My Ride, My Therapy

This is more a stream of thought than anything else.

I am a police officer, I work in patrol.  Simply put, that means that I respond to 911 calls.  This can range from calls involving a barking dog, to a shoplifting, to a murder, or something where I might have to take a life.  I have seen death in many forms, I have seen humanity at its lowest.  As of this writing, I have been a cop for 15 years.  Time has taken its toll on me in this job.  I have become stressed, hardened, and callus to much of the world.  All the little things have added up over the years.  By "little things" I mean seeing brains splattered across walls, having brains dripping on my shoes while performing first aid, seeing a baby in a bath tub drowned, and seeing the Mother stabbed in her bed while she slept.  These are the little things over the course of a career that even though you expect to see them, tend to occupy a permanent place in your psyche.

I thought about these events and scenes occasionally as the years passed by, but things changed in the Fall of 2009, when I went on a call that resulted in a fellow officer committing suicide right in front of me.  The vision of him pulling the trigger on his pistol which was pressed to his temple is a sight I will never be able to forget.  It was a couple of years after this that I really found out that I suffer from PTSD to some extent.  It was the culmination of all of those years and that one single event that changed my mental makeup for quite possibly the rest of my life.

Jumping back several years, to 2005, I had started taking landscape pictures with the hopes of creating order in the chaotic world I lived in.  For years this worked for me.  I had my much needed escape, and ability to concentrate on the beauty of the world around me.  I found a lot of joy in photography and became reasonably good at it.  I was in my prime in 2009 and was creating magic with a camera.  I had found my creative outlet and one that would provide some mental solace to my fatiguing brain.  That November, however, I faced that one fateful call that still to this day affects every aspect of my life.  I was temporarily reassigned pending a standard internal investigation.  I looked to my photography to occupy my mind and bring peace back to my world.

Oddly enough though, photography wasn't helping me.  In fact, as the time went on, I started to feel let down by my photography.  I wasn't satisfied with it any more.  I usually came home grumpier than when I went out which was the direct opposite of what I was used to.  I attributed it to having found the love of my life and the feelings of guilt I had from being away from her.  It made sense, and I found that I was having more fun opting to forgo a photo outing to stay home with Toni. Eventually, by the Spring of 2011, I had decided that photography wasn't providing that outlet it once had.  I was sad and depressed much more than I though I should be.  It was time to hang it up.

I sold everything photography related, in order to bankroll what was becoming a new hobby for me....cycling.  I didn't look back once I started riding my Specialized Tarmac.  I became happy again, and I became focused with life in general.  My depression was pretty much over it seemed, and I poured my efforts into training and riding.  It wasn't until the end of 2013, that I started to feel burned out from riding.  I suffered a crash, and the thought of cycling taking me away from Toni was just too much for me to handle.  The decision was made to go back to photography.  Hey, I was in a happy place, and photography was much safer than cycling.  How could I go wrong?

Take Flight

Well, in a very short amount of time something very odd happened.  I was getting ready to go to work one morning and I remember very vividly a paralyzing fear that came over me.  There was no reason for it, but I was scared to death to get dressed and go into work.  I started to tremble and sweat.  I couldn't move.  That made me even more afraid.  What was going on?  I wasn't sure, but it subsided after about 10 minutes.  I forced myself to get dressed and go into work.  Everything was fine once I got there, but I kept wondering why I had felt the way I felt.

Occasionally, from that point on, I would find myself getting very nervous about calls I would go on.  So nervous in fact that I would start to tremble while talking to people.  This was not normal, not normal at all.  In all my years of being a police officer, I had never felt like this at work, and there were plenty of times that I should have.  I turned to my photography once again to try and calm myself.  I went out more than I had been and did full day Treks, along with some special subjects close by the house.  I was creating decent pictures, but I wasn't happy with them, and just like before, I was coming home feeling defeated, and worthless.

Not long after this, I was in a training class where PTSD was discussed.  I fell in every one of those categories.  I didn't feel that my PTSD was overly serious, but I could see that it could potentially cause me problems down the road.  I was pretty sure that I was affected not only by the culmination of stressful events over a long period of time, but also the acute event of watching somebody I knew put a bullet in their head.

