Stop Fussing Over That Belichick Kiss

I’ve said it before: My interest in football is minimal, though my attention perks up a bit when my hometown New England Patriots play the Super Bowl. My focus usually turns to how people behave in the heat of the moment. Whether their team wins or loses, people latch on to the supremely stupid after the big game.

Mood music:

Sometimes Patriots fans are the worst. After the team lost the Super Bowl a couple years ago, people started picking on quarterback Tom Brady’s wife, supermodel Gisele Bündchen. It happened again last year, after the Pats lost in the playoffs. The suggestion is always that she’s somehow turned Brady into a sissy. Fortunately, from what I can tell, the Pats fans who do this are a small minority.

This time, the most glaring acts of stupidity are in the media. Case in point: the reaction to Patriots coach Bill Belichick getting a smooch from his daughter. News sites went wild about the “unusual” kiss.

Bill Belichick Kisses Daughter After Winning Super Bowl
Photo by Matt Slocum/AP Photo

TotalProSports.com expressed its horror this way:

After winning Super Bowl 49, passions were running high, and the Patriots coach kissed like no one was watching. Only there were a ton of people watching because it was the Super Bowl. And the person he kissed was his daughter, Amanda. But there was SO MUCH passion in that kiss.

The Stir even brought in a family physician to asses the situation. The reaction of Dr. Deborah Gilboa:

I think this is a reach for scandal … Being able to show affection between adult parents and their adult kids is lovely, and it’s great if Bill Belichick has such a positive relationship with his daughter.

Nothing to see here, right? But Stir writer Jenny Erikson couldn’t let it go:

OK … in theory maybe it’s a good idea that parents and their adult children are so close that they kiss on the mouth … but I just can’t see it. I have a very close relationship with my own dad, and kiss him on the cheek almost every time we greet and say goodbye, but on the lips? Never. Not even a little bit. It kind of makes me uncomfortable even writing this paragraph.

She’s entitled to that opinion, of course. I even share her preference for planting parental kisses on the cheek. But she’s making something out of nothing like the others who were scandalized by this.

This father-daughter kiss was no big deal. Parents and adult kids kiss each other on the lips all the time. I don’t see any tongue jamming in that photo. Do you? That would have been a different story altogether.

Tom Brady and his mom also kissed on the lips after the win, but no one is making a big deal out of that. Nor should they.

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David J. Phillip/AP

 

Give it a rest, folks.

Anatomy of an Identity Crisis

When a sibling’s death turns the baby of the family into the oldest son, you get an identity crisis filled with anger and confusion.

Mood music:

I’ve written at length about my brother Michael, who died of an asthma attack when I was 13. That experience will test any kid, and I was no exception. The loss infused a deep reservoir of fear and anxiety in me that would bubble up many times over the years.

But something else happened that would make me feel strange and alone for a long time.

I started my life as the youngest of three kids, the proverbial baby of the family. Michael was the oldest, and in the Brenner family much has always been expected of the oldest son.

My father was the middle child of his generation, but he was the only son. My grandfather, who came off a boat from the former Soviet Union with all the typical old-school values, expected the world of my father. As my grandfather descended into old age and illness in the mid-1960s, my father became increasingly responsible for the family business.

Growing up, my older brother became the one my father leaned on the most. Michael was encouraged to chart his own course and was studying to be a plumber, but he was also expected to help out with the family business and do a lot of the grunt work at home.

I was the baby, and a sick and spoiled one at that. By age eight I was in and out of the hospital with dangerous flare-ups of Crohn’s Disease. Because of that, I was coddled a lot.

The result was a lower-than-average maturity level for my age. At age 10 I acted like I was 5 sometimes. I would crawl into bed with my father for snuggles, like a toddler might do.

My maturity level hadn’t changed much by the time I hit 13. I probably regressed even further right after my brother died. But as 1984 dragged on, I was slowly pulled into the role of oldest son.

Everything that was expected of my brother became expected of me, and I wasn’t mentally equipped to deal with it. My brother had a lot of street smarts that I lacked.

As I descended into my confusing and angry teen years, I would be sent on deliveries for the family business. I’d get flustered and lose my sense of direction. One time my father sent me to Chelsea for a package. It was 4:30 and the place I was going to was closing at 5. I got there at 5:10 and had to drive back to Saugus without a package. I felt humiliated and ashamed.

As I entered my 20s, all that immaturity and feeling of inadequacy hardened into an angry, rebellious streak. I gave in to a variety of addictive impulses.

As I got older and worked on myself, the confusion and anger gave way to gratitude. The hard lessons of going from youngest child to oldest son have served me well.

I now have a lot of responsibilities with work and family, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. For all the rebelling, my experiences gave me a strong work ethic. But like my maturity, it just took longer to emerge.

Holding My Dead Innocence by EddieTheYeti

Holding My Dead Innocence” by EddieTheYeti. Read more of my ongoing series with EddieTheYeti.

The Imperfect Art of Coming Out

As new readers find this blog, they often ask the question I’ve heard many times before: Why the hell did I out myself? Wasn’t I afraid people would blackball me at work? Don’t I worry that I’ll be defined by my struggle with OCD above all else?

