My Glasshouse
Hello friend, here we meet once again. Unlike other times when I usually have a topic in mind I’d like to speak about, or a person to mention even in the slightest of ways, this particular time has neither.
It also isn’t the feeling of guilt for not writing to you because I am not as absent as the usual times. This chat between us tonight has a lingering weight to it, something I can’t really tell. This goes against my habit of knowing myself, or in the least being aware. As always, each path takes to the other, each sentence paves the way for the next “profound” self-talk, and as mentioned, unlike anything, this is truly without any direction.
Such introductions leave me without an idea of what might come next. I’ve already explained the context; the plot is laid bare and there is no twist in sight. Sometimes, amidst the usual daily walks and commutes, lying between the normally known stops, I find myself gazing — into God knows what — pavement, the sky, people’s faces, the cracks in the walls and the floors.
I am taken into the future, an ideal, an image. The commonly used name describing this phenomenon is daydreaming. I’m a stranger to dreams; I barely remember any in the last couple of months. I only seem to get a glimpse of something of that range when I wake up and go back to sleep. Those last hours — only rarely — that is when I recall anything, only in those times I feel like a normal person.
Talks of dreams and “oh! I saw this and that yesterday in my dreams” have never been familiar coming out of my mouth. I certainly don’t know why or how that is. I’ll go further as to say there might be a condition for such, other than lacking interest, obviously.
Daydreaming, on the other hand — people call it fantasies. People see it as a line of fiction they get to live in: saving their crush from a terrorist attack at your local school, flying, superpowers, etc. I too share those at times. More often than not though, it is exactly what I just said to you: “I am taken into the future, an ideal, an image.”
Truly, most if not all the times I use it, I can’t really tell if I do that consciously. It serves as a compass of sorts, a higher self I shall transcend to, an ideal version to hold myself to. As cliché as that might be, it’s true, I believe — or like to believe, for that matter.
Sometimes in meeting someone, I go into scenarios in my head of what it might be like, to have a grip and to be in control in a way. One or many might emerge into what the person might actually do or say, even if not, any improvising at that moment will be easy, because again, improvising was a part of the plan.
I don’t know, but everything seems like a pre-determined plan for me, something I’ve already lived through in my head, or predicted in a way, or in the least of forms had a notion of. Coming out of me, these words sound highly superstitious. Not only so, but “fantasies” for me to only limit one’s presence in the moment.
I do chase spontaneity, and even that comes with the flavor of something that could happen. I guess that’s why I am so confident in what I will be. I believe — and to an extent know — that I have a strong gut feeling, and somehow that’s been chasing me my whole life now (the sense of who I might become).
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To a level, I understand why people, those who don’t know me and those who do, have the feeling that I am arrogant or overconfident. I have a strong sense of belief, and that is strictly connected into my actions in the time being — drawing an assumption or a rough sketch of “future self.”
Hell, imagine reading those words as a stranger. Saying I’m not arrogant or egotistical is quite unbelievable. Well, I don’t deny such accusations — I might go as far as to confirming them.
In more than one incident that I can vividly remember, I was the person to exactly match those synonyms, adding some others into the mix such as naïve, impulsive, vociferous, and so on. Those adjectives do very well do me justice in those scenarios.
I don’t think I’m the sum of my bad or good deeds or actions. Either of those have their own consequences, and solely judging a person by such a narrow scope of information with limited context is deeply misleading.
I have lived with myself long enough to say that like a tide I come and go. I don’t really know what I am but being a human I guess, and what I think of myself holds no true weight, because that’ll be shattered soon enough by some grand reaction or action.
I can’t deny I try to hold the basic human deeds in place to guide me through the shifts — trying to be as kind as possible and all of that human-rights talk. I am as lost in myself as I am lost in my surroundings. Most things I don’t hold enough interest in me to interpret, and those that I do I lack the means for the discovery, and so I only strive to enjoy my ignorance and my adoration for such.
Do I wish or hope to have a deeper interest for things that are very much so interesting to my peers? Sure, that’ll give me room to be more similar and easier to fathom (relatable). Then again, that wasn’t, nor is, my main objective.
I lived as a stranger most, if not all, of my life. I’ve been ostracized and I’ve enjoyed my alienation. And now, it all seems like I live in a glasshouse; I stare and I look at everyone from the outside. Sure, I might adore some to the point I try to bring them in that glasshouse, but come on, no one wants to be a prisoner — even if the cell has your lover.
I have come to a point where I think my analogy isn’t doing it justice. Not even so, because not only do I not mind it, I’d go as far as to say I enjoy it for much of the time. Staying in that realm of allegory, I do get out of my “glasshouse.” I do get to try out new things. Then, at the end of the day, as tired as a bird and as wounded as a prey, I need a shelter. It might be glass, but it kept me away for long enough that it seems like thick cement walls.
As heavy as the crown, one can’t take one without leaving another, can’t be choosing something without gaining a loss. I chose — maybe not at the start, but I do now choose to keep my “glasshouse.” I do know the basics of what I am losing. I am aware of the shame and guilt I put on.
It’s the only “safehouse” I’ve known. Perhaps “safe” being a stretch, but it’s the only liminal space I get to be myself. I don’t deny myself that right, nor will I ever. I know what I lose — or at least the boundaries of which — and for the time being, it is what I will be sacrificing.
