As a kid living on Revere Beach, long walks were my lifeline to sanity. At least once a day, I walked the entire length of the crescent-shaped coastline, from the edge of Revere Beach Boulevard to the city’s border with Winthrop. In more recent years, I haven’t walked much. But recent events are rekindling my love for it.
I spent a lot of time walking around New York City this morning. I’m staying in Brooklyn for the CSO Security Standard event, but my hotel room wasn’t ready when I arrived, so I looked outside at the Brooklyn Bridge and decided to walk across it, just for the hell of it.
I walked into Chinatown for coffee with a couple friends, then I walked to Ground Zero. Being the day after the 9-11 anniversary, it seemed like the right thing to do.
Last time I was at Ground Zero I left in a pretty depressed mood, but this time, strangely enough, I felt inspired. A lot is happening on that site, including construction of two memorial pools in the footprints of the twin towers, surrounded by trees, with a new Freedom Tower rising up at the edge.
Also inspiring is that nine years later, the people of NYC are keeping the memories of the victims alive. One example is this shrine to the firefighters who lost their lives:
By the time I walked back over the Brooklyn Bridge to check into my room, five hours had passed and I was exhausted. But I felt like I did exactly what I was supposed to do before settling in to work.
Long walks like this have always restored my sanity.
During all those walks on Revere Beach, I’d be trying to think through all the childhood chaos and find a way forward. I always did.
When the kids were still small enough for the double stroller, I’d take them on a 3.5-mile walk in our Haverhill neighborhood.
I stopped walking in recent years because life just got to busy. Or at least that’s how I’ve rationalized it. The truth is, I think I’ve been making excuses.
Yesterday morning Sean wanted to do that 3.5-mile walk with me because it brought back special memories for him. So that’s what we did.
Between that walk and todays stroll around NYC, I’m starting to realize walking was an important tool for me.
It’s time I dusted that tool off and started using it again.
Everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing on Sept. 11, 2001. Here’s my own account.
Mood music:
I was assistant New Hampshire editor at The Eagle-Tribune and I arrived in the newsroom at 4:30 a.m. as usual. I was already in a depressed mood. It wasn’t a sense of dread over something bad about to happen. It was simply my state of mind at the time. I wasn’t liking myself and was playing a role that wasn’t me.
I was already headed toward one of my emotional breakdowns and the job was a catalyst at that point. By day’s end, I would be seriously reconsidering what I was doing with my life. But then everyone was doing that by day’s end.
I was absorbed in all my usual bullshit when the NH managing editor came in and, with a half-smile on his face, told me a plane hit the World Trade Center. At that point, like everyone else, I figured it was a small plane and that it was an accident. Then the second plane hit and we watched it as it happened on the newsroom TV.
I remember being scared to death. Not so much at the scene unfolding on the newsroom TV, but at the scene in the newsroom itself. Chaos was not unusual at The Eagle-Tribune, but this was a whole new level of madness. I can’t remember if my fear was that terrorists might fly a plane into the building we were in as their next act or if it was a fear of not being able to function amidst the chaos. It was probably some of each.
This was a huge story everywhere, but The Eagle-Tribune had a bigger stake in the coverage than most local dailies around the country because many of the victims on the planes that hit the towers were from the Merrimack Valley. There was someone from Methuen, Plaistow, N.H., Haverhill, Amesbury, Andover — all over our coverage area.
When the first World Trade Center tower collapsed on the TV screen mounted above Editor Steve Lambert’s office, he came out, stood on a desk and told everyone to collect themselves a minute, because this would be the most important story we ever covered.
Up to that point, it was. But I was so full of fear and anxiety that my ability to function was gone. I spent most of the next few days in the newsroom, but did nothing of importance. I was a shell. I stayed that way until I left the paper in early 2004. In fact, I stayed that way for some time after that. I should note that the rest of the newsroom staff at the time did a hell of a job under very tough pressure that day. My friend Gretchen Putnam was still editor of features back then, but she and her staff helped gather the news with the same grit she would display later as metro editor.
I remember being touched by a column she wrote the next day. She described picking her son Jack up from school and telling him something bad happened in the world that day. His young response was something like this: “Something bad happens in the world every day.”
Sometimes, kids have a better perspective of the big picture than grown-ups do.
I got home very late that day and hugged Erin and Sean, who was about five months old at that point. I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of world he would grow up in.
