Glass Heart

Written by: Erin Cho

Edited by: Zelene Wong

It was just like how rubberbands stretched further and further the harder you pulled it, until SNAP, it breaks! It couldn’t handle the pressure. In this case, I was that rubber band. Growing up, I always thought I was the same as the kids who played at the monkey bars in the playground in the middle of the park, or the kids who picked out all the carrots and peas out of their fried rice for dinner. 

However, I was not. 

I used to always roam the school corridors, heading to third period, social studies, a class my friends and I always dread due to all the excessive essay writing assignments, but there was this wall in our school. This seemingly normal wall had always stood silently, with its blank, white stare. However, contrary to its simple outward appearance, this wall was special, as on it was a bulletin board. Hanging from the top left corner, a huge poster promoting this years school show theme of a girl who suffers from a heart disease. Although my heart was less of a “disease”, and more of a mishap, it still bothered me. I could still relate to it, as coronary heart disease was not curable or reversable; just like my odd glass heart that I was stuck with for my whole life. Nevertheless, one tingly part of me was glad. Glad that my condition was never spoken about, never discussed, never brought up. All I wanted to do was blend into the dull shadows of this school, and be like all the other kids. 

When I look in the mirror, I see a girl who longs to blend in and has successfully done so since the start of school, but a mirror was not enough to spot my difference from the other kids in school. Just a couple of days after my eighth birthday, I went to the hospital to get a CT scan of my heart. Was I scared? Yes. But I always felt my heart beat differently from others. I felt a prickly sensation everytime it thumped dramatically, and sometimes I felt it thumped too quickly, or too slowly, but that may have just been my paranoia. It was finally time to find out an internal tragedy about myself that I did not know would turn my life around, for the worst. When the doctor, with his kind smile and his regretful eyes, handed me the scan of my heart, I stared. I stared and stared and stared. How could this be? Not only did my heart beat differently, it also looked different. Drastically different. My heart was made of pure, thin, fragile glass. Glass? Seriously? Weeping in horror, my mom put her head in her arms as I was filled with confusion. I was only eight years old, and the concept of a “glass heart” did not fully sink in. Unanswered questions swam in my brain. What would it do to me? What did it mean? Why do I have it? My immature self denied everything the doctor had warned me about, and attempted to return back to my “normal” day-to-day life. As I reached the age of thirteen, my glass heart then, and only then disclosed the ghastly secrets it contained under such a delicate layer. 

I still remember the model of my heart, a rough estimation of how the doctor believes it would look like. It was so glorious, so pure, I simply couldn’t understand how it could hurt me. Staring at the model as the thin rays of sunlight peeked in through the threadbare curtains surrounding the left side of the glass, I could see it refracting all the colors of the rainbow through it; it was so engrossing, so mesmerizing. I shifted my feet to the other side of the room, slowly noticing how thin the glass was, how it looked like it was a single tap away from splintering, and there was already a small crack on the left side outlining the streaks of sunlight.

Until high school started, I had no trouble containing my vulnerable glass heart. On the first day, a majority of my time was spent with Kaysie, until suddenly I was approached by the three most prominent girls of our school: Maeve, Sophie, and Eleanor. Maeve was an exchange student from England who recently joined our school. Sophie and Eleanor were always there- I never talked to them, but they were always seen re-applying their tinted lipstick in front of a bathroom mirror or ridiculing the other students for their clothes, bags, and hair. Up until now, I was merely a spectator. 

“You really don’t care what you wear, do you?” Sophie sneered, as Eleanor snapped at someone for bumping into her. 

This was the first time I was ever approached by somebody other than Kaysie, let alone a pair of sought-after, wealthy girls that always had their fathers paying to bury any mistakes they made. Rooted by shock, I felt the blood rushing down to my face- I raised my pale upper lip to say something, anything! But nothing came out. I felt hundreds of little beady eyes glaring at me, forcing my back to hunch over even more. I returned my focus back to Sophie and Eleanor. I felt as though their glare could pierce a hole through me, as if they could shatter my glass heart in an instance. I fearfully watched them look around the hallways, perhaps to check if there were any teachers around. All of a sudden, they snatched my diary out of my locker. A dominant, striking pang of frustration ran through my mind.

“Give it back!” I shouted, but the glares cramped my throat, and nothing came out. 

