The Only Way Out Of The Fog Is Through It

We all go through it: Something upsets us so much that we go into a fog; unable to function when we’re still required to do so. It rises up like a brick wall.

Mood music:

We smash into it a few too many times and go through the rest of the day dazed and confused. It’s a natural reaction to life’s more stressful and traumatic moments.

If a loved one is sick or dead, or you get into a huge fight with your spouse, or you just discover you’ve been robbed, the feeling hits you.

But what do you do when that feeling clings to you every day like a wet, filthy rag?

I’ve been there many times. It used to cripple me every day. It’s no longer a daily thing, but it still gets me on occasion.

Monday was one of those days; let’s just say it was driven by guilt.

But here’s the difference between now and the old days:

It didn’t incapacitate me and leave me lying half dead on the couch like it used to. I didn’t check out of the hotel of reality. I may have wanted to, but I didn’t.

I felt every bad feeling and it did stick in my brain all day like a splinter. But somehow, I was able to make it through the day. I got my work done, I got chores done and I was even able to focus on the not-always-easy task of helping Duncan do his homework.

I can point to a lot of things that make the difference today:

—Medication to control my OCD, ADD and the depression that comes with it;

–Regular visits to the therapist to get things off my chest; and

–An eating program devoid of flour and sugar. When I’m not sinking under the weight of a food binge, my thinking is clearer.

I don’t think it’s possible to avoid the fog altogether. Life is too unpredictable and dramatic for that. Sometimes the stresses get the better of you and you lose sight of everything around you. It’s a very shitty place to be.

But there is a positive in this: If you never felt the fog, it would mean you didn’t care about anything or anyone.

You would see clearly and keep walking, but the destination would always be some selfish pursuit.

Some of this may sound a bit hyperbolic. I use some fancy language along the way to explain it.

But that’s how my brain rolls this morning.

“Heartsign,” by EddieTheYeti

December 28, 2014

The Sister Who Saved Her Family

My youngest sister, Shira Beth Brenner, was born 29 years ago today, sending rays of sunshine into a house that was in darkness.

You might think it’s hyperbole for me to say she saved the family. We were surviving, after all. But we were surviving badly, reeling from the death of my brother barely two years before.

Shira helped us smile again.

Mood music:

I was a bitter 15-year-old home sick with the flu and a Crohn’s flare up the day she arrived. She was an especially adorable baby and was a welcome distraction from everything that was going on at the time.

She’s quite a kid. If not for the big chip on my shoulder, I might have been more like her in my 20s. I’m happy with how my life turned out and believe I had to go through the dark stuff to get here. But Shira has really been an inspiration to me. She crisscrosses the globe without fear and has an easygoing way about her that’s nearly impossible to crack. I know, because I’ve tried.

I’ve always been the teasing sort of brother. I tell everyone who will listen that I remember when I could fit Shira in a beer mug. I remember once, when she was about 4 or 5, she told me to stop teasing.

“I can’t help it,” I said. “I tease you cause I love you.”

“Then don’t love me,” she shot back.

I told everyone about that exchange, and with more than a little glee.

Around the same time, I was having a lot of parties in the basement of the Revere house. The morning after, Shira would often make the rounds, stopping at the various friends who would be passed out asleep on my bed, on the couch or on the floor.

Even back then, no matter how much I drank the night before, I would always wake up early so I could sneak cigarettes without being seen.

I’d always enjoyed watching her make the rounds. My guests didn’t always enjoy it, but that was fine with me.

In more recent years, as she traveled and I got absorbed with work, marriage and parenthood, we didn’t see much of each other, save for some holidays and a couple birthday dinners.

But I’ve seen a lot more of her this year in the last three years, as my father’s ailments forced us all closer together.

At one point soon after a series of strokes, we siblings worked in shifts, helping to keep Dad out of trouble. He may have trouble seeing, swallowing and walking, but he still likes to keep everyone busy. Shira usually got the task of sleeping over on Saturday nights. She never complains and always smiles.

I’ve heard it said that a kid like her lives life on a rainbow, always in a zen-like state despite all the hard reality around her.

In Shira’s case I think that’s true. And it’s something we can all learn from. She’s not oblivious to the reality around her. She just handles it with a lot more grace than the rest of us.

