Lives Lived Before

So he huffed and he puffed and he blew the house down!

The Three Little Pigs, English Fairy Tales, retold by Flora Annie Steel (1922)

It seemed like a common experience to her. She could not imagine that anything about the proceeding day, week, month, or year had not been lived a million times before. Yet, as she sat in the cafe, listening to the liminal music playing she felt the same feeling as when landing on the flow of a new work.

Julie was 32 and had, by her reckoning at least, lived a good life. To be sure she was by no means the most blessed, lucky, or privileged person in history but she lived a comfortable middle class life working a job she enjoyed. Sometimes Julie would think back on her days in college and the depression she fought during those four years and she would wonder what right she had to be depressed. Quickly though, she inevitably reminded herself of the legitimate challenges she had faced, the ones which allowed her to purchase her depression from her ego.

Ron was 22 and had, by his reckoning at least, lived a good life. Others perhaps had easier lives, but it was an undeniable fact that still more lived harder and worse lives. Ron often considered why he was depressed and why he was anxious, he asked himself what right he had to be depressed and what right he had to muse poetic on his depression when that same weight affected others so much more acutely than it did him. These moments passed however, and Ron, or sometimes his therapist, raised the point that his depression was valid and should not be dismissed. And his mind would be settled, for a time at least.

Ron worked as a software developer for a bio-tech startup in the Boston area, peculated through the grinds of the tech world Ron often worried he was a “tech bro”. He worried but he did not know. On days, increasingly rare, when Ron worked in the office he felt isolated from his colleagues. Surely they felt isolated from one and other also, he told himself.

On the rare occasions when Ron would go out with his co workers all he found for himself was increased isolation. The observed fact of the isolation not serving to increase its magnitude; rather, it observation collapsing into reality from the dark corner of possibility. He would go out with his co workers less and less and each time in doing so would add a brick to the wall.

Ron had others, those whom he knew outside of his job at the bio-tech startup. He had close friends from childhood and those from school. He cared deeply for his friends and his friends cared for him. There existed no boiling animosity under the surface as might in a play of old. And yet, as Ron hid from his co workers he similarly hid from his friends. The act of hiding from some often pushes one to hide from others afterall. Whether this was from fear or shame Ron didn’t know.

Do not think he did not know what he did as he did it. The act of isolation is not one of naivete after all. Ron understood that by spending more and more time within himself he walked further and further from the social life he felt he wanted. Yes, further away from some people he cared little for but also further away from those he loved deeply. However, for all that he wanted to turn and walk back he found he could not. Anxiety, stress, and depression pulled his strings. When the wall Ron had built stretched above his head and in that height prevented him from seeing the possibilities of the future Ron met Julie

Julie had, in ways, lived a life similar to Ron. She shared many of the same fears as Ron did, she understood them implicitly. Julie, unlike many of his co workers in tech, was the kind of person Ron would want to be friends with. She was the kind of person Ron would have, years earlier spent time with and put in effort to know, but the kind of person now who could not be seen over the high wall he had built.

Julie wanted to know Ron too though. She felt her life had been muted and she wanted to experience so much more. Julie had not built a wall as Ron had and did not understand that it formed an barrier to large to down. She was stubborn and when the bricks told her “you cannot cross” she said “okay, can I climb?”. And when they returned to her “You cannot climb” she asked “okay, may I see through”. And when the bricks retorted “You may not see through” she asked “okay, may I speak through”. And the bricks said to Julie “You may not talk” she simply said “okay, but I will talk”.

Julie and Ron spoke through the wall. They spoke of the shared struggles which Ron and Julie had and they spoke of their guilt over those struggles and as they spoke Ron wanted more and more to see Julie, for a human, as Ron demonstrably was, connection could not be complete without the infinite dimensional complexity that a face brings. So as they spoke more Ron slowly stacked bricks. He could not take down the wall, for it was part of him, but he could climb above it. And after many months Ron summited the wall and, breathing the cold air upon the top looked down on Julie and saw himself.

Ron was confused, but Julie was not, Julie had always known that she was Ron. She had always known that Ron needed his house to protect him. For the wall was not just a wall, it was a house and it was a shell and it was a room and it was whatever Ron needed to hide himself from the world. As Ron stood upon the peak of his home, gazing down in confusion, Julie began to build. She built a great earthen staircase out of stones and mud. She built up and she climbed up and eventually she joined Ron upon the summit.

They looked at each other, Ron, the life Julie had lived, and Julie, the life Ron had wanted but not known was possible. Sitting on the gable roof together Ron asked “How long were you outside before you first spoke?” and Julie earnestly replied that she did not know. She retorted that Ron built the house, surely he must know what was around it before the first brick was laid. This made sense to Ron, so he thought, and as he thought he realized that when he was hiding from his co workers he was also hiding from the world. He realized that he was so focused on building he never looked up and therefore couldn't say if Julie had been there or not.

As Ron concerned himself with what Julie said his vision wandered to the landscape for the first time since sitting upon their shared perch. He saw a cliff which they sat upon and a desert stretching out to infinity in front of them. He saw a great mountain rising to the sky behind them and within all of this he saw light. Light playing around the mountain as the sun elevated the landscape and rapidly pulled it into day.

Julie watched all of this, already knowing the ending, but also knowing that Ron needed to accept it himself, without her prescience. She watched Ron admire the beauty of the world and, as she watched, she too admired the beauty of the world. She felt Ron’s wonder and she felt Ron’s pain and Ron’s life.

Later, as the sun was setting and the world was allowed to rest Julie walked down the stairs which had been built and stood at the window, which was not a window, where she and Ron had talked for all those years. Julie remembered Ron, she remembered him fondly for he was within her. She felt the latent fear of the world and, further, she felt new fears. Fears which Ron could have never understood. However, she felt possibility more, she saw and she felt and she knew she could venture forth for the first time in years.

Julie built a door in the house which Ron had built and the door faced away from the tech world where Ron had lived. She sat on the ground, in the house, looking at the door once it was built. She tried to tell herself she was admiring her work but she knew she was afraid; she felt the same fear Ron always did, after all, Julie felt everything Ron ever did. She considered closing the door up, all of the bricks were carefully stacked in the corner, ready to be put back in place. She looked at the door and she started to close it. She picked up a brick and she placed it on the ground within the door frame but as she did she thought back to Ron and she thought back to how amazing it had been when she had looked out over that landscape for the first time in years.

Julie thought on the landscape while a freshly laid brick sat in the door, waiting to be locked in forever. She thought and drifted through her history. She thought of her life as Ron and of all of the beauty and happiness she had seen and experienced. And she thought of all of the less than savory people she had spent time with and the vitriol and ichor which she spilled onto herself around them. She thought on all of this, the ups and downs of her life so far and she could not decide what to do. She stood there frozen, and as she stood her friends from her previous life gently reached down to the brick on the floor and removed it. They reached in and they took her hand and they guided her out of her house.

Juile, 32, sat in the coffee shop thinking back on the previous 10 years of her life. She didn’t know why she had suddenly gotten distracted in musings on her past and didn’t know why she had thought of Ron for the first time in years. But as she sat in the coffee shop and looked out the window at the banal traffic and shopping plaza she remembered Ron’s final words to her before she walked down the stairs. As she thought on those words she smiled and she went back to work.