As my voice died down to a whisper, I realized I had bigger problems to deal with - My glass heart. Something was wrong. Something that was not supposed to, not meant to be happening was happening. I felt my glass heart, a cohesion, starting to crack. It felt like a huge iceberg was breaking up into smaller mounds; dangerous, but riveting. It felt like something, someone was peeling off a small shard of glass off the top of my heart- as if a real, normally-beating heart would be exposed underneath. Although the shard seemed to be the size of a thumb, it was still a piece of my heart, a piece of me. All of a sudden, my knees felt weak, they started and continued to shake and quiver. I couldn’t keep my balance and crashed down to the floor on my knees. Everybody just stared, poignant droplets unevenly lining up against the brim of my eye, desperate to be released and run down my now bloated skin. I sniffled as quietly as possible and a sliver of blood seeped out of my knees, staining the rough gray concrete surface. Powerlessly, I looked up in the most careful way possible, still seeing everyone eavesdropping by the eye. Slightly disappointed, but severely concerned frowns rapidly spread like a disease across everyone’s faces.

This cycle of tormentation, that seemed never-ending, lasted for two years. Confrontation. Subjugation. Traumatization. And every time this happened, one shard after another broke off my heart, and my frightened self never brought this up to my parents. Even during family dinners, if I felt something serrated dig deeper in my skin around the heart, I would try to rush to the bathroom one step after another, as naturally as I can. From then on, everything would happen all over again. My knees weaken, my palms get sweaty, my throat dries up, and I start to lose more and more blood. It became a daily routine, and I bottled up the strenuous pain in my heart, a heart that I could not call a heart anymore. Just the bottom piece of a China vase, all crushed, abused, and shattered. 

One day, I could not hide it anymore. I felt like my pain was written all over my forehead- my heart was the size of a glass cup. It was quiet Saturday evening, with the birds chattering on the trees outside, televisions synchronizing displaying the news channel across the neighborhood. 

I gathered around the table for dinner and sat myself down, oblivious of what awaited in the near future. Weakly, I picked up my spoon, as I felt something growing inside of me, something coming up. I tried to stand up, but couldn’t. I glued my mouth together, like I drank too much water and didn’t want it to overflow out of my mouth. I rapidly stuck both hands onto my mouth to contain it, but to no avail. I saw bewilderment form across my parent’s faces. 

I sat there, with warm, thick maroon blood flowing down the sides of my glass bowl containing my dinner. My mouth was dripping with blood. My lower lip was jealous of how unsoiled and polished my upper lip was. It was still spreading out all over the scruffy wooden table, surreptitiously sinking into the nooks and crannys. Suddenly, the Goddess of Morality, Themis appeared right before my very eyes. Everything around me froze, including the blood that was flowing down the sides of my dining table. She warned me about my death, which could be sometime before midnight. Squeezing my fingers, I thought I was hallucinating, and tried to ignore and deny her, but I couldn’t tilt my head away. I gave up trying.

“You’ve lived a good life. Your attempts of dealing with your glass heart have not gone unnoticed. I recognize and respect your efforts. You deserve a second chance.” exclaimed Themis. 

“Pardon?…” I felt my voice shake, and painfully swallowed my spit.

“I shall give you a second chance to relive your life with the possession of a “normal” heart, but in exchange for the end of your suffering, Maeve, Sophie, and Eleanor shall continue your suffering.” 

Narrowing my eyes, I carefully considered the decision. I slowly shut my eyes and thought about the deep, permanent cuts and bruises that they inflicted upon me. I had this growing desire inside of me, that even throughout all my pain, one day, I will get Sophie and Eleanor back. However, I couldn’t do this. Maeve did nothing wrong, I’m not even sure how she got winded up with them.

“Time is ticking.” 

Unsure where it was coming from, I could hear a hasty, hurried beat, pressuring and agonizing my train of thoughts. 

I imagined the burdensome weight of guilt I would have to carry if I even was to relive my life. Knowing who I am, I knew I wouldn’t be able to feel innocent for even a second from birth to death. 

“Alright. I have made my decision.” 

“Thank you. So, what is your decision?” Themis asked.

“Please read my heart.” I said with a straight face.

“Your… heart? I see. Your wish shall be fulfilled.” 

I took a deep breath, took a last look at my parents, and felt a river of tears gushing down my face and dripping onto the floor softly. I lowered my eyelids, and waited. I waited for it all to happen, for the pain to pass by, for my sufferings to continue someplace else. I’m not going to hurt an innocent girl like Maeve for the benefit of myself. I would also feel too guilty to live if I had bestowed it on Sophie and Eleanor, despite how miserably they have treated me for my whole life. I took a last look at my mother and father, the two people I failed to warn, the two people I was able to salvage my last moment with. 

I never got to appreciate how the city looked from the top, and how glorious the shiny stars were, until now.

The End.