PTS-Me

I said it wouldn't always be pretty... Today... Yesterday... They weren't pretty.

Part of this journey I'm taking you on, a huge part, is a healing journey. I have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). It comes in many forms, from many different points of origin. In my case its from my time over seas in combat in Iraq 2003.

It rears its head at random sometimes. The last couple of days have seemed random. I've scratched my head trying to figure out why I've had intense depression and rage. We're on vacation and I've been so angry, at times to the point I don't feel safe. I don't feel I'll be able to keep my emotions in check. I've secretly been hoping to get into a fight so I could give this rage purpose.

I was at the mechanic and saw a guy staring at me for what seemed like 5 minutes. I wanted to scream at him "Can I help you?" "Is there a problem?" But I held back. PTSD can make you look for fights that aren't there. Everyone becomes the enemy to include my children and my wife. The baby cries, my 4 year old doesn't listen at times and my wife isn't perfect... How dare they be human... But, in these moments it's all I see. There humanity becomes a negative.

I've made great progress with my PTSD and so have many others, but we still have our days. They have become fewer in number, but it wasn't that long ago I had at least 3 days a week like this. Horrible way to live. Its one of the reasons the veteran suicide rate is so high. 22 a day. ABSOLUTELY HEART BREAKING. I won't be part of that number. I hope to eradicate that number.

So what to do in my state... It was getting late and there was about 30 minutes before sunset. I decided I needed to get out and run. Burn off this adrenaline that had been dumping into my system the past 2 days. I ended up running 3.84 miles at a 9 minute mile pace. Its a good pace for me at this point. In the last .5 miles I started to have a conversation with myself.

I was heading home and decided to keep a faster pace and not quit if it got tough. It got tough... Life always gets tough. Before it got tough I realized how bad a father, husband, son and friend I am when I get like this. My mantra became my wife deserves better, my daughter deserves better etc... I said it over and over. I asked myself is my body in charge or am I in charge? If my body says I'm tired, I can't do this, do I listen or do I tell it the race isn't over?

I deserve better.

I realized in that moment I deserve a better quality of life. It's not just for everybody else. Do I let the relationships in my life, as important as they may be, determine if I'm doing a good enough job or do I tell myself how I'm doing?

I deserve better because when I'm a better man I feel better and my family gets better from me as well. When I tell my body I know its tough, I know you're tired, I know you want to quit but we're not going to, I fight forward. I get stronger.

On this race there are setbacks. Our days won't always be something we want to write about or share with others. Its not a success only journey. I'm not always going to be the best family man, my event times won't always get faster but I'm not going to quit. On any of it. When set backs come I'll take a deep breath, really think about things and when I get that moment of clarity, I'll tell myself your're done quiting. If we don't quit, theres still a chance we'll get better.

Its not a success only life. We aren't perfect. We never will be. Obstacles will come... a lot. It will get difficult. We will fall short. There will be tears. There will be anger. We'll feel like we suck. But if we don't give up and we work, the bad times become the exceptions.

I have been in therapy, I have a service dog and the teachings from the trauma resiliency program, writing, Film making and now I have swimming, biking, running and a literal race to run. If we can find outlets, we can workout our demons. We can learn a lot about ourselves in those moments when it gets hard instead of giving up. Many call it the pain cave. Its a place we put ourselves on purpose in a healthy way (like exercise) where we must give it our all even when it gets hard.

Maybe your pain cave is getting out in public for a while because your afraid of crowds. Maybe its going to the fireworks wearing headphones and during the show, taking them off a listening to the booms. Maybe its picking up the phone and talking to that broken relationship you've been avoiding for years. Maybe it's telling your spouse you love them. Maybe it's planning a date. Maybe its playing with your kids. It takes effort. It takes love and dedication. But when the thing you try gets tough and you enter the pain cave will you quit? or will you address the reality of your situation and really think about it. Will you push forward?

I'm not perfect, but I'm pushing forward. It may take a day or two or longer to get back on track but I'm always working to find the trail.

What trail do you need to get back on?

Perfectionism Mixed With Impatience

Have you ever started something new, or been doing something for a long time and still felt like you were nothing? Felt you aren't good enough and never will be? So much so you get angry. Anger followed by resentment and doubt? If so, welcome to the club.

This has been a pattern of mine and over the years, it's something I've been working on. Why do I feel this way? My response to an emotion may be severe or irrational, but the emotion is trying to tell me, tell us something.

It's telling ME, comparison is the robber of joy. A good friend of mine shared that pearl with me and its become a life changing reality.

More often than not, we don't begin something and compare ourselves against the beginners. We compare ourselves to the best of the best. How do we stack up?

I start making short films and immediately compare my work to that of the greatest hollywood directors! When I do that, I don't stack up very well... I don't think I ever will and I lose the drive to try. The drive to get better.

I train for a triathlon and look up times from last years racers to see the averages. I find the average time for each event is far faster than I am currently capable of completing individually, let alone back to back! So do I quit because I most likely won't place well in the race? Who's holding me to these unrealistic standards on which my success is determined?

Me.

Why do we, or at least I, compare myself to top level industry professionals and elite athletes who have been working, improving, getting better for years?

Perfectionism mixed with impatience.

I want to be the best. Now. I don't want to work for it. I want to be great without doing the work because doing the work is hard and involves failure. It involves adversity and I just want to fly.

I can't fly and its unreasonable to think I can. I can't run an Iron Man race so it's unreasonable to compare myself to someone who can. But, it is reasonable to aspire to that end. To learn from the established and work towards a goal... Over time...

It's not always reaching the goal thats important. Sometimes its what we learn on the journey thats the real victory. Thats the real goal.

To what end do you strive?

Hills Make Me Mad

I made a huge realization today.

