Tax on life.

Photo by: Tim Bindner Photography

Today is the first day of summer. For 99 percent of the people, this is a time that they most love and enjoy. For me, it starts four months of not only being uncomfortable but in some cases being in pain.   I am sensitive to the sun and the heat.  The reactions are painful to me.  As I prepare for the next few months and think about the potential displeasure that I may go through because of the heat and I have to get my mind right and focus on the things that I enjoy.  I recently lost the ability to go hiking due to a tick disease so I must focus my mind on other things that help me get through my daily life.

When faced with adversity or negative situations, how those instances affect me and how I interpret them is the path that controls my life.  Those negative situations and people for that matter are what I think of as a tax.  The tax I pay in life.  If it is something I can overcome and learn from, then the better off I will be.  I struggle with trying not to let the negativity control me.   As mentioned in an earlier blog I have been treated for a tick disease and consequently, this has caused me to no longer risk hiking in the warmer months.   Hiking is my number one outlet for my mental relief and stability, and it has been taken from me.  My energies will now turn more to my photography, listening to my music and this blog to get me through these few months.

I am seeing a lot of suicide prevention posts on Facebook and in the media these days. I like most people, have bouts of depression, anxiety, and stress. It would be a lie if I said that I never thought about suicide but they were always fleeting thoughts and much more prevalent in my teenage years. It is nothing I would ever act upon as I have too much to live for. I have done some research recently on depression and also post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The more I research these two the more I think I do suffer from a form of PTSD. PTSD is normally associated with the military, police officers, firefighters, or people that are put in high-stress situations, but I think it can apply to almost anyone depending on the trauma they have endured. I think my trauma comes from witnessing death.

At an early age, I was introduced to death by losing both grandmas, my grandfather on my mother’s side, and then eventually my other grandfather. I also lost a couple of uncles during this period, all within a few short years. As a child, I spent many months at the funeral home because of this. It was my early introduction to death, and as a young child I didn’t understand it but I feel it hit me later in life. I lost a locker buddy in high school due to a car wreck. In my twenties, I worked in various nursing homes and I witnessed patients die regularly. These were patients that I got to know quite well.   One day they were there the next day they were not. I also spent some time working in the emergency room of a hospital which was also a haven for trauma and death almost daily. These deaths were particularly hard to witness due to the nature of the situations.  Overdoses, gun-shots, stabbings, heart-attacks, cancer, car-wrecks, broken necks, etc.  The tipping point for me was when my father died of cancer in 2007 and my cousin died two years later of cancer as well. Even when Prince and Chester Bennington died it impacted me more than I expected.  Grief is part of death and it affects people differently.  There are no timelines for these things but I think with the recent death of my cousin and father and my mother breaking her neck in two places a few years back, that is when it finally hit me. All the feelings I buried, finally were released and caused the trauma that I think I am going through now. As a young man, I was not able to process this correctly and for the most part it just kind of rolled off my back. I think as I get older and contemplate my mortality these things cut deeper and deeper into my soul. If there’s a tax to pay here it is huge and I honestly don’t know how I could turn these types of things into a teaching or learning moment. Logically I know everyone and everything is going to die at some point but I wonder if this is part of the reason why I have trouble opening up to people. I feel like if I give part of myself to someone and they die than part of me dies as well.

Symptoms of PTSD include agitation, irritability, hostility, self-destructive behavior, and social isolation many of which I have. Psychologically, people with PTSD have flashbacks, fear, severe anxiety, and mistrust. I experience three of the four of these regularly. The mood of somebody with PTSD also includes loss of interest in pleasurable activities, guilt, or loneliness. The Sleep Disorders involved with PTSD are insomnia or nightmares.  I experience a nightmare quite often. The final piece of this is emotional detachment or unwanted thoughts.  Again I know a psychiatrist or psychologist but from what I’ve read I can check off a lot of these in my normal life, and things that have been more prevalent in the past 10 years. I don’t have any self-destructive behavior, nor flashbacks of any sort, but in most cases, I experienced many of the other symptoms regularly.

One of my coping mechanisms is to be withdrawn. This is most prevalent when it comes to my family. As a child growing up, my family was extremely close. We spent most holidays together, hung out with each other, and spend a lot of time together.  Early in my childhood, there was a riff in my family (no-one knows what happened) that began to drive everyone apart between my uncle and my grandfather. At that point, the family started to split apart, do their own thing and then eventually, over time, people started dying off.  I used this situation to also begin distancing myself from my family members. When my father passed, I coped by distancing myself from my family almost completely. As cousins, aunts, and uncles died, the distance I had created lessened the blow of their deaths on me.  I think deep down inside it’s the fact that I know members of my immediate family will be gone soon, and by distancing myself and not being close to them, the pain of their eventual death might not be as severe on me.  As it was with my cousin and father.  It is my way to cope.  May not be right, but it is how I am dealing with it.

So where do I go from here? I will continue to utilize my outlets of photography, listening to music, and writing this blog until I can get back on the trails, as a way to quiet the demons in my head. I am working towards trusting people a little more and opening up to a select group of people little more, but still with a lot of reservations about who I do that with.

I have paid my life tax for all the death I have seen. I need to move on and let it go. To open up, trust people, and focus on the good things that I have in my life. I have a gorgeous wife, a wonderful son, and a few friends that love me. Those are the things that matter in life.  This will not be an easy journey for me but I know I have the support and love of my few friends, wife, and son to get me through this. From this day forward I’m going to focus on the sun rises and not the sun sets, in life.

Until next time,

Tim