Mirror, Mirror

“Scott and I have been brothers for almost 22 yearsnow, and we've been friends for about half as long.”

Laughter. A good sign. I was nervous about having to speak at my brother's wedding reception.

“Actually, we spent almost as much time playing as fighting while growing up, but at some point – I don't exactly remember when – our relationship changed. We became something more than friends, more than brothers. Something deeper...”

POW! My shoulder ached. The pain didn't register, though; all I could see was red. I was so pissed off. Scott and I had been playing G.I.Joe in the living room, and getting along fine. I threw one at him, playfully, and accidentally hit him with it. That set off his notorious temper, and the fight was on. He punched me in the arm, hard. I hit him back, and we rolled around slugging one another for a few minutes, both of us pissed off at the other beyond rationality now.

I hit him again; I think I might have punched him in the face this time. Scott fell over next to the big green chair, and lay on the floor, unmoving. I sat there for a minute or two, waiting for him to get back up and resume fighting, letting the adrenaline drain from my body.

“Scott?”

He still hadn't moved.

“Get up.”

We often got into fights over the stupidest things while growing up. I suppose it's just the sort of thing brothers do. Now, though, with him lying on the floor insensate, I was beginning to panic. Neither of us had ever really hurt the other before. He didn't seem to be faking, though. Or breathing.

“Come on. Get up,” I ordered. “This isn't funny.” He just lay there, eyes open. Unmoving.

How long this went on, I can't recall. One minute? Five? It seemed eternal. I started to freak out. I shook him. He didn't move. If he was breathing, it was so shallow, that I couldn't tell.

“Scott!”

I jumped up and began running around the house, looking for our mother. “Mom! I think Scott's hurt bad!” I yelled. I couldn't find her anywhere. I ran back to the living room to try and wake him again.

I shook my brother again, and this time that face – near mirror image to my own – grinned back at me in laughter. He had been playing dead, and far more convincingly than I'd ever seen him do. I was shocked.

“You jerk!”

Scott laughed as he sat up.

“I had you fooled,” he said, with self-satisfaction in his voice.

But I wouldn't concede. I shook my head. “I knew you were faking it.” Deny, deny, deny. “I was just playing along.”

We both knew he'd gotten the better of me, though. We went back to playing with our G.I.Joes, argument forgotten.

I'm certain that we fought many times after that, but that's the last time I remember actually getting into a serious physical altercation with my brother.

One day, a few years later, my brother and I were playing Euchre in that very same living room with two of his friends—Jen and Heather. It was a Midwest card game of choice. The two of them were a team, while Scott and I were on the other team. I had only played Euchre a couple of times, while the others were all old hands at it. Nevertheless, Scott and I were of one mind we were taking tricks left and right, setting them up for one another like we were old pros.

I stared across the playing field at him. My face, but different. Chocolate brown hair, brown eyes to my green, mole on his upper lip. He smiled back at me; one of his wide-mouthed, toothy smiles. Jen asked him what we were smiling at.

“We're exercising our psychic bond,” I replied.

In response, Scott scrunched up his face as if he were concentrating really hard, to further illustrate the point. As we were winning seven to two, it wasn't hard to believe that we were “psychic brothers.”

On the next hand, though, my brother reneged, failing to follow suit when one of the other girls threw down a club. That scored them six points, and lost us the game.

“Way to go, craphead!” I remarked. Scott gave me an “I'm such an idiot!” expression.

We both laughed. So much for our psychic bond.

“I'm going over to Joe's later for a party, Crapper.” He used his nickname for me. “Do you want to come along?”

Scott was home from college for the weekend. I was just a sophomore in high school at the time. He occasionally invited me to hand out with him and his friends – I think because he was concerned for my social development, or lack thereof – and of course, I eagerly accepted his invitation.

It wasn't much of a party. The high point was seeing Joe and Clark again, two of my brother's closest high school friends and two really fun guys. There was some drinking, which I wasn't into at the time since I was still dealing with issues about my mom's alcoholism and how that related to me. As such, it wasn't a topic much discussed among my siblings. Given that, I was pretty surprised that my brother brought it up on the way home from the party.

As we pulled out of the driveway, an inebriated Joe and Clark waved good night to us both. My brother turned to me as he drove. “Clark isn't having an easy time adjusting to college,” he said, out of the blue. “He doesn't go out and party or anything. Joe and I wanted to try and help him loosen up a bit. He's never been out drinking.”

“Yeah?” I remarked, dully. I was rather taken aback by the turn of conversation, which had become rather serious out of the blue.

“I think Joe drank too much tonight,” my brother added, apologetically. “He was starting to become a jerk. I hope he didn't bother you.”

I shook my head. “No,” I said, soberly. “I don't drink, but some of my friends do, and I've accepted that casual drinking is okay, you know?”

Scott nodded as he watched the road. “I like to have a beer or two on occasion, as a social thing. For the longest time, I couldn't stand alcohol, knowing about mom. But I think it's okay, as long as it's done in moderation. Joe went over his limit tonight, I think.”