You could say she’s doing for the family today what she did the day she was born — giving the family color and light at a time when we need it most.

Happy Birthday, kid.

November 22, 2014

The Lost Generation of Revere, Mass.

An old friend from the Point of Pines, Revere, sent me a note some time ago. He came across my post on Zane Mead and another on the Bridge Rats gang. For him, they brought up more memories of kids from the neighborhood who died young.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/jX-yuZFVm34

I’ll keep his name and certain details out to protect his privacy, but here’s some of what he wrote to me:

I came across your piece in your OCD Diaries about Zane Mead. It stirred up some old memories of growing up. I was actually friends with Zane until I left for the military in 1985. He was a sweet kid with a good heart most of the time. Occasionally he would be angry and self destructive. This was usually followed by an attempted suicide.

I had many talks with him about it. he never would say what was eating at him. Not sure why but I don’t think it was an issue at home. I feel like it was a personal daemon. As you stated, our life’s experiences at the time didn’t give us the ability to see the problem no less the wisdom to offer any real help. I often wonder if there was something more I could have done.

It seemed that I lost a lot of friends over the five years I was gone.

We lost your brother, Scott James, Mike McDonald. Kenny Page. It’s like we lost a generation. For years I thought I was a under achiever in my life. The more time moves on I think we may be lucky for just getting out of the city. Revere was just eating people up back then. Probably still is.

I also read you piece on bullies where you mention the Bridge Rats. I’m sincerely sorry for any part I may have caused in your distress.

Thanks for the memories. Good, Bad and Ugly. I guess they make us who we are.

Indeed they do, my friend.

I had forgotten about Mike McDonald and Kenny Page. As a teen I was so self-absorbed over my brother’s death that I didn’t realize how much loss our generation was suffering. After reading my friend’s note, I thought hard about his points about Revere eating people up. Was there some kind of curse hanging over the city in the 1980s? Were all my adolescent traumas part of that curse? Was my brother’s death and Sean Marley’s death part of it?

If you asked me that about six years ago, I’d have bought the theory straight away. Today I tend to doubt it.

It was a sad and unfortunate period, but it wasn’t a curse. We all had our share of childhood happiness in Revere in between the bad stuff. And I know now what I didn’t get back then: That we weren’t meant to live soft lives devoid of pain and struggle. These things are tossed in our path to mold us into what we can only hope to be: good people. It doesn’t always work out that way, of course. But let’s face it: Has life ever been fair?

As for the Bridge Rats, my memories are fond ones.

The last post I wrote about this gang suggested they were a band of bullies. But if you read all the way through the post, you’ll see some nostalgic warmth in my memories. As I’ve said many times, I was a punk like everyone else. I got picked on, but I did my share of picking on other people. For the most part, the Bridge Rats were a collection of pretty good kids. Some grew into happy, productive lives. Some didn’t.

That’s life.

I recently wrote about the time the Brenners nearly left Revere. There’s no question that for a time, I hated that city and would have done anything to get out.

But I stayed, and good things happened in the years that followed. A lot of good things. Precious, joyful things. I look at my kid sister Shira and the amazing, beautiful woman she is today. Would she have been that way if not for the Revere in her? Perhaps. But living there certainly didn’t damage her.

I’ve said before that Revere is where I survived and my current city of Haverhill is where I healed. That was and still is the truth.

But make no mistake about it: Revere helped make me who I am today.

And I’ll admit it: I like who I am today.

November 12, 2014

40 Years Ago in Amityville

Some of you have seen the “Amityville Horror” and instantly think of it as the story of a haunted house. I never believed it, but I’ve always been drawn to the murders that started the whole thing off.

This week marks the 40th anniversary of the murders, in which Ronald “Butch” DeFeo was convicted of killing his parents, two brothers and two sisters. I’ve always had an interest in it because at its bare core, this is the story of a family so dysfunctional it couldn’t survive.

Filmmaker Ryan Katzenbach is about to release the final installment of his film series about the murders, with a huge focus being on the DeFeo family itself: Who each of them were, what they aspired to and what tore them apart.

Ryan released a video earlier in his project, paying respect to the family that bears sharing here:

Coming from a family with more than a little dysfunction, I always find myself grateful after thinking about this story. Family members will yell at each other, hit each other and stop talking to each other, but in most cases nobody gets shot over it. That’s something to be thankful for.