In the days that followed, I walked around in a state of fear like everyone else. That fear made me do things I was ashamed of.
A week after the attacks, Erin and I were scheduled to fly to Arizona to attend a cousin’s wedding. The night before were were supposed to leave, I gave in to my terror at the prospect of getting on a plane and we didn’t go. It’s one of the biggest regrets of my life.
There are two types of head cases headed for a breakdown: There’s the type that tries hard to get him or herself killed through reckless behavior, and then there are those who cower in their room, terrified of what’s on the other side of that door. I fell into the latter category. I guess I tried to get myself killed along the way, but I did so in a much slower fashion. I started drinking copious amounts of wine to feel OK in my skin, and I went on a food binge that lasted about three months and resulted in a 30-pound weight gain.
A few months ago I found myself in lower Manhattan for a security event and I went to Ground Zero.
Gone were the rows of lit candles and personal notes that used to line the sidewalks around this place. To the naked eye it’s just another construction site people pass by in a hurry on their way to wherever.
I was pissed off at first. It wasn’t the thought of what happened here. My emotion there is one of sadness. No, this was anger. I was pissed that people seemed to be walking by without any thought of all the people who met their death here at the hands of terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001. It was almost as if the pictures of twisted metal, smoke and crushed bodies never existed.
As I started to process that fact, my mood shifted again.
I realized these people were doing something special. No matter where they were going or what they were thinking, they were moving — living — horrific memories be damned.
They were doing what we all should be doing, living each day to the full instead of cowering in fear in the corner.
Doing so honors the dead and says F-U to those who destroyed those towers and wish we would stay scared.
It reminded me of who I am and what I’ve been through. I didn’t run from the falling towers or get shot at in the mountains of Afghanistan or the streets of Baghdad. But the struggles with OCD and addiction burned scars into my insides all the same.
I was terrified when I was living my lowest lows. But somewhere along the way, I got better, healed and walked away. I exchanged my self hatred and fear for love of life I never thought possible.
It’s similar to what the survivors of Sept. 11 have gone through.
They reminded me of something important, and while some sadness lingers, I am grateful.
So here’s what I’ll be doing this weekend, the ninth anniversary of the attacks:
The Esquire Magazine Style Blog has a fascinating read on pant sizes that brings back a lot of fat guy memories. And though I’m not nearly as heavy as I was at the height of my binge-eating disorder, this tale of fat man’s pants still resonates.
The author, Abram Sauer, recounts a painful moment when he tried on a size 36 pants and found them too tight. He did some digging and found that not all pants’ sizes are as advertised, and how it opens a can of worms in terms of a person’s perception of their own body and how they might act going forward.
He writes:
I’ve never been slim — I played offensive line in high school — but I’m no cow either. (I’m happily a “Russell Crowe” body type.) So I immediately went across the street, bought a tailor’s measuring tape, and trudged from shop to shop, trying on various brands’ casual dress pants. It took just two hours to tear my self-esteem to smithereens and raise some serious questions about what I later learned is called “vanity sizing.”
The pants manufacturers are trying to flatter us. And this flattery works: Alfani’s 36-inch “Garrett” pant was 38.5 inches, just like the Calvin Klein “Dylan” pants — which I loved and purchased. A 39-inch pair from Haggar (a brand name that out-testosterones even “Garrett”) was incredibly comfortable. Dockers, meanwhile, teased “Leave yourself some wiggle room” with its “Individual Fit Waistline,” and they weren’t kidding: despite having a clear size listed, the 36-inchers were 39.5 inches. And part of the reason they were so comfy is that I felt good about myself, no matter whether I deserved it.
He concluded:
The mind-screw of broken pride aside — like Humpty Dumpty, it cannot be put back together, now that you know the truth — down-waisting is genuine cause for concern. A recent report published in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that men with larger waists were twice at risk of death compared with their smaller-waist peers. Men whose waists measured 47 inches or larger were twice as likely to die. Yet, most men only know their waist size by their pants — so if those pants are up to five inches smaller than the reality, some men may be wrongly dismissing health dangers.
–I’ve always hated clothes shopping because of the blow the experience would inevitably land on my ego. My hips are always wider than my waist, no matter how thin I am. So the right waist size is still too tight in the hips and legs. Buying pants isn’t as traumatic now that I’m some 80 pounds lighter than I once was, but I’d still rather wear pants full of holes than buy a new pair.
