you’ll drown in it. But it’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay. We’re going to be okay. There’s a way through this, we’ll get through this.”
We hold each other for a long time, both of us crying, both of us letting in the light.
One night Nate takes me aside and asks me if he can ask me a very serious question.
“It’s okay if you cry a little bit when you answer,” he reassures me, “because I know you cry sometimes when you talk about things you care about a lot.”
I tell him I will do my best, and so he takes a deep breath and says, “You know when you first got sick, and you told us about getting the divorce, you said that you had thought about it for a really long time before you made the decision, and that you’d thought about it even more after making the decision, before you finally told us.”
“I remember,” I say.
“Well,” he says, “how long did you think about it? And why did you think about it so long? And why did you decide to do it? Was it to protect us? Or what?”
“Those are good questions. I’m going to have to think about them for a bit, too, before I answer you,” I say, laughing, stalling for time. How much information does he really need? What is it that he really wants to know?
I had been frozen in place in my marriage for a very long time, unsure of what to do, afraid that if I moved, everything would shatter. I had been a barrier between my kids and their father’s anger and absence, and also a conduit between them, facilitating information, explaining what he’d really meant when he’d said what he’d said, or interpreting tone for them, or providing