As for the DeFeo family, below is something I wrote about the case in 2010.

The Amityville Obsession

Posted on September 28, 2010

Part of my obsessive-compulsive behavior includes a study of the more morbid pieces of history. The Manson murders is one example. The Amityville murders is another. Lately, I’ve been obsessed with the latter.

The match for the fire is a book I just read called “The Night The DeFeos Died” by Ric Osuna. The book goes a long way in crushing the bullshit hoax about the house being haunted. I watched “The Amityville Horror” as a kid and it scared the hell out of me. I’ve had an interest ever since. This book gets into the train wreck that was the DeFeo family. They were outwardly religious and close-knit. But the father was a rage-a-holic who apparently yelled a lot and beat his wife and kids, especially his oldest son Butch, who is now rotting in jail for the murders.

The book also reveals that the DeFeo family had mob connections. The toxic mix of dysfunction reached its climax Nov. 13, 1974. After a night of chaos in the house, Butch and his sister Dawn plotted to kill the abusive father and a mother they felt was an enabler.

Somewhere in the chaos, the story goes, Dawn killed their younger siblings. This apparently outraged Butch, who then blew her head off in anger. Investigators later found powder burns on Dawn’s nightgown, suggesting that she had indeed fired a rifle.

The only one who knows the real truth is Butch. But he has proven himself to be a serial liar, so the truth will remain in his head. My impression is that he got an unfair trial and that investigators covered up a lot of things in order to have a slam-dunk case. That’s certainly an argument Osuna makes in the book.

So why the obsession with this story? There are a few things worth noting:

–I don’t romanticize this stuff. The interest isn’t because of the brutal nature of the murders. I’ve seen the crime scene forensic photos for the DeFeo and Manson murders, and they made me sick to my stomach.

–It’s really part of my fascination with history.

Like it or not, this stuff is part of American history. The Manson story is a snapshot of everything that went wrong in the 1960s, where a counterculture born of good intentions — a craving for peace in Vietnam and at home — lost it’s way because there were no rules, no discipline and there was no sobriety. I agree with those who believe the promise of the 1960s died abruptly in the summer of 1969. I’m also fascinated because it shows how easily seemingly stable people can be brainwashed and controlled to the point where they would willingly heed orders to commit the worst of sins.

–The Amityville story is a case study of what happens when the head of a household abuses the rest of the family. Slap a kid around often enough and you just might turn him into the type of man who shoots heroin and plots the murder of some or all of his family.

It’s the whole cause-and-effect thing that keeps my obsession going.

My own experiences have given me an obsession with the key moments in a person’s life that determine if that person will turn to evil or come out of the adversity stronger and better.

I’m lucky because I’m a case study in the latter category. But I can’t help but feel bad for those who go the wrong way.

Some of the twists and turns are so random.

In the case of the Amityville murders, I don’t believe for a second that the house is haunted. Several families have lived there happily over the last 30 years. Sure, a couple of the future residents had bad things happen to them. But bad things happen to everyone.

You don’t need a haunted house to give your life ups and downs.

Sometimes, all it takes are the ghosts in your head.

Addendum, Nov. 14, 2011:

I recently came across photos of what the house looks like now. It really is a beautiful place. More recent owners have put a lot of work into the house, and it’s bright and cheerful decor almost make you forget what happened there.

August 23, 2014

“Crazy Mike” Lives

A couple years ago I wrote some posts criticizing fellow Haverhill residents for making fun of a mentally ill man — Crazy Mike, as he is unfortunately known.

Some jerks created a Facebook page dedicated to making fun of the man, whose real name is Michael Nicoloro, which was taken down after a wave of complaints.

Mood Music:

There’s been a lot of debate and speculation regarding Mike’s mental state and how he got that way, some saying it was from his experiences while serving in Vietnam. Others claimed that he’s not in fact a veteran and that he simply chooses to live the way he does.

Most recently, many have speculated that Mike had died.

I knew something was up when traffic for my posts about him shot through the ceiling.

I got in touch with members of his family, and his apparent death was news to them.

Despite any official obituary or other confirmation, the rumors persisted.