–Finding a pair of pants that were looser than advertised did indeed leave me with the false perception that I’d cheated the odds with my eating behavior. The result was more bad behavior because, well, I had cheated the odds.
–I don’t blame clothing manufacturers for taking liberty with the sizes. For one thing, their job is to sell pants and keep the customer happy. I doubt these guys ever met someone who was happy after peeling themselves from a too-tight pair of pants. If they are making so-called vanity sizes, it’s because the customer demands it.
–The measuring tape never lies. Pants may lie, but when you put the tape around the waist or hips, what you see is the truth.
In my case, I’ve learned not to let the fit of new pants get in the way of reality. The only thing I care about is what the food on my plate weighs. I use a small scale to determine that. If I keep weighing the portions, the smaller pants are going to fit. It’s stupidly simple.
Clothing manufacturers can play all the games they want with sizes.
If you have a binge-eating problem like I did, there’s no limit to the lies your brain will spin about your own body perception. I’ve looked in the mirror many times as a fat man and saw a thin man because that’s what I wanted to see. I’ve looked in the mirror as a much thinner man and saw a fat guy staring back at me because that’s how I felt that day.
Clothing companies may play games. Fast food restaurants may play games with the amount of fat and chemicles they stuff into their food.
But in the end, the real enemy is ourselves. We see what we want to see and believe what we want to believe.
For reasons not immediately clear to me, I’m in the midst of a mood swing. The day started off well enough, so as a little exercise I’m going to bang on this keyboard and see if I can figure out what’s what.
I woke up at 4 a.m. tired but happy. I was out late last night at one of the planning meetings for a weekend Catholic retreat I’m on team for next month and I was assigned a cool talk to give during that weekend. The coffee was good and strong and I got to work ahead of the traffic and thunderstorms.
I talked to my OA sponsor and talked to one of the guys I sponsor (another sponsee was late calling and I never got a chance to call him back). I wrote a blog entry and plunged into work. Good day so far. I was especially glad to be writing something, since I’ve been doing a lot more editing and planning than writing these last two weeks. I’m always happier when writing articles.
I think the spark for the mood swing happened during the writing of that article. It’s for a three-part series and while I have a crystal-clear idea of where I’m going with parts 2 and 3, I hit a wall writing the first one. I didn’t have as clear a sense of where I was going and it slowed me down. So instead of writing all three articles, I only got through one.
Ridiculous, you say? True, three write-ups in one day is a lot to expect and most people are happy to finish one. But writing multiple items in a day is something I do all the time. I wouldn’t care as much if not for a burning desire to get the series off my plate before heading to New York for a conference Sunday.
The second spark, I think, is that my editor hadn’t gotten to reading my story by the time I left and I had high hopes of posting it this afternoon. This is also me being ridiculous, because it is not time-sensitive stuff. But I am a control freak and when my work is in someone else’s queue I have no control. That stuff I wrote this morning about learning to surrender? Sometimes I suck at following my own wisdom.
So I guess I know what my problem is now. I don’t feel like I was productive in my work today, and I thrive on being productive.
That’s a sucky feeling.
But it’s too bad. I know I just have to get over it and move on.
Tomorrow is the chance to do better. Tonight I’ll just move on.
I also could have gone on a binge like I used to when feeling unfulfilled at the end of a day. But I didn’t.
In my journey through Faith and recovery, I hear the word “surrender” over and over again. I used to hate the word for the same reason you might hate it. To surrender means to give up, toss in the towel and go home defeated, right? Not exactly.
1. a: to yield to the power, control, or possession of another upon compulsion or demand (surrendered the fort)
b: to give up completely or agree to forgo especially in favor of another
2. a: to give (oneself) up into the power of another especially as a prisoner
b: to give (oneself) over to something (as an influence)
2 b comes closest, but it’s not enough.
They are accurate descriptions, mind you. They just don’t do justice to what the word means in faith and recovery.
Here’s what I’ve learned about the word so far: It DOES NOT mean to quit life and stop trying to be better and stronger. In the context of Faith and the 12 Steps of Recovery, it DOES NOT mean that you stop thinking for yourself.
It IS about admitting you can’t control everything and that you need the aid of a higher power. For many of us (for me, anyway), that higher power is God. It IS also about putting your trust in others.
