By @RWhiteAuthor
The house I grew up in wasn’t made of wood and nails — not really. It was built from glass. Invisible to the eye, but fragile enough that any sharp word or raised voice could send cracks splintering through its walls. And there were cracks everywhere. Each argument between my parents was another spiderweb etching itself across the surface, another reminder that everything around me was temporary, on the verge of collapse.
My earliest memories live behind those cracks, distorted like reflections in a broken mirror. I can never quite piece them together — only fragments remain. A slammed door. The bitter sting of cigarette smoke curling into my lungs. My father’s voice, sharp as shattered glass. My mother’s silence, colder than any winter.
In that house, identity wasn’t something you wore like a favorite jacket. It was something you hid, something you protected, like a bird trying to shield its eggs from the storm. I learned early how to disappear. I studied the shifts in air pressure when voices started to rise, the way the house seemed to hold its breath before the explosion. I learned the art of becoming invisible — shrinking myself so small I could fit into the cracks, unseen and untouched.
My room became more than four walls. It was an island. A place where the books on my shelf whispered to me, offering shelter in their ink-and-paper embrace. I would lie in bed, tracing the spines with my fingertips as though they were lifelines. The characters I met lived in worlds where things made sense, where heroes faced monsters and won, where love was offered freely, not rationed like scarce bread. In those stories, I borrowed other people’s identities because my own felt like an empty coat, stitched together but never quite fitting.
The house itself mirrored the lives inside it. Dishes stacked like unstable towers in the sink. Clothes curled into heaps on the floor, like creatures that had given up on standing. Dust gathered in the corners, undisturbed, as though time itself had abandoned us. It was a museum of neglect, each object a relic of apathy.
But even amid the chaos, there were rare moments of peace. The smell of pine needles on a camping trip, the way the water at Lake George glinted like liquid silver in the sun, the sound of my father’s laughter — rare and almost mythical — on those days when the world briefly forgot to be cruel. Those moments were small, but I hoarded them like treasures, burying them deep where the storms couldn’t reach.
Identity, I’ve learned, is not a single, solid thing. It’s a mosaic. Broken pieces pressed together, sharp edges smoothed over time. My own was shaped by absence as much as presence, by silence as much as sound. I was the child of a home without stability, sculpted by its unpredictability. I became a mirror for other people’s emotions, reflecting them back, learning to anticipate their shape before they formed.
When I left that house, I thought I had left the chaos behind too. I joined the military, drawn by the promise of order, by the clean lines and ironed uniforms, by the idea that if I followed the rules, I would finally be safe. But the truth was, I carried the house with me — every crack, every sharp corner, every suffocating silence. The uniform fit better than my own skin, but even that was just another layer of glass, another fragile illusion.
In the quiet hours between missions, I’d find myself staring at the stars, that endless sky, trying to stitch together the pieces of myself. Out there, the world was vast and uncaring, but honest. The sky didn’t pretend to be something it wasn’t. The stars didn’t raise their voices. The night never slammed its door.
It wasn’t until much later, sitting in a therapist’s office, that I understood the house had never left me. It was there in the way I braced myself when someone raised their voice, even in kindness. It was there in the way I kept people at arm’s length, safe behind walls of practiced detachment. It was there in the way I mistrusted calm, expecting the storm that always seemed to follow.
But slowly, I’ve learned that even broken things can be beautiful. There’s a Japanese art called kintsugi — when pottery breaks, the cracks are filled with gold, making the object more valuable for having been broken. I think people are the same. The cracks in me — the childhood loneliness, the hunger for safety, the walls I built around myself — they’ve made me strong. They’ve given me depth. They’ve taught me empathy for others who carry their own invisible houses on their backs.
And so, piece by piece, I’ve started to reclaim myself. I’ve learned to sit with the silence without flinching. I’ve learned to let the people I love see beyond the glass. I’ve learned to forgive the house, even as I outgrew it.
The house I grew up in was never really a house at all. It was a mirror. And in its broken reflections, I finally learned how to see myself.
Reflection:
Writing “The House of Glass” was both a challenging and meaningful experience for me. This piece allowed me to look back on my childhood from a new perspective — not just as a collection of painful memories, but as a part of the foundation that shaped who I am today. It gave me the chance to connect personal experience with creative expression, and to explore how deeply identity is influenced by the environments we grow up in.
While writing, I realized how much of my sense of self was shaped in the absence of stability and safety. The constant tension in my home taught me to be alert, quiet, and careful, but it also made me feel invisible and uncertain of my own worth. Turning that feeling into the image of a glass house helped me put words to something I’ve carried for a long time — the idea that everything could break at any moment, and that I had to protect myself from the fallout.
I also found that writing this piece helped me recognize the small but important moments of strength that were present, even in difficult times. Whether it was escaping into books, finding temporary peace on a family trip, or learning to rely on myself, those moments helped shape a resilience that I still carry today. The kintsugi metaphor especially stood out to me, because it reminded me that brokenness and healing are both part of being human — and that the parts of my life I once wanted to forget have actually taught me some of the most important lessons about survival, growth, and empathy.
This story helped me reflect on how identity is always evolving, and how much of it is built from both the beautiful and the broken parts of our past. Writing it gave me a sense of ownership over my own story and reminded me that my experiences, even the hard ones, have value and meaning.
Let me know what you think in the comments.
Learn more about my memoir The Quiet After the Sirens