When you stare into the mirror, what stares back at you?
It's the question I've dealt for a long time and when I look into mine every day, that is what comes back at me.
It's what I see all the time.
It's hard to look at myself and not see what sits right under the skin. The anger, fear and regret that I feel for so many things, but also the self-loathing that comes with it, along with the belief that no matter how many friends I have or who I might ever be able to get close to, I will spend the rest of my life alone not because I want to, but because I have to.
When that is what stares back from your reflection, it becomes very hard to see what positive things still exist inside yourself as well.
From the time I was 19 years-old until I was 23, I had to go through a process by which my entire life to that point was dissected. Every decision I'd ever made, every relationship I'd tried to build and everything that defined me was laid out on a doctor's table and analyzed, scrutinized and criticized for good and bad.
When the process was over, I was left with the conclusion that not every Wrong can be fixed with two or more Rights, and my focus going forward couldn't be on the better parts of me, but the worse ones. And they do exist. I know that and accepting that is neither a weakness or a concession.
But it also doesn't change the fact that there exists more good in me than all the evil which can be derided from all the mistakes I've ever made in my entire life.
I know this because people around me have seen it and they've reminded me that I can be that person more times than I can count, even when I neither wanted to listen to them or believe them.
They look and see me for who I am, as opposed to what I see. They see an intelligent, caring, empathetic, funny, respectful, honorable man who if asked, will do just about anything within reason for them. They see a lot more than that too, from what I can tell, but to go further seems egotistical from my perspective.
Make no mistake, I could've let myself become that distortion I see in the mirror everyday very easily, and it's something I still deal with all the time. I still get angry, upset, frustrated, and whether I like it or not, that side of me is always going to be there.
But that's just it. It's only one side of who I am, and a mirror only shows us one side of ourselves.
We're so much more than that, when we let ourselves see it.
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