With that came more comments to my personal email about how I was an asshole for defending him and buying into the so-called lie that he was a veteran mentally scarred by what he saw.

Whether or not he’s a veteran is beside the point, but more on that in a second.

A trusted source told me he saw Mike this week in Central Square. He’s perfectly alive, so the death rumors can stop now.

My source believes Mike was off getting a 90-day evaluation. Whether that’s true or what for I don’t know.

Now, back to all the trash talk about his military status:

His relatives have confirmed that he was in Vietnam and that he came back with the scars of war. I’m more inclined to believe his relatives.

But as I said, it’s beside the point.

He’s mentally ill. Regardless of how he got that way, people have to be jerks to make fun of him.

We all have some baggage weighing down our souls. But instead of addressing our own issues, we judge other people.

Can an encounter with Mike be unsettling? Sure. Should he be kept off the streets? Not unless he has broken the law or hurt someone. I know of no evidence that he’s done that.

I do know for a fact that people have gone out of their way to bully him and set him off.

I’m glad he lives, and I wish him peace.

Now leave him alone.

July 17, 2014

Bad Customer Service Is a Mental Health Threat

There’s a reason the recorded call with a belligerent Comcast employee went viral. It wasn’t for sheer entertainment value, though some will undoubtedly find it amusing.

It’s because practically every Comcast customer has suffered one of those dreadful service calls. For Erin and me, the last such experience was a couple weeks ago, when we called for repairs to our Internet service.

Mood music:

In the case making news, a customer service rep gave one couple hell because they wanted to drop their cable service. The rep belligerently asks the same questions over and over again, trying to wear down the couple in hopes that they’ll give up and stick with their service.

In our case, we called for the simple reason that our Internet was down (it turned out to be a fried modem). During the course of the conversation, the rep tried getting us to repurchase the cable we dropped a couple years ago. Erin had to say no more than once. We’re already a customer for Internet service, and the rep’s job is to help us with our existing service. She shouldn’t have been trying to sell us something on a tech support call.

We have thick skin and can repel the pressure well enough. But it’s still a stressful experience.

Picture someone who suffers from anxiety, depression and other mental maladies. A call like that isn’t merely stressful and annoying, it’s traumatic.

I know because it was hell for me in the years before I got my fear and anxiety under control.

Back then, I would be terrified every time I had to call a customer service rep for anything. The prospect of being put on hold for 20 minutes or more was a killer. When the service rep who eventually answered would start pushing the importance of buying additional services, my mind would melt. When you can’t control your emotions, you can’t tell when someone’s urgency is truly warranted. Sometimes I caved into purchases we didn’t need, just to shut the person up.

I know a lot of people who are customer service reps for a variety of companies. They care deeply about the customers and do everything to serve them well.

But without a doubt, some reps are predators. They prey on the weak and are a threat to the mental well-being of some of their customers.

I’m glad this particular rep from Comcast aimed at the wrong couple and got exposed.

Van with Comcast Sux on it

July 15, 2014

Carter Center Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism

People love to pick on the presidency of Jimmy Carter. To be sure, there’s much to criticize. But Carter has done awesome deeds since leaving Washington 33 years ago.

One such deed: working to break the stigma around mental illness.

Mood music:

Being a journalist, I know how important it is for skilled writers to lift the veil off the scourge so the masses can understand. I never tackled such a beat as a reporter, but in my own subject areas I know how far training can go in helping the writer understand the stories in front of them. One of the cool things about the Carter Center’s effort is that training journalists is a program centerpiece.

To that end, the Carter Center has announced the recipients of the 2014-2015 Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism.

Carter Center fellows receive intensive training from leading mental health and journalism experts and a $10,000 stipend (or a comparable amount for international fellows) to report on a mental health topic of their choice. As the Carter Center noted in its press release:

Previous fellows have produced more than 1,300 mental health-related stories, documentaries, books, and other works during and after their fellowship year. Their projects have garnered multiple Emmy awards, nominations for the Pulitzer Prize, a Peabody Award, an Edward R. Murrow award, and awards from Mental Health America, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the American Psychological Association, American Psychoanalytic Association, Amnesty International, and the Association of Health Care Journalists.

