This I Believe

Laura - Sammamish, Washington
Entered on June 13, 2005
Age Group: Under 18

Sometimes I feel like I inhabit a glass box, a finite space that encloses me and my emotions and my pain. You are on the outside looking in, not staring, but glancing, because you have enough to do, you must continue with your own life. This box, this solitude, reflects my pain off its transparent and smooth walls, pain that cannot find an escape but becomes only a memory, like dust of long past, in forgotten corners.

When I feel so many emotions at once–angst, terror, uncertainty of my future–an overwhelming tide of hopelessness rages over me, and I retreat to my glass box, if only to avoid prying eyes and curious faces. I feel violated under the entreating stares of those that wish to help me, and feel alone when guiding hands that reach out to me are no more.

To escape from the relentless stabs of life that call my name–daily life that wants me to be a player–I choose to be instead, an objective spectator, someone whose role doesn’t count, someone who can take a side but plays no active part in the game. In my glass box I can be whoever I want to be, feel however I want to feel. I watch. I listen–all within the confines of blank, impassive walls that I have erected by choice.

The view through these four walls is vast and daunting. I look below me and I see terra firma, solid and soothingly defiant earth that will catch me in my hardest falls and support my stance when I wish it to. To the sides I see so many people, people that want to guide me and show me the light, the light that has eluded me in moments of darkness. And above me is the greatest light of all, hope; hope that I have not yet had the courage to reach out to and grasp. Once there, can I ever go back? I fear that if I leave my glass box, I may never find it again.

But one day I will be tall and defiant, strong and responsive. I will reach up and out of my box, scale the impenetrable glass and find that light that beckons to me. It will be unbearably brilliant, and it will whisper of unpredictable change.

Yet I believe I can find it.