I was on a 2 mile run preparing for my sprint triathlon in September. For those of you who may not know, a sprint triathlon is a short distance triathlon designed for an elite athlete to be able to complete in under an hour. I have no such expectations for myself this go round! My race will be comprised of a 400 meter swim, 13.1 mile bike ride and a 3.1 mile (5K) run.

Ok... Back to the realization... So I'm training and hills make me mad. I see a hill and I'm mad that God didn't make the world flat... In my frustration I realized I was running down a hill consumed with dread for the next hill that was fast approaching. I wasn't even enjoying the decline! I didn't notice I was given a chance to catch my breath to ready myself for the next hill!

I think we do that a lot in life. We have a lot of crazy. Maybe its family, work or any number of other things, but we find ourselves in a grind, another season of busy. In those seasons we may find the hill impossibly long and steep. Sometimes the hill requires us to slow down and walk! But every hill has a decline.

I wonder if you're like me and realize once the top has been reached and you've survived it, you forget to rest. You forget to catch your breath on the way down because another hill is coming once you reach the bottom.

I finish a film project and am still not present with my family because my mind is already worrying about and fixating on my next project, the next climb.

There will always be a hill to climb. God didn't make our lives or this world flat. Because of it, we will always need to push ourselves up the hill. But, its vital we remember to catch our breath once the hill has been climbed.

On the way down the hill, I had already decided I would fail because the next hill was too long and to steep.

I enter into project already confident I'll fail because the project is bigger than me.

In this moment, I remember, I'm running down the hill and if I failed to appreciate that, the next hill would break me. If I enter into the project resigned to failure, I will be miserable, do sub-standard work and maybe, just maybe, be ok.

But, if I rest in the downtime and climb the hill knowing it won't last forever, I can finish strong and be stronger for the next hill.

Success isn't how fast you climbed. It's that you climbed and you're not afraid to do it again. It's not finishing the climb and hiding so you don't have to try it again. It's celebrating the success knowing you GET to go out and try again!

What hills are you afraid to climb?

Try to Fail

I think it happens pretty quickly. You go from inactive to active and realize, oye, I've really let myself go! For me, it's the biggest hurdle to "trying". When my mile time has risen from 6 minutes and 30 seconds to 9 minutes and 10 seconds, I get a wee bit discouraged. I tell myself things like, "Whats the point? You'll never get back to the way you were so don't try. Just quit." It's a horrible, common stream of logic.

I think in part, it's a problem with the connotation of success, failure and try. For me, I operate on a continuum of success and failure. I try and either succeed or fail. When I fail, I usually quit. But can't success simply be defined as trying? For a long time I've viewed the word "try" as timid. It leaves room for the failure and is surprised by the success. But in trying haven't you already succeeded?

Trying is getting up and running even though you may finish the run in a walk. Trying is playing with your kids even though they look at you like you're crazy because, "This is weird, daddy never plays with us." and though its awkward, you play, you stick with it and do it again tomorrow. Trying is succeeding in putting forth the effort to start and without a start there can be no success or failure. So lets embrace the "try". Lets celebrate the failure as much as the success! Lets celebrate the failure because we tried and failure isn't permanent unless we never try again.

There was a sentence painted on the wall of my high school weight room. It read "try to fail". In its context, it referred to lifting weights and trying to reach muscle failure during a strength training workout. Now, I see it as much more than that. What if we lived our lives trying so hard we forced ourselves out of our comfort zone and into the unknown. Into the unknown where failure lives. What if when failure comes, we learn from it and try again strengthened by the failure?

I'm not going to finish my race come race day if I don't fail now. I'm not going to fail now unless I try. If we don't try we stay ok. When we stay ok we don't get stronger... We stay ok...

So lets "try to fail" so we can get stronger, so we can be better, so we can thrive.

Will you try with me?

I'm OK

There was a point in time when I was in great shape. I was a soldier so out of necessity, my body was conditioned as such. So what happened? How did I get here? A 31 year old couch sitter. It's simple. I stopped trying.

You see I left the military and entered a world of self-medication. I drank too much in an effort to numb my feelings and used cocaine to feel something. I ate out, never cooked in and when I was motivated to eat healthy (after an all night bender) I'd walk to Subway. Nothing says healthy like cheese, pepperoni, salami, ham and a bag of chips!

Fast forward about 5 years and two drug influenced hospital stays and I was finally clean, mostly sober and 35 lbs heavier (about 195 lbs). The only exercise I was getting was running to the oven to save the pizza I was burning and climbing the stairs to my bedroom. I wasn't winning at life, but I was getting better.

Over the next 6 years my weight and energy level would fluctuate. I would get married, have two beautiful baby girls and receive a service dog for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) through This Able Veteran So what now? Why am I writing this? Why share this brief summary of my post military life? It's because I'm ok.

I'm ok and the world convinced me ok was..... well... ok! I've come to realize I'm an ok husband an ok father and my health is ok. I've come to realize ok doesn't take work. Ok is existing. A farmers field with an ok yield produces just enough to get by. Ok is simply surviving. But God didn't make us to survive, He made us to thrive!

Ok marriages end. I don't want my marriage to end... ever. Ok health lacks energy and I want to run and play with my kids and when I do it I don't want to feel like my knees will explode or I'm going to somehow hurt myself!

This is my line in the sand. This is my declaration. This is me stepping into the arena, onto the battlefield and beginning to fight. I'm fighting for my family, for my health and for a future thats more than ok. Will you join me on this adventure?

I've chosen to start a training program to race in my first triathlon. The physical demands make me feel like a soldier again, but thats another blog topic! This blog, "Tri The Race", will chronicle my efforts, successes, failures and realizations had along the way. Warning: It's not always going to be pretty, but if you stick with me, I think together we can do something special. So I ask again, will you join me?