Bonk! All of a sudden my nose is throbbing as I realize that I just walked into a glass wall. Now this wall hasn’t been here my whole life, no actually, it just got here. Appeared out of thin air into the space before me. I look all around, but no one sees it. No one is even bothered by it. The taller, lanky boy in my class with strawberry blond hair just walked right through where I would be blocked. The two best friends, who never leave each other’s side, skip through my barricade. I am the only one who is limited by this wall. Every thick, solid inch of it reflects the sun and flashes a smile towards me, mimicking me. Mimicking the fact that I am stuck. I could walk all the way around it, but something my heart desperately yearns for is inside. How a young baby cries for its mother, sticking its hand out in front, reaching, opening and closing his or her hands, squeezing for something to fill in the space they provide. That is me. That is my heart, squeezing, yearning to be filled. Filled by what is inside that glass dome.
Damnit all I want is what’s inside the glass. All of my thoughts are invaded by those of my longings. I am fully encompassed by this prohibition of my desires. Possibly if this glass dome wasn’t here I wouldn’t want what’s inside it so much, but I don’t think that. How could I think that when I all can think about is how much I want it? How can one little roadblock affect my deepest desires? How can one obstacle cause so much pure craving. Yeah, people say all the time how just the phrase “you can’t have it” makes them want it so much more. But that’s not true this time. It can’t be true. Can it? It doesn’t matter; all that matters is that I need to get it. I need to be inside instead of outside. For once I want to be the one others look in on. I want to be the one that others strive to be like, or strive to obtain what I have achieved. My whole life I have looked at others from the outside. I have been in the middle of a party with people surrounding me, laughing and joking and screaming and yet I want to be somewhere else, somewhere more fun. With people who appreciate me as much as I appreciate them, a sort of equilibrium friendship. But those don’t exist and for some reason I can’t accept that. I can’t just be happy in the moment and enjoy what I do have instead of always seeing what others have, always seeing what I could have but knowing that I won’t get it. I have friends, I have things to do, if only I did them. Well right now I am going to do something. I am going to break this glass and get what I want. I don’t care what others think, I am going to free my lust.
I push my index finger into the glass, testing its strength. Surely it is as delicate as it looks and will fall upon my touch. It doesn’t. It doesn’t even shift in the slightest. I know that this will be no easy mission that will lead me to my prize soon. It is of course, going to be difficult. I back up slowly, about 6 meters and then race forward and jump, at the last moment, jamming the side of my body into the glass barrier. Yea, ouch. That hurt. My right shoulder down to my right hip is pulsing with sore pressure. I can feel a bruise initiating, but I don’t care. The pain only enrages me more. I have to break free. I have to break in. I have to satiate my craving. So, I kick off my shoes and socks until I am left bare. I touch the ball of my right foot to the glass and the slight moisture of my foot from the heat of the shoe allows my foot to stick and provide leverage for the rest of my body. My left foot follows suit as I climb my way to the top of the dome. I steady myself on top in an aggressive stance. As I look down into the glass between my hands, I feel as though I am a starved polar bear standing on a block of ice staring down at a seal swimming happily along. It’s glossy skin glistening in the high sun teases the weak desperate muscles inside the polar bear’s stomach. He is thrashing and slamming against the ice attempting to reach his prey just as I am thrashing and slamming against the glass beneath me. It doesn’t even cross my mind that if I succeed in breaking this structure then I will fall with it into the deep freezing arctic below. I stand up and use gravity to bring my foot down upon the glass. Hard. Jump up and stomp back down. Nothing, nothing will release me into the wonderful abyss below. I plomp down onto my butt and slide down the glass to the pavement. I slip into my shoes and run to the nearest closet outside the school. The door is cracked open, so I jam my fingers in and pull open the door. My eyes scan, searching for some sort of heavy object that will undoubtedly break the glass. I grab an over-sized hammer and a shot put and rush to where the crystal meets the tar. I drop the metal ball to the ground, missing my foot by just a quarter of an inch. I step back and thrust my arm and wrist forward, smashing the hammer down upon the barricade. Not a single sliver of a crack protrudes from the spot where the peen landed. So I bend over and grab the heavy sphere and, nearly straining my shoulder, propel it forward. The weight of the ball projects it back only slightly before pulling it to the ground. Nothing. The shot put did NOTHING! It made absolutely no impact on the frame of this glass. No small slight change was detected, no weakening of the very thing that was exponentially weakening me. I curled my fingers in towards my palm and squeezed, squeezed my frustration into a fist. A fist that would come to no use if I tried to punch it into the glass, but would affect my face if directed there. There is no hope, no other way to reach that which I so dearly want to indulge. My cheeks burst into flames and are so obviously red it reaches my eyes. Red, all I see is red. Whether that red is love or hate it doesn’t matter, at this point, they are the same.
