A Red Hot Blob

I am glass. I have no color and am a delicate piece of art for everyone to look through. I melted everything that I am just so I could reshape myself into what I thought the world wanted to see. Everything that I was burned until all that was left was the red hot glob of nothingness, just waiting to be shaped into something deemed beautiful. I would twist, turn, and warp myself, anything to fit the mold of the next artwork everyone wanted to see. I lived to see their admiring eyes, the ones that would look straight through me knowing nothing of the pain it took to become art. I wanted nothing more than to be someone that could be admired and loved. My value was determined by the amount of eyes that looked upon me fondly.

Admiring eyes are fickle things—always drifting to find the next best thing. My life became dedicated to trying to always be the next best thing for those eyes. Their attention, already stamped with an expiration date, came with the cost of my happiness, confidence, and identity, basically everything. The second their attention expired and left the piece I had become for them, I would deflate, as their eyes were no longer there to justify parading the stifling mold. The second I was free from their narrowed eyes I would design a sculpture better and even more elaborate to bring their eyes right back to stare through me. Then it was back to the familiar pain of burning everything that I was, from my thoughts to the way I held myself, so I could become another piece in the art exhibit. One would think that I loved the pain required to melt but I despised being in pain. However, what could I do? I was only a slave to their eyes.

Everyone knows that glass will eventually shatter. I was no exception. My sculptures of glass were built to amaze, not to last. I was never a permanent exhibit in society’s museum, and glass was a trend that finally died. In a dying effort to keep those fickle eyes on me I contorted myself to create the biggest spectacle yet—stretching myself thinner and taller until the elaborate display was too much for my weak base. All it took was the slight breeze of someone passing over me to tip over my fragile balance. I fell and hit the ground hard. To be precise, I hit the ground and shattered. I was broken into thousands of jagged pieces that no one wanted to touch. Afterall, everyone knows that broken glass is dangerous and needs to be disposed of carefully.

I lost my place in that exhibit, swept away like nothing more than an afterthought. Perhaps my shattering was labeled a disaster, but a new piece was still wheeled in the next day to replace me anyways. There was no new design I could force myself into that would bring back a dead trend. Those admiring eyes were no longer fickle, they were just turned away. I could no longer become what they wanted to see, as they had grown bored of glass. There is no better way to describe it then, “For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure” (Emerson 3), and I was punished by their indifference when I could no longer conform. At that moment it was clear. I spent years dedicating myself to society’s museum and all I had to show for it was not a prize—it was the pile of see-through shards that spoke nothing of who I was.

I had become nothing. Not a glob of nothingness waiting to be shaped but just absolutely nothing without eyes to tell me what they wanted to see. The funny thing about becoming nothing is that there is so much time to think about what could have been done differently. In the quiet of self-loathing, I was hit with a clarity hidden behind my delusion. I thought the weighted stares that held me in place were the utmost expression of love. I thought the narrowed eyes were how they saw what I held inside of myself, not how they noticed the smudges in their reflection. I thought they loved looking at me, not the reflections they saw of themselves. All the pain I endured smelting myself was so I could be a reflection, not a piece of art. I destroyed myself again and again until there was actually nothing, no personality, just nothing left just to be their imitation. I lived the harshest life lesson, “that imitation is suicide.” (Emerson 1), I had brutally murdered myself in the fire just so I could bring pleasures to others. If I thought losing their fickle eyes caused self-loathing, then it was nothing compared to the revulsion I had for what the fire reduced me to.

I hated myself. I despised myself. I wanted to claw and scratch until my skin was reduced to shreds—it would have been better than acknowledging what I had become. There was no angle in which I could recognize who I was, despite the thousands of shards projecting my image. I picked up and looked through every piece to try and find anything that spoke of me—for once, not caring of the pain I felt. After hours of searching I came to the last of my shattered pieces. My hands were soaked in my own blood and as I held the last piece of glass I saw only red. I did not see my face that no longer held any meaning but instead I saw the rich red pool of the blood in my hands. My nerves were ignited by the sight of blood and my hands burned brightly with pain. I did not flinch, I was no stranger to pain, yet I did remember. I remembered the red hot glob of nothingness and the pain of remolding myself. In that moment everything clicked and it all made sense. I knew how to find myself.

In my despair I had forgotten glass’s best quality. Glass has the ability to be reborn despite shattering. So, once again I stepped into a studio. Only this time I held the shards of who I was and not a mold of what I needed to become. This time I embraced the pain of smelting my glass shards into a red hot glob of nothingness—no, a red hot glob of potential. I endured knowing I was not going to make a new spectacle for fickle eyes but rather something to be a reflection of me. I was molten glass and I contorted myself to create something sturdy yet breathtaking. The actions were familiar yet almost completely unrecognizable. This time I followed no elaborate mold, only the whispers of my heart that started speaking the second I saw no reflection in my glass. I put my faith in the concept of, “trust[ing] thyself: every heart beats to that iron string.” (Emerson 1), and decided to only listen to my heart’s whims. For the first time my hands danced, twisting and turning gleaming threads of glass. I knew I was a slave to the admiring eyes, but I never realized how weighed down my hands were. My hands followed my heart’s rhythm, and I never felt more free. My hands were no longer shackled to create an imitation of what those eyes wanted to see—they were free to create art.

Emerson, Ralph-Waldo. "Self-Reliance," 1841.