With a few other things going on involving negative changes to my body (I was getting fat and out of shape), Toni and I decided I should probably get back on a bike for my health and well being.  I immediately sensed a increase in my happiness at just the prospect.  When I actually got the bike, I was elated.  When I went on my first ride, I felt young again, like a kid with no problems.  I started to think that cycling was just a happier hobby for me than photography.  I was fine with that, and wanted to make it my lifestyle again.

After my crash on my fifth ride, I should have felt different about riding, and should have wanted to go back to photography as my outlet.  Strangely enough, I didn't, I wanted get back on my wheels again as soon as possible, and I left the camera in the closet while I focused on my fitness, and trying to get a replacement bike as quickly as possible.

In this time, I had plenty of time to think and evaluate the different emotions I had experienced of the last few months.  I came to realize that even though I had suffered a pretty bad crash, I was still happier having been back on the bike.  While I was waiting for the bike in the first place, I had spent nearly a month preparing for getting back into riding.  My stress levels were back down again at home and at work. I felt happier, and more confident. Cycling, as a lifestyle obviously had some pretty significant benefits to my world beyond just the physical health aspect.

I started to examine things even further.  I wanted to know why photography wasn't doing it for me any more, and why cycling was so effective.  What I have come up with so far is that they deal with two different qualities of life.  Photography opens me up to emotion and feelings, while cycling is all about moving forward, staying focused, and constantly improving yourself.  Fundamentally speaking, while behind the camera, I look for images that make me feel a certain way.  In practice, I take whatever emotion I am feeling at the time, and find pictures to help express that emotion.  Much like alcohol does to a drinker, my photography enhances whatever I am feeling at the time.  My slight depression became much stronger.  Also, I get in the habit of leaving my emotions unguarded even when the camera is put up.  I allow myself to feel deeper when I am in the practice of being a photographer.  I look for emotion everywhere I turn.  Because of where I was mentally, I would subconsciously seek out emotions that were on the sad end of the spectrum rather than happy.  I sought out the emotions I could identify with.  I am pretty sure that this is the reason that I started becoming so apprehensive about being at work.  The more I tried to offset it with photography, the worse it became, and the worse I felt about my photography.  I was stuck in a cycle of thoughts that were tearing me apart from the inside out.

On the other hand, when I am a cyclist, and riding, I am looking toward the positive as a general rule.  I am focused on self betterment through better fitness, faster and long rides, and I learn to put my safety as a paramount concern.  In short, when you are riding on the road, there is only one major thought that goes through your head without any prompting..."I want to LIVE!!!!"  Riding a bike has nothing to do with where you have been, its all about where you are going, what is ahead, and how do I get there.  This is why it is so difficult to be sad after a bike ride.  You are always so full of hope for the next mile, the next ride, or just the next hill.  You train yourself to look forward, not behind.

It is this mental retraining that cycling provided in both 2011 and now that holds the key to my happiness.  It is really twofold in a way.  I feel happier about myself because I am in control of my weight and fitness, so I feel better just to look at myself.  I also become a more positive person because I am thinking about the next ride, instead of pouring over pictures from hours before, or even days before.  Photography is all about memories....in my case, memories that I would just rather leave in the past.

Many of my memories are painful, which brings me to another metaphor for cycling.  Doing distance rides (60 miles and more), a cyclist will deal with a lot of pain from various muscles, and points of contact with the bike (we don't sit on easy chairs while riding).  Its a known quantity, and something that each of us has learned to deal with.  Pain is how you know you are pushing yourself and getting better.  With cycling, you learn to relate pain to improvement, so pain is a good thing.  My memories cause me pain, but when I look at that pain from a cyclist's perspective, I can see it as positive growth.  In a way, what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger.

Being a cyclist, makes me stronger.  I'm not just talking about physically.  It makes me stronger mentally. It keeps me sharp, and on my toes.  I hone my ability to make snap decisions which makes me more confident at work.  Life is just better on two wheels.

I admit, this was an atypical entry here, but it was something that has been weighing on me for a little while and I felt that I should put it down on paper so to speak.  There are many reasons why cyclists ride, and honestly, there are more reasons why I ride than what I have stated here.  However, I think that this really sums up why cycling fits as a lifestyle choice for me.  It's my time with me, and my time to meditate.  It fits in my introverted world, and I think ultimately makes me a better person.