The Things We Swallow

I once knew a man who ate glass.I don’t remember his name, but I remember him vividly.

The memory no longer distant. Me, in my twenties. Tall, long blonde hair, youthful wearing black cigarette pants and likey some cute tight top with black platform heels fully immersed in this party.Our house decorated for a Singles Valentine’s Day gathering— paper hearts cut from construction paper covering the walls each saying some inappropriate innuendo for the day of love. Party strings. A DJ spinning music that felt too loud for the size of the room and was likely even louder the condo owner next door shared living room wall. Every inch of the kitchen counters cluttered with bottles of cheap alcohol.

Then: the crash of a bottle breaking.

And him — a young man, mid-twenties, sturdy in frame and height, brown shaggy hair, dressed in all black, like he belonged to some forgotten 90s band — walking calmly over, picking up a shard of broken glass, and without hesitation, putting it in his mouth.

Chewing it. Swallowing it. Eating glass. I remember being stunned — my face frozen in disbelief. The thoughts that raced through my mind: What is wrong with this human?

The image of his insides being cut. The fear that caused my heart to drop right into the pit of my belly when I had the fleeting thought, what if this gets stuck in his throat?

And then I come back to the present moment. This memory, a movie trailer clip, has come to an abrupt end. In this moment, I'm not eating glass, but can’t stop thinking that the exact feeling that resides within me mirrors what it would be like to eat glass.

My throat is raw and dry.My chest feels like it’s being sliced from the inside.Each breath cuts a little deeper down through my diaphragm, into my stomach.The blood — invisible but real — a reminder of my current pain.

The clinical term pops into my head: vicarious trauma. Vividly aware that attuned, empathic hearts will feel another human's suffering, whether from physical injury or emotional agony, as though it is happening to them. Because the pain is.

No barrier. No distance. Just pain — shared, absorbed.

A new movie trailer clip. I am rewatching yesterday—the pain in his grey-blue eyes. “Keep your eyes on me,” I say. Watching anguish, panic, and physical pain.

“Breathe with me. In through your nose, baby. Keep your mouth closed. Eyes on me.”

Breathe. The alarm alerts scream, beep, and flash red on the machines. His blood pressure is too high. His oxygen levels are rapidly dropping. Heartbeat now 165. Eyes on me.

“I’m going to have to put this in your artery,” Jason says. I know this man. He is on the MET team (Medical Emergency Team). I met him and the others just 5 days earlier during my husband’s internal bleed that spilled out of him externally. The needle is big.

“Baby, keep looking at me. Breathe.” IV meds are administered in the other arm. They work around me. Never asking me to leave his bed or let go of his hand.

Machines continue to scream. Constant chatter of communication—directives, information, speculation. “Sepsis.” “Keep looking at me.”

He is scared. I am afraid, too. He is confused. Me too. We stare into each other's eyes, but much deeper because I can see his soul. I wonder if he can see mine. The intensity between us is palpable. His eyes convey wordless trust, fragile and sacred.

Death by a thousand cuts—I think of the psychological description of watching someone you love suffer slowly, helplessly. It feels like eating broken glass.

And just like that, my mind flashes back 20 years ago, to that young man chewing glass at a party, surrounded by music and laughter that covered up so much unseen pain.

I wonder where he is now.What his insides look like.I wonder if he ever healed.

I wonder if his eating glass was his way of proving a pain he didn’t know how else to show — and I wonder, too, how many of us are walking around looking fine, looking normal, while inside we are shredded and bleeding, carrying wounds no one else can see.

And then, my thoughts turn inward.I wonder if I will ever be the same.I wonder what my husband’s insides look like now — if he will ever truly heal from so many physical cuts.If he escapes death this time, will it be enough to heal my invisible cuts?

I decide that in this moment, survival means we both will bleed — but bleeding means we are still alive.So I hold fiercely to the truth I know in my bones: cuts heal.And it will be my work, not to willingly eat broken glass, but to trust that healing is possible.

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