Todas las personas que fui

"Todas las personas que fui" by Alfonso Casas is a comic someone recommended to me, I grabbed from the library, then had to buy, have given as a gift (and will again), and now have to buy again. It can't not be nearby. That's how good I think it is.

It's about the author himself and his journey from a hole (depression / identity crisis / insert your own version of the hole here) to making peace with himself.

It's the best book I've read on the subject. It's worth several therapy sessions, the good kind. I'm convinced all types of therapy are fundamentally the same thing. Specifically, the story reminds me of IFS and the process of accessing your inner child. But probably because this is a comic and IFS has a strong visualization component. At the core, they all work by making you see what mechanisms you have hardwired that no longer serve you. Each one uses its own metaphors and techniques that ultimately have to translate into understanding what's happening to you and giving you tools to get moving.

Alfonso tells this in the comic masterfully. The monsters, Cris, the Hall of Pillars, the butterfly sequence... I'll say it again: you can read "Todas las personas que fui" and skip all the initial therapy sessions where you start figuring out what's happening to you.

Something else I loved: the title made me expect the story to be about one thing (I can't help being a know-it-all) and it turned out to be about the opposite. A nice surprise. I'm not giving details so I don't spoil it for you any more than I already have.

Below are a few passages I don't want to forget. The truth is it doesn't quite make sense out of context, because their weight comes from the combination of text and image. If you're going to read the book and don't want spoilers, skip them.

Thanks to Ale for the recommendation.

I've seen those colors. I know they exist.

I don't know why you're all so afraid of the dark, when only in the dark can you see the light of the stars.

I know I'm not like this, but I can't seem to be the way I used to be either. I've... gotten lost.

At some point, the things that made me happy had stopped making me happy.

Cris: this part of the iceberg represents your "peaceful" coexistence with the monsters. You think they're making your life impossible, but what they're actually doing is warning you that there's something you need to attend to. The hidden part of the iceberg is all the shiiiit you've been neglecting for too long.

Cris: First, you create a small comfort zone for yourself. Not very big, what real estate agents would call "full of character." But then monsters start appearing, taking up space in that supposed "safe zone," causing you some discomfort. Normally that makes people react, but not you. So eventually the discomfort gets so great that they try to push you out of that comfort zone and throw you headlong into what I call "the growth zone," where you can evolve and develop as a person.

Cris: Humans are like fireflies. Your light comes from within.

Cris: Welcome to the Hall of Pillars. The foundation on which your entire belief system is built. When you have a crisis, the first thing to collapse is your belief system. What you used to do that worked for you suddenly stops working. And as a consequence... your whole world shakes.

Some of these columns have become obsolete and no longer hold anything up. Others are just heavy slabs blocking your path, and now that they've fallen you don't have to put them back up.

Alfonso: Hey, why do you help me? I thought you didn't like me.

Cris: Not at all! We actually care about you! Well, basically we care about you... being alive. Without you we wouldn't exist. It's like a symbiosis.

Cris: Thinking so much about the paths you didn't take stops you from enjoying the one you chose. At some point you have to say goodbye to them. You shouldn't worry about the roads you've left behind. Only about all the ones opening up ahead of you.

Alfonso: But what if I'm wrong?

Cris: If you keep moving, you can't be wrong. The real mistake is staying still. Everything else is... just the road.

Cris: Therapy isn't something miraculous. It's like an umbrella: it doesn't stop the rain, but it helps you not get soaked.

Cris: The statue of expectations, the embodiment of all the ideas you projected (and others projected) onto yourself. It keeps getting taller. Eventually you lose the will to reach it. [...] You were so focused on the goal that you didn't notice how far you'd already climbed. Life is much more than your big goals. You know all those little things you thought were "distracting" you from reaching them? That's precisely life.

Life is what happens to you while you're too busy meeting expectations. Don't wait until you've missed those "little things" to realize how precious they are.

Maybe you're chasing goals that no longer represent who you are.

You're better than him. Because he is ideal, but you are real. He can never exist, but you can.

When you can't find the time to stop, your body does it for you.

I don't understand your fear of making mistakes. You can't spend your life so afraid of failing that it stops you from living it. Living is perfecting the art of failing better.

Life is like one of those snow globes. It's fragile and you have to handle it carefully. But if you don't shake it a little, you're missing something.

A: If I can't even draw anymore, then what am I? C: You might be surprised, but even if you stopped drawing, you'd still be you.

Memories are like a hotel. You can visit them, but you can't live in them.

You can't look for happiness in a place that no longer exists.

I can finally see all the people I was. They're all smiling at me. And in that moment I understand that there's always an earlier version of you that's proud of how far you've come.

You spend your whole life looking for yourself, only to understand that you were always there.

You can't always feel good. Nobody can. Happiness comes in moments. It can't be sustained over time.

Little by little I made my way through the levels of that video game where the final boss was me. And it turned out you didn't have to defeat him. You just had to hug him.