The Man in the Mirror

I catch glimpses of myself sometimes, like watching a stranger I once knew. There in the bathroom mirror at 3 AM, the raven's inked across my back seem to shift with each breath I took. Hugin and Munin, thought and memory, carrying the weight of everything I've seen.

I splash cold water on my face. Some days I'm present, anchored, here in this Colorado life I've built. I feel the mountain air in my lungs, appreciate the sunrise painting peaks gold, and find comfort in routine. I answer emails, pay bills, and smile (sometimes) at strangers in the grocery store. I pass for normal.

Other days, I'm back there. The Hindu Kush rises in my mind, jagged and unforgiving. I hear Mac's voice telling me to check my six. I feel the weight of the knife, the resistance as it plunges…

Not today. Today I choose to be here.

I've mapped the topography of my mind like those mountain ranges I once navigated. Charted the valleys of grief, the peaks of rare joy, the treacherous slopes of memory. Some territories remain marked "Here be dragons," places too dangerous to venture alone.

My morning ritual grounds me. Coffee. Stretching. Working out. Meditation and journaling. A few minutes looking at the mountains outside my window. I am here. I am now. I survived for a reason.

But even as I tell myself this, I feel the pull again. The restlessness. The need to run from everything familiar. From the weight of being known, being seen, being present. It would be so easy to throw essentials in the Jeep and hit the road. Find a new place where no one knows my stories, where I can be whoever I pretend to be that day.

Off I go again, leaving parts of myself behind. Even when I stay physically present, my mind wanders, detaches, and observes from a distance. Friends notice. "You're somewhere else today," they say. They don't know how right they are.

The ravens on my back watch it all, recording every arrival, every departure. Hugin catalogs my thoughts as they fracture and reform. Munin preserves the memories I try to outrun. Together they bear witness to this fractured existence, to the man who is both here and not here. Present and absent. Survivor and ghost.

Tonight, I'll sit with my ghosts and try, once again, to reconcile all these versions of myself into someone who can be fully present. Someone who doesn't need to disappear to survive.

Till tomorrow, when I'll catch another glimpse of that stranger in the mirror, and wonder if today is the day I finally recognize myself.