Congratulations are in order for this year’s fellows:

U.S. Recipients

Katti Gray, independent journalist, Monticello, N.Y.
Topic: Examine special courts that keep veterans with mental illness out from behind prison bars as well as explore innovations for managing those who end up on lockdown.

Matthew Herper,senior editor, Forbes, New York, N.Y.
Topic: Explore what has caused the rise in diagnoses for ADHD and what has shaped the treatment of it.

Nadia Kounang, producer, Medical, Health, and Wellness Unit, CNN, Atlanta, Ga.
Topic: Investigate mental health issues and incarceration in a long-form television project.

Mary Annette Pember, independent journalist, Cincinnati, Ohio
Topic: Research the influence of intergenerational historical trauma on mental health in Native American communities in a series “Last Orphans at Holy Cross.”

Megan Thompson, producer and correspondent, PBS NewsHour Weekend, PBS, New York, N.Y.
Topic: Explore the connections between mental health and poverty, especially among children.

Misty Rae Williams, reporter, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Atlanta, Ga.
Topic: Report on the challenges facing Georgia’s mental health system as it approaches the end of a five-year settlement agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice.

Colombian Recipients

Natalia Gómez Carvajal,editor, El Tiempo, Colombia
Topic: Explore the life of Colombian refugees displaced by violence who live in urban settings in extreme poverty and suffer from mental illnesses through a photojournalistic project.

María Paula Laguna Trujillo and Laura María Ayala Rodríguez, Semana, Colombia
Topic: Combine print and Web to examine the mental health conditions of Colombian prisoners and their lack of access to psychiatric services through a multimedia project.

Go forth and be the change!

The Carter Center and reflecting pool

May 4, 2014

Luke Skywalker Has OCD (May The 4th Be With You, Too)

In honor of Star Wars Day, I share an observation about Luke Skywalker. The dude went through a lot in life, and I respected that. But there has always been something about him that gets on my fucking nerves.

Was it the way he whined like a baby after Darth Vader introduced himself as Luke’s Daddy?

Was it the way he utterly failed to stand up to Uncle Owen before the latter was blasted to a crisp along with Aunt Beru?

No.

Like most of the people I can’t stand, the problem is that I look at Luke and see my reflection…

January 24, 2014

Wherein I Run Afoul Of The U.S. Secret Service

My resolve against the inner demons is tested regularly.

Some are little tests, like being put in a room with all the food and alcohol I once binged on daily to see if I can resist the temptation.

Some are bigger tests, like getting lost en route to Washington D.C a few years ago with my wife and kids in the car. Getting lost in a car used to be the stuff my anxiety attacks were made of.

Then there are the huge tests, like the time I got an unexpected grilling from two U.S. Secret Service officers — incidentally, the day after getting lost on the interstate somewhere in New Jersey.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:3ckQ5LMB0ORA45X0ozu9eR]

I wrote a full account of the encounter for CSOonline.com in “What it’s like to be grilled by the Secret Service,” so I won’t repeat it all here. That column captures it from a security perspective.

Here I’ll focus on the emotional part.

First, the gist of what happened: I was taking photos from my BlackBerry of Marine One (with President Obama aboard) taking off from the White House South Lawn. I guess I lingered there for too long, because the Secret Service thought I was taking surveillance photos. Two Android smartphones later, I’m amused they found BlackBerry-quality photos threatening.

One of them was pretty tough and didn’t believe my honest protests that I was just taking pictures and walking around there because I’m a White House history buff. One officer played bad cop, grilling me as if I were just caught red-handed robbing a bank. The other guy played the reassuring role. “We’re just going to get one of these for our records,” he cooed as he snapped a picture of my unshaven face.

Apparently nobody ever showed them the picture of the Brenners visiting the West Wing three months earlier. They did note that I was texting a lot as I walked, and they wanted to know who I was texting. When I told them it was Howard Schmidt, President Obama’s then-cybersecurity advisor, it knocked them off stride. I told them I was making dinner plans with Howard, that I was buying him dinner to thank him for giving me, the wife and kids the West Wing tour.

“Why didn’t you tell us that in the first place?” the meaner of the two cops asked.

As I told Howard what happened over burgers that evening, he had a good laugh.

