Work Text:
There were happy things going on all around. Good news, family events, and lots of reasons to smile. So Jack did, he even laughed, joined in the play, smiled politely through bad jokes, clapped at school plays, and did his best with the clock golf. Joey was stable, the children were doing well, Phil was out of danger. He was coping with work, was functioning and doing all the things he should. He had control over the panic now, wasn’t getting trapped by his body, all should be good.
He knew it should. Why then was he feeling like he was getting further and further away from everyone? Why did he seem to be watching these things, apart, playing a role and hoping no one would realise? He felt… as though he was inside a glass tank – safe but separate. He would see things that he used to love, used to be delighted with, and be unmoved, have to play a part as if it still made him feel something. He knew his family were expecting a certain reaction, so he gave it. He felt a sense of…loss … yes, loss, that was the best description. It was almost more painful than feeling bad, damaged, for then he could at least know he was human, could have something to pick at, to fight.
As the layers built, as the glass poured over him, he would search for something, for any sort of feeling, but it wasn’t there. There wasn’t any sense of future, only of a lost past. He knew himself to be lucky, to have things many men dreamed of, and a supportive family around him. He just couldn’t … feel – couldn’t access that part of him that made the world real. As the time went on he felt as though the glass was becoming thicker by the day, the real world further away and less reachable. He switched back and forth between feeling it like potentially breakable thin layers, then solid immovable ice all around him, then back to a thicker glass each time.
As things got worse, he no longer felt it to be thin, breakable, but thick, dense, green. An ancient leaded glass, thicker base than top, or maybe a toughed, dense safety glass, so strong and thick that very little would ever penetrate it.
Perhaps that was good. Perhaps inside that glass he couldn’t be hurt, couldn’t hurt anyone else. If the glass would just remain clear, he felt he could even cope like this for years. But it became smeared, misty, thicker and almost tinted as the months went on, and he couldn’t really see through, couldn’t really interact with the world. Couldn’t get any feeling when good things happened, just a sense that one day in the past he had felt one way or another about that sort of situation. He could respond, could appear normal, only he knew of the near clinical mental check back to past experience, comparison done and decision made to dial up a suitable response.
He was in some ways almost at peace, warm and safe in the box as it formed, couldn’t grieve for things or people lost, because that was outside the glass wall, was gone as a need, gone as an outlet. He felt those around him try to reach him, but barely any dent could be made in the thickness.
He had a vague feeling that the only way to fight it was from within the wall, from inside himself, but he was tired, so very very tired, and he just didn’t have the strength any more. So the layers upon layers of glass built up, the vision sometimes clear, but mainly opaque, smeared, cloudy. The gap between him and those around him started to be push wider by the glass, and he couldn’t feel anything but relief that there might be quiet, he was now so worn down and insulated, double, triple glazed that he couldn’t feel it was anything but a good thing, this protective layer.
Friends tried, family tried, but with only their actions on the outside the wall never thinned enough to do more than sense echoes of a space, a reality outside. He imagined just occasionally that he had the power to fight it, that if he could just find the strength that wall would splinter, crack, break away and he would be back out in the world, back able to sense, feel, care. But from inside the glass he became almost afraid of that possibility, fearful that if he used his strength to break out, he would be cut, and more importantly, would cut those around him. There would be nothing left, he would be exposed, vulnerable, swallowed up by all of the vaguely remembered emotions.
No. It was safer to stay within the wall, constricting though it might be, heavy though it was to carry around with him. Safer to not fight it, to watch without comment the extra layers build, the strength of the wall increase with every day spent not trying to get out.
It wasn’t a good thing, he knew that vaguely, knew that he would want any one of his own loved ones to fight, to get themselves back to the world. But from inside his cocoon, airless as it was becoming, he just didn’t have the strength, he didn’t feel he had the will, the power to get out.
Yet… There was hope, however tiny. Every now and again, sometimes someone like Jem, Joey or one of the children somehow managed to chip just a little bit away, and he almost felt a whoosh of air from a tiny hole, a sense that perhaps there was something out there that was worth breaking out to see. He realised afterwards that without those little chips – small smiles; tiny hand in his; strong hugs; a cheery hello or sympathetic ear – without those little scratches and chisels into the glass, he would have just eventually become immovable, stifled, would have been unable to ever get out, ever to properly breathe again.
The progress felt so very painfully slow, and so hard sometimes to see as positive, but it was, it was a way out, a way to escape, or more importantly, a reason to try. He knew dimly that it had to come from him, for every tiny chip on the outer layers barely dented the strength of the glass. By themselves those chips couldn’t do it, couldn’t help, but they led him to try to get closer to others, to move towards a thinner shell, even a possible escape. His own attempts to get out always seemed much more powerful. When he forced himself to try to respond, he managed to remove more layers, even felt he could melt the glass a little, cause a bulge out.
He needed those little taps, however, those attempts by others to break in, to keep him going, keep him trying to escape, for he had to battle a desire to stay there, a fear of the strength of outside feelings, fear of peace being broken, of a return to that broken state of constant panic. He would easily lose heart, feel that at least this protective shell allowed him to function, to present some kind of face to the world, to physically be present even if his mind and soul was blocked away. He couldn’t totally give in however, totally allow the glass cube to swallow him up, just as long as those tiny cracks were made by others outside, just as long as he remembered that others needed him wholly there, not just visible, physically present.
He would get there, he had to. He would escape, would crack that shell, however long it took. It just took time, energy, and all those tiny taps on the glass by those who loved him, those who he realised eventually wanted him back, fully back however damaged. A safe world, inside the glass, maybe. But not a real one, not a future that he wanted deep down within him. He would get there, get out.
He had to, wanted to, and he would.