It’s a fair question.

Mood music:

First, let’s get the notions of courage and bravery off the table. Some have used those words to describe what I’m doing, and I appreciate that. But I really don’t think it’s that. Like I’ve said before, my grandfather parachuting behind enemy lines at the start of the D-Day invasion was courage.

I’m  doing this more because the point arrived where, for the sake of my own sanity, I had to start being myself as openly and honestly as I can. Honesty can be tough for people who deal with mental illness and addiction. But I decided I had to do better.

Read more on this in “The Liar’s Disease.”

Admittedly, some of the motivation is selfish. We OCD types have overdeveloped egos and tend to go digging for attention. It’s hard to admit that, but it’s the truth. Being open about that forces me to keep myself in check. It’s also an invitation for those around me to call me out on acts of ego and selfishness.

The biggest reason for doing this, without question, is my faith. I realized some time ago that when you toss the skeletons from your closet into the daylight, they turn to dust. Big, sinister stigmas become very small indeed. Then you can move on.

I didn’t arrive at this viewpoint easily. It took years of dirty work.

With my faith comes a need to serve others. In this case, I accumulated experiences that might be of help to other sufferers. Sharing wasn’t exactly something I wanted to do; it was something I had to do.

We’re all in this together. Many good people have helped me along the way. Trying to help someone else is the very least I could do. In the final analysis, we all help each other.

Getting it all out of the head and into this blog has certainly been helpful, so thanks for indulging me.

Did I risk my career to do this? I don’t think so.

That said, I don’t think I’d be doing this if I still worked for The Eagle-Tribune. The newroom’s culture wouldn’t have allowed for it. I have no idea if the culture has changed, but I suspect not.

I’ve gotten a ton of support from those I work with. That was true when I started this five years ago, during another job, and it’s true today, in my current job.

Does that mean everyone should put their demons out in the open as I have?

It’s not going to be the right decision for everyone to make. There are a lot of honorable reasons for people to keep their demons private. In many cases, the veil is what you use to protect others as well as yourself. But my veil blew away in the storm that was my life. Walking forward without it was all I could do.

As the line in Mötley Crüe’s “Home Sweet Home” goes, “My life is an open book, for the whole world to read.”

For my own development as a human being, I think it’s best that way.

Close to My Heart by EddieTheYetiClose to My Heart” by EddieTheYeti. Read more of my ongoing series with EddieTheYeti.

Heavy Metal Saved Me

I am your main man, if you’re looking for trouble. I’ll take no lip, no one’s tougher than me. I kicked your face you’d soon be seeing double. Hey little girl, keep your hands off of me…I’m a rocker.

“The Rocker,” by Thin Lizzy

A lot of people are amused to learn about my musical tastes. My work space at home and the office is cluttered with political and history-based trinkets, which would leave one to believe I listened to country or folk or maybe even some 1970s rock.

Heavy Metal music? It just doesn’t fit my image.

And yet, some 30 years ago, that music saved my life. And to this day, I listen to it faithfully. In fact, it’s become one of the main tools of my recovery from a life of mental disorder.

Let’s start from the beginning.

1984

This is the year my older brother died. But even without that, life was pretty miserable. I wasn’t exactly popular in school. I was overweight and the subject of ridicule. Emotions were understandably raw at home.

But that was also the year I began listening to heavy metal music.

It allowed me to escape the pain around me. The aggressiveness of the music gave me an outlet to process all the rage I was feeling. Without it, drugs and violence toward others might have been next.

My closest friend at the time, who lived two doors down, got me into the music — introducing me to the likes of Motley Crue and Thin Lizzy. When that friend died 12 years later, the music would again help me process my rage and keep me steady.

I’d be angry, hurt or scared, and I needed something to absorb my aggression. Heavy metal was the punching bag.

One of my favorite songs in 1984 was “Knock ‘Em Dead Kid” from Motley Crue’s “Shout At The Devil” album. The lyrics go something like this:

Heard a star-spangled fight/A steel-belted scream

Now I’m black/I’m black/I’m black

Another sidewalk’s bloody dream

I heard the sirens wine/My blood turned to freeze

You’ll see the red in my eyes/as you take my disease

For me, it was excellent therapy.

Around 2003, as I was going through a rough patch at work (my own shortcomings at the time more than anything else), that therapy took the form of Metallica’s “St. Anger” album. The album itself is far from their best, but the opening song, “Frantic,” tore a path straight into my soul.

The song came out a year before I started to come to grips with the OCD, and the guy in the video WAS me. The lyrics were me. I was frantic. I just didn’t realize it at that point.

Today, I listen to the music more for simple enjoyment than as an anger-management device. The anger went away some time ago.

The nostalgia is a big attraction for me, too. It takes me back to a time when I was in pieces; to a time when the music literally saved me. It has become something of a security blanket.

A lot of it makes me laugh as well — no small thing when you’re struggling not to take life too seriously.

How can you not find a live Motley Crue clip funny? Vince Neil sings every fifth word of most songs live. It’s amusing to watch.

The spikes-and-leather dress code make me laugh, too.

It reminds me not to take myself too seriously. And once I’m brought down to Earth like that, sanity prevails.