Whos this guy in the mirror?

Travel far enough and your bound to meet yourself on the road- David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

Great thinkers like Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell theorize that we really aren't that different or unique as we would like to believe ourselves to be. There's a saying in the rooms of your a unique snowflake just like everyone else in this snow bank. Different but the same.

"Different trailer but same trailer park" Katy Musgrave, Merry Go Round

I've been thinking about what role I should be playing because I find myself in the same stories. It's like watching the same movie over and over and admittedly the production value are getting better with each cycle its the same story.

I have two pictures hanging on my wall one taken in 2006 the other in 2013. Each shows me with three guys who I been there with me bleeding in the trenches who I hope to be life long pals. I've had other pictures like this before but they have gotten lost along the way. Its photographic evidence of who was playing the roles of the people I want/need in my life. I attract or group with the same people in general. The sage representing a pilgrim further down the road I want to travel on. The philosopher a pilgrim who talks in bigger ideas. The grinder a pilgrim who struggles through with life by nose to the grindstone. Not per say happy but busy. I always had a image of myself in my head but it wasn't until recently when I really saw myself in another that I got a clear picture. Even if I look in the mirror it isn't a true image its in reverse. Self appraisal is always flawed.

However when I quit trying to compare myself to others and start to identify I see how much overwhelmingly I am more alike than different than most people. I meet myself in 2012 and I see why most people like me. Its for the same reasons I liked him right off the bat. Outwardly besides both being big guys not a lot similar. Characteristically very much alike. Good time Charlie, sensitive, quick with a joke, loyal, spiritual, philosophical, ect. Inwardly I think we share some of the same damage. Middle child syndrome of stable older successful brother successful stable younger sister crazy in the middle, abandonment issues, separation from or children, ill at ease with physical self, bad choices with ex's, and of course addiction which is what brought us to the dance in the first place. I've long decided that if I ever get a tombstone my epitaph would read " Here lies Tomas. Easy to love, hard to like".  Fits this guy as well.

Its easy to love us both for all the good things we are but its hard as hell to like us for all the crap we pull in our lives. I had caught a big resentment against him over the last year for crap he pulled and the ramifications that came from it. When I first met him I got a lot of hope from him. He seemed to have found that special something to get the life I wanted despite the built in deficiencies. Good solid relationship, self supportive through work, nice stuff finally, good relationships with others, connection with God, grateful as all get out, respected, seemed to work a good program for example. Then the real acid test of life took place and stuff went sideways in a real quick fashion. My mom said to me words I find more profound and true the longer I live "We love other for the strengths they possess but grow to hate them for not using them."

I grew to hate him for his gratefulness that disappeared in the hard times. His narcissism, bouts of depression as well as mania, selfishness, justification, being a victim. I hated him for the all the reasons I hate myself sometimes. Where had his strength gone? Where was his connection to God? Why couldn't he stay sober? He spoke all the right words before why didn't he just shake it off?

The thing I was most disgusted with him is how much his stability was equally proportionate to the relationship status to the woman in his life at the time. If things were good with her things were flipping fantastic with him. If they were rocky he was in a hole beyond hope. The symbiotic parasitic codependency of this guy was off the charts! I hadn't seen such insanity since well since I looked in the mirror if I was going to be honest. To overcome my resentment of him I had to overcome the resentment of myself for being cut from the exact same cloth. I had to forgive myself for trading my sobriety, my god, my safety, my happiness, my stability for the love of a woman in 2006.

I had done the exact same thing all my life basing my happiness off my partner. I had done it for all the same reasons. Loneliness, fear, need of approval, no self esteem top the list but it boils down to I was uncomfortable with myself and God. All those things that I was supposed to go to God to get  I was afraid so I just took to people that couldn't give it to me. I would either put on my captain save a ho cape to save her hoping to vicariously heal myself through her recovery. Or the other extreme find someone I could submit my life to in hopes that they could run it better than I could. The benevolent dominator or the victim. Either way I found myself sucking out everything out of people until they just had to cut me loose to save themselves from my bottomless pit.  Then when it inevitably self destructed then I was Icarus fell trying to fly with a good woman and my wings melted under her glow. The other half of the time I was Dante who only willing plunged deep into Hell's depths to rescue her. I was so pissed at this guy I had respected so much being so stupid. Why couldn't he just be ok being alone for at least a month hell two weeks? Then I look back at my own track record and oh why couldn't I for so long?

Its hard to maintain rigorous honesty and a resentment against someone else for doing the same crap your doing. When I take the focus off my very little story in my head and try to be the huge dramatic story God is telling I see the role I'm playing isn't always the role I'm supposed to be playing at all. A love story of God's restoration set against a backdrop of a  fallen world at war is how John Edlridge describes it and I like that. Joseph Campbell says there are really only 7 archetypes of people in the world and we all represent a subtype mixture of them at different points in our lives. I agree and rejoice in being the subtype today. It gives me a point of reference of where I was, where I am, and where I will go based on my choices how to respond to a changing life. In ten years I will hopefully have another photo of me and a group of guys who are sharing a life of pilgrims on the road to happy destiny. Chances are that it will be a different group of guys because everyone is moving at their own pace including myself. I wont be the same guy in the same place when the picture is taken. A snowflake doesn't start out beautiful it starts as a piece of debris floating in the sky that God takes and attaches water molecules to. As it gains weight it loses altitude. The minuscule amount of the water bonds to the debris and crystalize into something beautiful as a after effect.