Deconstruction
Reconstruction :: Image :: Hi-Line – Highway 2 – from Inside the Orange Bubble Series – Photograph – 2017
I saw a therapist for the first time in my life after I quit smoking tobacco in 1997. Thinking back, I assumed the time between quitting and visiting a therapist wasn’t very long, but after checking my records I discovered it’d been a year. I was surprised it took me so long to seek help considering everything that happened. The need to talk with someone began when my wife, daughter and I were having a quiet dinner. Our daughter was two months old, and it’d been eight months since quitting. At some point during our meal, my vision suddenly narrowed to an angry tunnel. I always thought the idea of ‘tunnel vision’ was just a metaphor. It’s not. It’s a physical thing too. I didn’t understand what was happening but from that moment forward, everything changed.
Fortunately, during her pregnancy, my wife began to read various parenting and women’s health books. One of them was Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom by Christiane Northrup, M.D. Hoping for answers, I read the section on smoking and learned for the first time what it can do to someone emotionally, even spiritually. She wrote that “smoking blocks the heart,” and wasn’t referring to blockage on a physical level. Besides nicotine, she explained that chemicals in cigarette tobacco can replace our own dopamine and serotonin over time, and when our bodies produce less of those, and the chemicals that replaced them are gone too, things can get ugly. They did get ugly and I finally had to admit I needed help.
I explained to my therapist what had been going on. He asked me all the necessary questions to determine where I was on the ‘depression’ spectrum, registered my responses, and told me that in fact I had mild depression. He thought an anti-depressant could be helpful, but since my situation wasn’t dire, he left it up to me. I’d heard about possible side effects and asked him if the drugs would dampen all my emotions and creative energy too. He said, “Yes, it can have that affect. It suppresses everything. That’s it’s job.” I thought about it for a few weeks and decided not to.
Sometime before that first appointment, I had a conversation with a man from Pennsylvania. He’d driven from Pittsburgh to the Pacific Northwest and back alone. Heading west, he found himself on Highway 2 along the Hi-Line in Eastern and Northern Montana. As the day wore on and dusk approached, he said he felt anxious and vulnerable. I added, “Yeh, when driving two-lane highways out there, huge chunks of time can pass without seeing another car, or anyone.” He was too uncomfortable, so he returned to the main interstate and stayed on it for the remainder of his trip. Out there, exposure is more than running out of gas or mechanical problems, it’s being alone.
As an aside, I relayed that story to my therapist and added my theory about tailgaters too. Either they’re having a bad day, terrible at judging relative distance in traffic, or lonely. He listened and nodded. I explained further that when unnecessary tailgating happens on a remote road in Eastern Montana, it’s simply about their fear, and loneliness— being near someone comforts them. After I told him my theory, he politely considered it and responded, “You might have something there. How does it make YOU feel when you’re alone in the middle of nowhere?” “It’s one of my favorite things.”