The Lego Brick

I did not first open my eyes to the glaring lights of a hospital room, never released my first, heartbreaking cry, never caught my breath under the gaze of my concerned mother. I was created. Plastic and heat, pressure and pain, that's all I have ever been, all I have ever known.

My first memory is disaster.I don't recall much of it, just the things that resonated deep inside me: the heartache of the only home I had ever known being taken away, the dampness of the bottom of something brown and foul smelling, the pain of my peers being launched on top of me. I see their limbs falling everywhere every time I close my eyes. Sometimes I still wonder at the silence of it all, the only sounds filling the air: the clicks and snaps, as some were separated forever and new bonds were found.

The dampland, as I grew to know it, became my home.

I grew up within it.

I met my first love there, I clicked with her in a way I never had before, in a way that felt pure, innocent, special.

That is, until we were taken out of our home, falling into another land, another planet, this one hard, and dry. Humans, as I learned they were called, loomed over us now, clicking and clacking away at our pieces, choosing which of us to separate and which to connect.

I had my first panic attack within our home, the dry heaving of the night in which I was first separated. It had never hurt me to not be human, not the way it did when I lost her, the light of my days, and I couldn't chase, I couldn't scream, I couldn't cry. All I could do is hope, pray that sooner or later we would find our ways back to each other, that I could feel her breath as I cradled her within my arms.

I learned to hate those moments, to fear separation.

I learned that the reprieve of a brighter, happier world was not comparable to the pain that I could feel within. If I could have clung to the surface of dampland every time it tipped to empty all of its inhabitants into the other world I would have.

I clicked with thousands of peers back then, as did everyone else. I grew accustomed to the pressure of being pushed into someone else, the pain of becoming one, of losing my own identity to share it with someone I had never known. Some of my encounters were good ones, with pretty pinks or fiery reds, and other awful, pea green and sunshine yellow being the absolute worst. But no one could ever compare to her, the only one I was still there for, still living in hope of finding again.

So life went on, through bondings and separations, through pressure and pain.

That is, until it all stopped, until we were left in dampland, abandoned, forgotten. Whispers circulated that we had been left for dead, to be ignored forever. I tried to not let it affect me, brushing off the gossip that my new neighbor seemed so keen on sharing, ignoring her daily rants.

Yet, deep inside it terrified me to be stuck.

You see, for once I was thrown back home alone, un-clicked, broken. For some time I was glad, the relative silence surrounding me sparing me from the jarring reminders of who I could be with, had we never been brutally broken apart. But now, as time went on, unknown within this dark land, I was left to wonder who I was.

What was I if I had failed in my only task, the only thing I had been made for: to click?

Terror, what a human feeling for someone that was anything but, for a heart and brain made of plastic.

Fear of failure, but how did I even know what fear was?

I seemed to be the only one affected by such things, everyone else just waded through life, untouched, unbroken. Yet, here I was, crashing because of my own mind, being separated from the inside out.

Days, weeks, months, years, I could never tell you how long we spent within dampland, time didn't exist here, but no one noticed, no one cared. No one seemed to know what time was at all, just me, the lone conserver of such a painful memory.

So I lived on, through gossip and invisible tears, through contact and darkness.

That is, until the day dampland finally tipped once again.

At first, it felt familiar, as it had countless times before. The slow incline of our world, resonating deeply in my bones, making me shake, rush into others, skid away from my spot.

I braced myself for the sharp impact, for the first glimpse of light, of the familiar faces of our humans. But it never came.

Instead, the world froze at an angle it never had before, stopped before the eyes I was desperately missing. In that moment something inside me lurched.

My chest tightened around nothing. My thoughts raced without direction. I was afraid, not of separation, not of pain, but of something vast and formless, something I could not snap away from.

I realized then that I was breathing.

Not air though, as there was no air in dampland. Yet I could feel it, my chest spreading and constricting,the unmistakable rhythm of my lungs filling.

My body reacted before my mind could stop it, a hollow expansion and collapse that made no sense for something solid. Dampland seemed to spin around me, letting everyone go to the light and leaving me stuck. I had wished for this, every time the box tipped, for me to remain inside, to not be faced with the pain I knew the other world could bring me.

But now that I was here, I wanted it to stop.

I wanted the world to click back into place.

It didn’t.

It remained frozen, still and unmoving.

I tried to press myself down, maybe if I could click with whoever was under me, even just nudge them, time would unfreeze, everything would go back to normal. I hoped that somehow, in this fantasy, I would be the hero, I would finally save the day.

Nothing answered.

No click, no snap, not even any resistance. It seemed like somehow, I was folding around the block itself, as if I had become soft. It felt so wrong, every moment without a click, without the possibility of escape, leaving one simple question in its wake:

“What was I without clicking?”

The fear rose within me, maybe I was just another brick, to be used some other way. Maybe I could create shapes and squeeze myself into the smallest of corners. Or maybe I was just useless, maybe I deserved to never click, who could I join with afterall, after losing the only thing dear to me, the only one that made me feel…

Warmth?

The kind of warmth that lasted more than a second, that lingered even after she had left.

It spread through me in waves now, just thinking of her. It filled the hollow spaces of past clicks, past certainty. I had never felt quite this way before, full yet so empty, missing clicking yet not missing it at all.