Out of pure rage, I sharply turn away from the glass dome in front of me until I am facing out, away. I look into the distance. See the brick buildings towering over me. But not in an intimidating fashion. In an almost timid manner, as if they are afraid of their own height. I never realized this until now. In this moment. The world seemed different. Changed. As if I had never really seen it. Never really looked. Because it was always there. Why did I have to look if it was always there? No fear of it ever leaving. It was going to be there whether I looked or not. Maybe because other people saw it, really looked at it, and acknowledged its presence. Saw how the leaves wave to the grass as the wind passes through. Saw how the road looked empty, alone when no cars drove by. Saw how the cars seem to smile and dance along as the drive. But now I see it. So I slowly turn towards the glass and I look inside. I want to really see what I yearn for. I want to see what is being held inside the glass dome. Standing in the center are two people. Two people obviously enamored by each other.
The boy. He has curly black hair contently sitting on top of his head. He’s wearing a sweatshirt; black with the word Cornell stitched on the front. The hood is pushing up against the curly locks on the back of his head. He’s strong. I can’t see his actual skin, but I know that underneath those layers of clothing is muscle. Cells concentrated in one location that work together to move the body. Toned muscles that are used everyday to pull people out of fires and knock down blocked doors. His face, plain, not ugly or handsome. But nice. He’s nice looking. He has beautiful broad shoulders that are open like the gates of a zoo on a warm summer’s day. Those shoulders of his are facing the girl. The girl. She has shiny brown hair that is falling gently around her face, complementing her extraordinary features. Against him she is exotic. Her body curves smoothly like the waves of an ocean. Her cheekbones reach out in wonder and her brown eyes capture your soul. She holds the beauty in the relationship, but is wildly devoted to the guy in front of her. Her face lights up as she strokes the side of his face, brushing his hair behind his ear, gingerly. The corners of her mouth reach out and up as if they are pulling to jump off her face. Him. He stands there looking deep into her eyes, without much emotion on his face. He smiles, slightly, enjoying the moment. But it says it all in his eyes. In his eyes he loves her. He would run to Jupiter and back if it meant keeping her. Her. She just wants to be in his arms. She just wants the affection that her beau could give her. In her eyes happiness is seeing him look at her, seeing him love her, holding him, and connecting with him. In his eyes happiness is a little bit more. A little bit more than she is willing to offer. She feels as though she is offering him everything, all of her emotion, all of her secrets, all of her faults. But to him that is just a part of somebody. There is more, to him, in a relationship, more she could offer. More intimacy. They both define their connections and the possibilities of their relationship in different ways, which causes some tension. Two people pulling on opposite sides of a rope, causes some tension.
However, if one were to not see them, just look, just look from the outside, which I realize now that I was doing earlier, without any analytic thought, they would think that standing in front of them is perfection. Utter beauty and affection that we all would strive to have; that all would imagine is how true love in high school would be. But, I am not just looking at them, I am seeing them now. I am seeing all they truly are. They are in love, they feel complete affection for the other, they are honest. However, not perfect, not just because nobody is perfect, because they are not perfect. Because they are two individual people with individual minds who care for and enjoy the others’ company. Not one person taking up space in this universe in the form of two bodies. That would be perfect. But that does not exist, at least not in this world. And actually that makes it better, more appealing. They don’t have to be perfect and have everything and get along at all times to be able to love each other, and need each other, and work. They work. They function together, most of the time. They are like skis on snow. Except sometimes the snow isn’t great, slushy, or slick, or pebbly and sometimes the skis create friction or break. But they get through. They get down the mountain, together.
I stopped everything I was doing, all my thoughts and all my movement, until I was standing completely still with my hands by my side. Mountain pose, as they call it in yoga, a sort of centering pose. Then, with all the might I had left in me, I lifted both my hands in unison and placed them on the glass in front of me. I felt the cool smooth surface beneath my palms as I then touched my forehead to it. I surrendered myself to it. Gave away all my passion and my love. Gave away my fear and anxiety. I let the glass be me. I am the glass. Then I felt nothing underneath my palms and instinctively lurched my right leg forward to catch my balance. The glass was gone. There was no more rock solid wall keeping me from what I want. There was no more anger of solitude pitted in my stomach. At this I realized that no hammer or chainsaw could break the glass. No fire or pounding could distort the perfect round surface. Only I could. I was the glass wall keeping me from what I want. I created it, placed it there in front of my nose and kept myself from that which I desired. So, all I had to do was accept the fact that what I really wanted was inside and I was the only thing holding me back from getting it. I had to tell myself that all I had to do was admit it to myself and to them. Whether or not I get it after that is unknown.