As addicts in the grip of the demon, we trust nobody. We picture everyone with a knife in their hand, ready to stab us in the back. We see someone trying to tell us to clean up our act even though they could not possibly understand what it’s like to be truly out of control. We also watch over our shoulders because we expect someone to swoop in and steal our junk at any moment.
When we start to realize we have a problem, we labor unsuccessfully under the delusion that we can clean up on our own, without any help. In that regard, we refuse to surrender. We think our will is enough to get the job done, even though the art of will power has eluded us repeatedly. That’s the insanity of being a control freak.
I tried all kinds of things to clean up from a binge eating addiction. I thought I could tame the beast by chain smoking and drinking 14 cups of black coffee per morning. I thought I could do it by fasting twice a week. I even thought I could do it by drinking wine instead of eating.
Since I grew up with a chip on my shoulder, I looked at the word surrender with pure hatred. To surrender meant to do whatever my mother told me to do. Since her desire was for me to always play it safe and never take risks, it would have been the wrong thing to surrender to.
To surrender also meant to do what my father told me to do, which as a teenager simply didn’t fit into the joys of staying up all night getting high. He had a lot of good things to teach me, but no fucking way was I going to heed his advice. That would mean surrendering.
Surrendering to God seemed like the worst idea of all. That meant giving up my free will and following some unseen being over the cliff.
Motley Crue bassist and lyricist Nikki Sixx once described a similar reaction when he was asked to get on his knees and pray for help to break his heroin addiction. His reaction went something like this: “Fuck God!”
Let go and let God? Screw you.
As I got older and my addictive behavior was about to destroy all my hopes and dreams, I reached a point where I was willing to do anything to stop the pain.
Some would call that giving up, and I guess that’s what it was.
One time I was at a party listening to a group of moms talking about the pain of childbirth. Someone noted that in that moment of agony you lose all modesty. You just want that baby out of there. After a while, you stop caring if the doctor is male or female.
I wouldn’t know, but it is a pretty decent description of an addict who has maxed out their tolerance for pain.
Suddenly, the word surrender doesn’t sound so bad.
–Effecting a spiritual awakening in which God does for us what we cannot do for ourselves, as we humbly submit our self-will and our heart to his will (Steps 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, and 11).
–Overcoming pride and resistance to change through rigorously honest self-examination (Steps 1, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 10)
–Making amends and repairing the harmful consequences of our self-destructive behaviors – especially the harm we’ve done to others (Steps 5, 8, 9, 10 and 12).
There it is, all laid bare. To surrender isn’t to give up and stop thinking for yourself. It’s exactly the opposite. It means doing a gut check, finally being honest and realizing you need help. When you surrender to God, you’re letting in the people who can help you.
It’s about honesty, trust and taking a leap of faith.
I stopped being afraid to leave my room, getting on airplanes, taking on challenging work assignments that previously would have made me sick to my stomach, and I stopped being afraid to get up and talk in front of a room full of people. I also stopped being afraid to speak up when I disagreed about something, particularly in work.
In other words, I finally started becoming the man I wanted to be.
I still have a long, long way to go. But this beats the hell out of what life was like when I was clinging to that old, stupid will of mine.
Yeah, I surrendered. I gave up the idea that I could go it alone, without people who know better and without God.
This blog is chock full of my own experiences with depression and addiction. I even hint here and there about how the addictive behavior runs in the family. But I’ve avoided the story of depression among siblings until now. This post is about my older sister, who had it much harder than me, and whose progress over the years has inspired me.
I haven’t mentioned it up to this point because it’s her story and her business. I didn’t want to violate her privacy. But recently I’ve realized her story is an important part of my own. So I sought and received her permission to tackle it head on. Hopefully, this post validates the trust she’s putting in me.
Wendi’s is a success story, whether she realizes it or not.
Sometime around 1991, things started coming to a head. She started plunging into deep depressions. Between 1991 and 1998, I can remember three occasions where this led to her hospitalization. She talked openly about wanting to kill herself. One such occasion, in 1998, was a couple months before my wedding. Since it was only two years after Sean Marley’s suicide, this made me more angry than anything. My anger was a selfish one. How dare she get suicidal and hospitalized and put me through this all over again. And how dare she do this while I was getting ready for my wedding.
