Hotels with sliding closet doors — mirrored on the outside — have always struck me as a bit much. A simple, full-length mirror, the ones that are just a bit warped around the edges, would be enough. But two doors completely covered in mirrors?
I had just finished layering up — a pair of running thermals, hoodie, heavy coat, two pairs of socks, heavier boots, work pants. The winter of 2021 in Idaho was brutal, and my coworker and I were out in it almost every day. I grabbed my beanie from my bed, yanked it down over my years — pre-feeling the cold outside, and turned to leave my hotel room for the fourth time that week.
I caught my reflection in the vanity mirrors and stopped. For a second — not in the medical sense, but in a very real, deep-down way — I didn’t recognize the guy staring back at me.
It was a fleeting moment; nothing particularly dramatic about it. I didn’t hear any swelling music or see a beam of light cut through the cloudy sky into my hotel room. It was just a single heartbeat of recognition: I don’t want to be him.
And yet, I was.
I’d been angry for a long time. It was a constant, dull, steady drumming in my soul. Most of the time, I could ignore it. I had work to do and if I wasn’t going to do it then who was?
I was hired to build software systems, to design tools for a complex and unique business. Instead, I was in the field every day installing hardware in sub-freezing temperatures, working bare-handed with tiny components that didn’t care that it was zero degrees outside.
We’d work for ten minutes, then warm up in the car for another ten. Freeze. Thaw. Repeat. I was certainly grateful for a car with a good heater. I’ve always been grateful that I’ve had work to provide for my family. But that was not work I enjoyed — not even close.
My coworker and I had been asking for help for months. If I’m being honest, it was only so we could have a reprieve, on occasion, from the grueling field work that neither of us was accustomed to. Promises were made — payouts, relief, a bigger team — and to be fair, the payout did come. Eighteen months later and half what was promised. But at the time, it felt like we were hanging on out of obligation; a sense of duty. It was the sunk cost fallacy in motion: we’d already poured too much of ourselves into it to walk away now.
So, I stood there, looking in that hotel mirror. Looking into my own eyes, and I felt it. The disconnect and distance. Not just from the life I wanted, but from the me I once knew.
I wish I could say that was a turning point. That I stepped out into that freezing air in the dark with some newfound resolve, but I didn’t. I stayed angry. Quietly (because that’s what I do), steadily, for almost another year.
My coworker eventually quit. He was a mechanical engineer who wanted to do the job he’d been hired for, so he found another company willing to pay him more, and he got to work inside.
I kept going, alone. The cold eventually gave way to Spring (which I’ll admit is a beautiful time to be outside in Idaho) but that eventually gave way to the blistering heat of summer. The work didn’t get any easier. Finally, one of the other partners in the business started joining me in the field, and that helped. He didn’t sugarcoat things. He agreed that the work was kind of terrible and hard. But he had this way of focusing on what mattered: we were often getting three-day weekends with our families. We were paying our bills. We were building something that was (is) actually pretty cool.
While his perspective didn’t erase my anger, it softened it. It was like he offered me a path to send my anger somewhere else, and I did start to feel a shift. Like so many things, it was slow and gradual. But enough.
Part of why I stayed angry for so long, I think, is that I’d convinced myself that the real me had disappeared. That the guy looking back at me in the mirror that morning was who I was now. That the guy who used to show up with optimism, humor, and creativity had been buried alive under too many hours, too much weather, too many broken promises, and too many unmet expectations. But the real me hadn’t disappeared or died. He’d just gone quiet.
Waiting for me to stop drowning him out with resentment.
I still work with that employer sometimes. Even now, there are days when I get pre-angry about things. I catch myself getting worked up about a conversation that hasn’t even happened yet, and my relationship with my old boss is pretty good these days.
Old patterns are hard to break, but it continues to get better.
Of course, the truth is, I never left — at least not completely. I still showed up for my wife when I was home. I still found joy anticipating her needs. I still brought warmth where I could. Sure, sometimes I did it because I felt obligated, but mostly I did it out of love.
Maybe that’s the thread I’ve been pulling on lately — not how to go back and somehow become who I used to be, but how to recognize the parts of me that stayed. Those are the important bits that held the lifeline when I was too tired or too buried to notice.
I miss myself, sometimes. But he’s not gone.
He’s just slowly climbing out of the canyon, a little bit more every day.
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