I didn't have any suitable response. This was the first real “adult” conversation I could recall having with my brother, so I was a bit taken aback. That it was happening, and that he would confide in me this way. We drove home the rest of the way in silence, but nothing really needed to be said. We were simply sharing one another's company. It was the first time I realized my brother and I could share anything with the other.

“... It is truly an incredible feeling, knowing that there is someone out there you are so close to, that you can share your life, your experiences with. That's why when Scott asked me to be his best man, I was honored beyond words, to be able to share in this experience with him, the start of a new chapter in his life.”

“I'd like to wish Scott and Melissa all my best, and hope that they live a long and happy life together.”

I raised my glass in a toast to the newlyweds, as applause broke out across the room.

Looking Glass.

“The voyeur is masturbator, the mirror his badge, the window his prey.” – Jim Morrison

I am a voyeur.

Much of my life, to my great mortification, has been spent observing others go about their lives, living their dreams, making choices, having careers, relationships, families. Doing all the things that people are supposed to do. Being fulfilled.

Doing the things that I am not.

Earlier tonight, while making another ill-fated attempt to clean my room/cell, I came across an old cast list from a stage production I was once in. Nostalgia and pride had prompted me to save it for these last 18 years, and my voyeuristic nature led me to Google some of my former castmates, to see what they had been up to all this time.

One in particular resonated with me- Tanya- who had been one of the lead roles in the show. She and I were only a year or two apart, and going through similar phases of life at the time we were in the show together; going to college, young adults away from home for the first time. Figuring out what we wanted to do with our lives. We weren’t particularly close during the run of the show, casual acquaintances, locked away in our own showmances with other castmates.

After the show wrapped, I partnered with another castmate of ours, Heather, in a business venture she was embarking on. Tanya ended up moving in with Heather, and so the three of us became fairly close at that time. When the summer ended, though, and school started up again for me, I gradually lost contact with the two of them.

Long story short, my Google-fu revealed that Tanya had, in fact, moved to Hollywood and pursued her dreams of an acting career, doing several movies and tv shows. Subsequently, she went on to reimagine her life as a mother, wife, and LA fashionista. All in all, a very full life, and knowing her, just the beginning.

In point of fact, several friends and acquaintances in recent years have gone on to find new careers, new relationships, new goals; to redefine themselves in life.

While I just watch from the sidelines, a voyeur in the increasingly small world that I have defined for myself (if only through inaction). Literally and figuratively, my world feels like a prison cell, a tiny studio apartment from which practically my sole release is a weekly 9 to 5 work furlough at a dead-end job where I do little more than push buttons for a living. That my prison is only a block from the beach is small consolation when most days I can barely muster the will to open my blinds to allow the natural light to brighten my day.

Bitterness aside, it isn’t jealousy that compels my voyeuristic tendencies. It’s admiration.

“Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor.” – old Norse proverb

On a recent trip to Hawaii to see my father, one night found us watching the finale of the reality show/singing competition “The Voice.” To put it mildly, the show is not exactly my dad’s cup of tea, so at one point he asked me what it was that I liked about it.

“I enjoy watching people pursuing their passions,” was my response.

There is something utterly compelling about people who follow their dreams, take a chance on life. Whether they succeed or fail, it takes a tremendous amount of courage and faith in oneself. To do it more than once? To redefine yourself, your career, attempt a different dream in life a second, third time? Astounding.

I have yet to do it even the once.

Seeing my friends and even strangers doing, being- LIVING – is invigorating, uplifting. It touches a part of me that I know, even in spite of my jadedness, is very much within me. I’ve even managed to tap into it once or twice in days long gone.

Ultimately, it is my own lack of a sense of self-worth that keeps me from sharing the same pursuit of fulfillment that I so admire in others. That keeps me locked away from the world.

I feel like a fraud, and live on perpetual edge that at any second, everyone else will realize it, too.

“If we undervalue ourselves, then we allow others to undervalue us as well.” – Dr. Emma Ryan, Common Law

I heard that quote on the new USA cop/comedy show recently, and it resonated with me. “Yeah, that’s so true. It’s been a constant problem all my life,” I thought.

But the more I pondered it, the more I realized it is anything but true, at least for me. Not in my life. If anything, the truth is completely opposite- time and again, inexplicably to me, my family and friends have exhibited more belief in my value as a person, in my abilities, than I ever have. In spite of what seems to me to be evidence to the contrary – a lifetime of conscious underachievement – their faith and trust in me has been almost universally unfaltering, whereas my own is… inconstant, at best.

I know that is one reason why I tend to be distant, withdrawn, uncommunicative much of the time. How can one possibly live up to that level of hopefulness, I think to myself. Yet they have never asked me to do anything, to be anything more than what I could be, if only I had the courage to do so.

Where these feelings of unworthiness arise from, I couldn’t truly say. I’m sure that I could point to dozens, hundreds of events in my life that have contributed to or reinforced those feelings – the curse of memory. But the roots of my lack of self-esteem run deep and are a tangled morass so thoroughly engrained in me at this point that analysis of the whys and wherefores may not even matter quite so much as simply confronting the underlying emotion behind it all.

That emotion, of course, being Fear.