I expected the feeling to dissipate with the tipping of the box, as many before it had. I expected for the world to unfreeze before my eyes, for me to be forced into someone different, someone so far from what I had ever wanted.

Yet again, everything remained still.

The quiet pressed upon me in a way it never had, like an invisible hand choking me, taking away the air I didn't need but that I so desperately craved. How could it bother me now, after so many years of living this way, of hearing and feeling nothing real, nothing sincere?

The voices blinded me like a rush of fresh air, pulling me out of my reprieve.

They came from all sides, off all frequencies, impossible to shut out.

Somehow, I remembered them, the beeps and shouts. I recognized them as my own, yet shrunk back from them in fear.

Maybe it was all in my head, maybe the last block that created my mind had finally separated from the rest, maybe I was only the carcass left in its wake.

I tried to ignore it, tried to convince myself it was just another sensation, another strange punishment for failing at the only thing I was meant to do.

But the world was changing.

Dampland blurred at the edges as my brain scrambled to explain, to find a reason for all this. Was it my fault? Did I do something, anything at all to cause this? How could I lose the only home I had ever known? More importantly I thought about her, about all we had shared and all that had been taken for us, and prayed to a deity I should not have known existed, to a god I wasn't sure was real that I could find her again, no matter what happened, no matter when.

As dampland grew thinner, moving farther and farther away from me the warmth within me grew. It fought my very being, a rabid beast wanting to be let out, wanting to contribute to my very being.

I never tried to fight it, not for a second.

My plastic heart had never been meant for such things, to feel, to run, to fight. All I knew to do was wait, so, as the warmth drowned me I waited, for a turn, for a sign. It came in the form of a rhythm, so familiar yet so far.

Thump.

Pause.

Thump.

It wasn’t the box.

It wasn’t the world.

It was me.

The realization split through me harder than any separation ever had. Plastic wasn't supposed to pulse, it didn't have a heart that could move inside it, it didn't have a brain to remember voices, faces, sensations.

Yet, here I was, stuck once again, this time not between clicks and snaps, but between whispers and sharp sounds. They slipped around the edges of my thoughts, between the cracks I had carefully concealed all along, and refused to budge, to be ignored. I tried to retreat, to harden, to become solid again, but the sounds burrowed deeper, scraping against something soft inside me I had never known existed.

Then it started.

Slow at first, a small twitch.

My body jerked, limbs responding before I understood they were mine to command. I fell, not onto studs, not into plastic, but into weight, into ache, into sensation so sharp it split me open.

I opened my eyes to a light. White. Terrifyingly strong for someone who had been in the dark for so long. A ceiling above me. Cracked and bruised. Nothing seemed quite so big as it had before, but why?

My chest heaved, my hands trembled, and suddenly there was no Dampland to return to, no clicks to save me. I realized then that I was breathing air, that it flowed rich and sweet down my throat, into my aching lungs, I had felt this before, but how?

Voices surrounded me once again, but now with quiet, careful tones, almost as if they were trying not to wake me.

They all seemed to be talking about me, and I realized I should know why. I should know why my first memory was of being thrown in the box, why I had awaked as a human after I was born a simple lego block, why I seemed to know all of these people, but could not quite remember how.

Suddenly, memories came crashing down, pieces of what I had been, of a narrative I had once occupied. A swing set swinging along in a yarn, red like the firetrucks I played with as a child. Beers snuck into junior prom, inside a backpack that seemed way too large for my small frame. A high school diploma, then a college one, my mother taking my picture with tears in her eyes, her little boy all grown up.

I recognized her now as one of the people standing before me, in a lily pad dress, the one I had given her this very Christmas.

I saw flashes from a party gone wrong, of an extra shot, a strip of acid taken in a moment of invincibility.

Yet, I also kept seeing the snaps. The separations. Her.

And then the truth crashed down harder than any fall: I wasn’t broken. I wasn’t abandoned. I was human. Flesh and breath and panic and all.

Someone asked me if I was okay.

I didn't answer.

How could I tell them everything I had lived, all that I had felt and suffered for something so unreal, for a chemical toying with my psyche? How could I explain that it broke me from the inside out, that I still felt the studs all over me?

How could I describe the emptiness I carried, the one that I knew I would have to live with for the rest of my life, that would ruin me at every turn? How could I describe her breath on my lips, that still felt so real, so cravable?

So I didn't try.

I looked at all them, standing over me, wearing the masks of fear I had started to associate to each of their faces. My people. My family. Those who would stand by me through anything.

At the very least I owed them loyalty. I owed them all of me.

I knew what I had to do.

I pushed myself upright, my own weight making my legs feel weak, almost buckling under me. The world spun, attempting to drive me down, but I resisted.

Everyone watched, silent, somber, as if they understood I needed this moment to be just for me.

I walked to where I knew I had stored them years ago, forgotten, left behind.

I had not doubted that my mother would bring my chest, the only thing that had comforted me through the sleepless nights of my youth. It was filled with so much, so many moments, but I dove straight past them, my quest being for one thing only.

I found it with tears in my eyes, my stomach in my throat, and my heart beating faster than it ever had before.

As I opened the box I had just known as home, as “dampland” I thought I felt the pull again. The unrestrainable connection of clicking, of knowing that you belong.

Yet, I closed the box, put it down.

And for the first time, I didn't look back.