I didn’t fault the Secret Service cops at the time. It’s not their job to know these things. It’s their job to nail terrorist activity when they see it. Could he have been a bit nicer to me, given that I was doing nothing wrong and all? Sure. But I try not to hold grudges.

It does say something about how much of a police state we’ve become in the decade-plus since 9-11, though. I also admit that if I could do it again, I’d be more belligerent. Government’s excessive reach into our lives has been laid bare since then. If I knew then what I know now, I would have been far more outraged.

Truth be told, the experience did freak me out. My back went into spasms and my hands shook for hours after. As they were in my face accusing me of running a terrorist surveillance mission, I was thinking to myself, “If these assholes haul me in, it’s really going to screw up the work I had planned for this afternoon.” I’m a typical OCD case, worrying that getting arrested will screw up the work day.

But it’s all good.

I didn’t go back to my hotel room and order $80 worth of food and a bottle of wine to comfort myself. A few years ago, a friendly encounter with Secret Service would have made me do that.

My mind wasn’t paralyzed, either. I got a lot of work done back at the hotel, even with the headache.

And hell, I got a pretty good column out of the experience.

November 26, 2013

The Ego OCD Built

The author has an ego that sometimes swells beyond acceptable levels. OCD fuels the fire. Written in December, 2009 and just as real now as it was then.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/Mw0vrH9SPzU

Last night I got on here to explain that sometimes OCD is good for me, in the sense that it provides fuel for my professional ambitions. Some might look at the post and think I was letting vanity take over.

Truth is, I was. And I do it often.

I’m the first to admit that humility isn’t one of my strong suits. I’m working on it, because as a Christian that’s what I need to do. I’ve always been a better talker than listener. I’m going to work on that or die trying.

Before I get too serious about it, it’s worth noting that a lot of OCD types have big egos. Achieving big things is one of the ways we try to fill in that hole that’s always dogging us. In my profession, getting access to the major power players of information security is a rush. I feel like I am somebody as a result. When I don’t make it to a big security conference, the wheels in my head start spinning. I start to worry that by not being there, I become irrelevant.

When I make it someplace and score, like the time I was able to corner Bob Woodward of Washington Post/Watergate fame at a conference in Florida four years ago, I can be insufferable for months. In that encounter, Woodward was there to deliver a keynote on the state of security. His forte was the larger war on terror and how the Bush White House was waging it. He needed to bone up on the IT aspect and started asking me about antivirus and firewalls, and whether those things really work. Later, during the Q&A part of his keynote, when someone asked him a cybersecurity question, he mentioned that he had talked to a fellow earlier (me) who mentioned that the emerging trend was toward a quiet, sneaky brand of attack. My ego boiled and rose. I was sure to tell EVERYBODY about it.

Today, when I write what I think is a good article, I promote it nonstop. That’s part of my job, of course. If you don’t promote it no one will read it. But I do it with an uber-sized dose of zeal.

Work has always been an OCD trigger for me. The good news is that a lot of my hyperactivity today is driven by joy than fear. A decade ago it was all about fear of not being the golden boy. With the fear gone, I find that sometimes it’s impossible to slow down. Ego is always a presence. The more prolific I am, the more attention I get.

I’m not particularly proud of it, but I do think it’s fair game to laugh at me over it. It’s dangerous for anyone to take themselves too seriously. I don’t in a lot of ways, but I always have to keep an eye out for moments when I do. When others see me taking myself to seriously, I want them to take me down a few pegs.

Fortunately, I have people in my life who do just that. My wife, for example.

My faith is making me more humble, as is my recovery program for the binge eating. But it’s a slow process.

My kids are helping me. They don’t care about the big career milestones. They just want my attention. They want me to read to them and give them a snuggle before bed. They want me to listen to their own milestones. Nothing beats parenthood in forcing me to understand that it’s not all about me.

I’m trying to improve in other ways. I go to Confession regularly because I feel the need to put my ego before the priest and seek forgiveness, which I always receive.

I try more and more to put my ego-driven energy into serving others, whether it’s through my recovery program or other acts of basic decency. It helps. A lot.

This is a journey and I always try to remember that.

All that said, I’ll still admit that getting that story last night felt pretty damn good. Try not to hate me for it. I’ll try not to hate myself.

Do feel free to laugh at me, though. Ego-laden people are amusing to watch.