Serial Thursdays: The Glass House

You walk down a pretty, tree-lined street, and see a glass house.  The sun shines off the sparkling glass house; it is beautiful, and you stop to admire the house for a few minutes, trying to focus on it, but the sun is too bright and pokes you right in your eyes.

After a few minutes of this, you notice a girl sitting on a rock outside the glass house, looking thoughtfully at it. 

She sees you looking at her and becomes animated suddenly, smiles brightly, gets up, and walks over to you, and says “Hello!”

That girl is me. 

I walk over to you, knowing what you are thinking, knowing what you are seeing.  You see a beautiful house, so beautiful it blinds you, so beautiful that you wish you were the owner, able to go in and wander freely. 

I say hello and distract myself with conversation with you.  I twinkle, I captivate, I engage you in a long conversation, and you are impressed by my wit, my intelligence, my joie de vivre.  I, too, am beautiful, and you wonder briefly at how such a beautiful young woman came to live in such a beautiful house.

Eventually, it is time for you to go, though you have not seen the inside of the house.  I have not invited you in, and though you don’t know this, it wouldn’t matter how long you stayed to chat.  It would be a cold day in hell before I would invite you or anyone inside my glass house. 

My house is for myself and myself alone.

I bid you goodbye, and you continue on your way, happy having seen such a lovely house, happy having spoken to such a lovely girl.  In later years, you occasionally think of me, and occasionally wonder how the house is doing, if I still live there, and what was inside the house.  You imagine the amazing furniture that surely furnishes the house, and who else might live in the house with me, and how lovely my life must be to live in such a wonderful house.

You will never know the truth. 

It’s all too easy to be blinded by the superficial beauty sometimes.  It’s all to easy to forget that what appears shiny and beautiful on the outside sometimes is actually completely rotten on the inside. 

I sit outside my lovely glass house day in, day out, knowing that the casual passersby will never see what’s inside; they will let the sun reflect off the glass walls and suggest an ethereal beauty, believing this illusion, wanting it for themselves.  I will talk to everyone who passes by, adding to this myth of perfection; the girl with the bright smile, chatting happily, letting them buy into the perception that my life is blessed, my life is wonderful and my house is outrageously beautiful. 

And when night falls, and everyone’s gone on their way, and I am left to myself, when I have no other choice, I enter this glass house, and try not to look at what’s inside when it’s all I can see around me. 

Death.  Destruction.  Decay. 

Everything neglected, nothing loved.  Pain, torture, heartache.  Every negative emotion in the human spectrum, and some that aren’t.  Suffering, loss, the very foundation of the glass house being the tears that fell from my eyes for days on end after the first time the first one put his hands on me. 

Everyone I ever trusted has betrayed me.  Everyone I ever tried to share my dreams with, the thoughts of building a future with a lovely house, all that I have ever loved… always left me. 

So instead, I built a glass house around those destroyed dreams.  I used my tears as the foundation, my heartache as the walls, my pain as the furniture, and my very soul as the roof.  It looks beautiful on the outside, but the inside is rotten down to the last nail.  I continue building and adding to the glass house; with each slap, with each hurled insult, with each new betrayal, my glass house gets bigger, more beautiful.

But none of this will last. 

Once someone loves me, I believe, once someone finally loves me enough to see into the house and still love me, not run away in fright, once someone finally loves me enough to hold me in his arms and never let go, the glass house?  I won’t need it anymore.  I will tear it down, brick by brick, wall by wall, room by room, until nothing remains but a puddle of tears at the bottom of a well.  Even those will dry up eventually, and I will move on from the glass house, and move into a brick house.  Perhaps other people won’t be blinded by its beauty, and perhaps other people won’t envy me so much, but I won’t need that anymore.  I will live in a solid house built from love, and I won’t be afraid to invite people into my house, to show them what real beauty is.  I will not need to distract them with my wit, my intelligence, instead I will be able to be my own trueself, and they will still want to be my friend, and I will be happy.

Once someone loves me.

Once someone finally loves me enough in spite of my glass house.

Maybe even love me because of my glass house.