Life in Glass

Stanley Floyd has a house full of jars. They line the floor, and halls, and walls. In total there are fourteen thousand six hundred and seventy five jars. And each jar holds a day of Stanley’s life. Each morning a new one appears by his bedside, holding the previous day within its transparent barriers.

There is one which holds the day he was born. But it is so old, and so buried, that he has no recollection of it.

One holds the day his father died. It’s stayed in its spot for a long time; untouched, barely opened. It is old and dusty, and the top is closed tight from decades of abandonment.

Further down there is the jar that holds the first time Stanley ever fell in love. It is a pleasant jar, which he opens from time to time. It makes him feel wistful and melancholic.

Then there is the jar of the day in which that first love ended, as most first loves do. Stanley might open this jar on rare occasions. Mistakes made in youth become easier to relive over time.

Soon follows the jar which holds the day he fell in love for a second time.

And then the third time, and the fourth.

Then, eventually, there is the jar which holds the day he fell in love for the fifth time. This is also the jar where he realized that this was actually the first time, and everything he had felt for the people in his previous relationships had been shallow and vapid in comparison to this. This was the jar which held his first understanding of the distinction between fleeting infatuation and real affection. Every time Stanley opens this jar he feels twenty years younger, and his eyes start to water, and his lungs starts to swell, and his heart feels fit to burst. Because of this, he also does not open this jar very often. There is such a thing as pained happiness, after all. Especially if one knows they can never reclaim it.

Most jars are more ordinary than this. Over two thousand jars which hold days at the grocery store, or cleaning the house, or nights ordering take out. Nearly five thousand jars which hold lazy days in. Reading, napping, or watching television. One thousand jars of infancy. Just sleeping, crying, spitting up, and staring at things but not yet comprehending them.

Roughly fifteen hundred jars full of tired hospital visits. Sitting in silence with the fifth and only person he had ever loved, as she became weaker, and stayed awake for less time.

And one jar when she finally stopped waking up at all.

Like the jar containing his father’s death, Stanley knows he will not open this one. He just stares at it, sitting at his bedside when he wakes. He tries to ignore it, but the jar is too recent. Far too recent. It will not be ignored. It seems to stare back at him as he forces his eyes away from it, towards the bedroom door, or the closet, the window, or anywhere else at all.

And he takes a shaky breath. Because he knows tomorrow he will receive a jar with this memory in it, and then the next day a similar one, and one as well the next. Possibly forever. His life would just be an unending Russian nesting doll of memories and pain. It was too much. It was just too much.

He could never open another jar again.

People were forged from their memories.

But what happened when the memories became too much to bear?

Even the happy ones were pointless now. They were dead and gone, just like her.

How could Stanley go on, shuffling cautiously around this empty house? Carefully moving out of the way of thousands of pounds of glass as if walking on eggshells, because if he knocked one over and opened it accidentally…

He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t.

Stanley Floyd went into the garage and picked up the old titanium baseball bat from his youth. He gripped it firmly, tested the heft and the balance in his hands.

And he swung with all his might at the nearest jar.

It wasn’t an important jar, he could tell. Just one of the many thousand, every day jars. Though he instantly felt lighter, and he also felt emptier. As if a drop had been taken from the cup of his life. But right now, he’d rather be empty than full of nothing but sorrow and pain.

He lifted the bat up again, and smashed another jar.

And another.

And another.

It took hours, and after a while his arms cried with stress, and his feet and legs were scraped and bleeding. But Stanley kept swinging.

He swung until he was thigh deep in glass shards and thin metal lids. After so many hours of exertion, he stopped, holding the last two jars in his hands.

One held the best day of his life. The day he knew he was unequivocally in love.

The other held the worst day of his life. Yesterday. When that love left the Earth.

He stared at them for a good long while. These two days were now all that was left of his life. The two most extremes of Stanley’s happiness and misery. But he had to finish what he started, and he threw the jars at the nearest wall with all his remaining strength. There the jars splintered, there they shattered.

And the deed was done.

For a brief moment, Stanley Floyd felt truly free of his life. As if the entire contents of his experiences had been drained away, and he was as empty and new as he was on his first day. He stood there blinking slowly, unsure what he should do. Unsure even, who he was at all.

Then he watched as the glass around him began to heat up, turning to copious amounts of sand, then perhaps dust, and then nothing at all. There was not a trace of the jars anywhere in the house. Even the metal lids had fled to wherever their bodies had gone.

It was over. It was all over. Stanley took a deep, relieved breath. But before he could exhale, he fell to the ground in agony.

He had figured that destroying the jars would erase his memories. He had been wrong. Without their proper homes, Stanley’s memories didn't just disappear. They needed to find new housing. And what better place of residence than Stanley’s own mind?

It was awful.

It was wonderful.

It was painful.

To have all these memories- a whole life- stuck inside your head? To be able to pull up any day and any memory at a moment’s notice? To not simply be able to lock memories away, or put them on a shelf? How could anyone live like that?

And because it was now at the forefront of his mind, yesterday emerged in his head without permission.

And Stanley sat. And Stanley cried.

And he cried more than he would have if he had simply opened yesterday’s jar. Because now, with all the contents of all the jars swimming around his head at once, he could see all the happy days at the same time as all the bad days.

And in a way that made it better.

And in a way that made it worse.

The day they met. Their first date. Their first fight. Their fifteenth fight. Their wedding. Their honeymoon. The days holding each other on the couch. The nights holding each other in bed. The time they tried to take up hiking. The day she was diagnosed. The day he threw her a surprise party. The days she didn't know who he was.

Every day together. All the good times, and the bad.

And for the first time Stanley realized just how important the bad memories were. They were needed in a way to create a proper life. A proper experience. The bad memories enhanced the good, and put a spotlight on them.

He had never known it was like this. Not before. Not with all of his days separated.

And now he could have all of his days at once.

It was terrifying.

It was spectacular.

With his jars gone- with her gone- all Stanley had were his memories.

But maybe, over time, that wouldn’t be such a bad thing at all.