I realize something now that I didn’t realize back then: Depression and the collateral damage it causes to others is never really in the sufferer’s control to stop. And it can care less about timetables. Mental illness doesn’t take breaks for holidays and weddings, for the convenience of others. Given my own battle with depression in subsequent years, I get it now.
I’m sorry for getting angry with her back then.
There’s something else I feel sorry about: Because of my own mental turmoil, I chose to avoid situations that made me uncomfortable. Wendi’s depression made me very uncomfortable. The result is that I wasn’t the helpful younger brother I should have been.
In 2003, Wendi caught a bizarre infection the doctors couldn’t make sense of. She spent a couple weeks in ICU and pumping her full of antibiotics didn’t seem to help her much. A couple times we were certain she wouldn’t make it. But since then, things have gotten better for Wendi. Not easier. Maybe not even happier. But better.
A couple years earlier, she had announced to the family that she was gay. It took some family members by shock, but not me. When I thought about a couple of the more “normal” relationships she had tried to nurture in past years and the depression she went into when things didn’t work out, it all made perfect sense to me. She was trying to live a life that didn’t gibe with her true nature.
When she came clean about that, her life didn’t get easier. But I suspect, because she found a way to be truthful with herself, that some things got easier to deal with. She’s been through her ups and downs since then. A marriage didn’t work out. She suffered some nasty complications from gastric bypass surgery. But she has moved on from those difficulties much more quickly than in past difficulties. It’s been heartening to see.
This post is my long overdue hat tip to you, Wendi. I love you.
I haven’t written anything new since Friday and don’t plan to today (well, except for this). Last time I took a break I got a bunch of e-mails from people asking if I was OK.
The last two days I re-posted a bunch of older entries. That was for newer readers who asked me to flag older posts that were important to the larger story.
I used to be terrified of hurricanes. The fear and anxiety in me would latch onto these storms like Crazy Glue. Yet with Hurricane Earl approaching New England, I’m feeling strangely apathetic.
Maybe it’s because I don’t live on the coast anymore. In Haverhill, we’re not expecting much from Earl. Some of it is definitely because a lot of the storm-driven fear left me when I brought the OCD under control.
Let’s do a flashback so you can get a better perspective:
I grew up on Revere Beach and I think the Blizzard of 1978 traumatized me for a long, long time. Every summer, when a hurricane would head toward us, I’d start having Blizzard of 78 flashbacks of the ocean surging down the Lynnway, right in front of my house, and the waves leaping over the sea wall with chunks of ice that hit the closest homes like missiles.
The tops were torn off some of the pavilions along the beach.
They stayed that way until a beach restoration project in the early 1990s. In the 1980s the exposed frames served as a reminder of what these ocean storms could do. For a long time, every nor’easter riding up the coast filled me with anxiety.
The TV news doesn’t help. Impending storms are more often than not pitched as the coming apocalypse.
From the late 1970s straight through the 1990s, I’d shake from weather reports mentioning the Blizzard of 1978 with each new storm. As a young adult, I developed a pattern of throwing a blanket over my head and going to sleep.
That’s exactly what I did in 1985 when Hurricane Gloria grazed us and, at age 21 in August 1991, when New England took a direct blow from Hurricane Bob.
My step-sister still likes to bring up how, on the morning Hurricane Bob was coming, I came into her room and yelled at her to wake up, telling her, “This aint no (expletive) Gloria.” That was me in OCD mode. I’m a little embarrassed every time I think about it, but that’s OK. Nobody got hurt.
That rough weather scared the heck out of me as a kid, I think, was perfectly normal. Carrying that same fear and anxiety well into adulthood? Probably not so normal.
In more recent years, I’ve overcome that fear, and I actually like a good storm now and again. I love to drive through the snow. And when Washington D.C. got smacked with 30-plus inches of heavy snow in a blizzard during one of my visits there last February, I gleefully walked the streets as the storm continued to rage.
This morning, I find myself wanting to grab my camera and drive to Cape Cod, which never would have occurred to me a few years ago.
Instead of fearing the danger, I want a piece of it.
I’m not going, though. Erin and the kids would not approve, nor would my friend Bob Connors, an emergency preparedness professional who has been warning his Facebook friends all week not to do stupid things like that. Since he sometimes supplies me with high-end cigars, I really don’t want to make him mad.
To my friends on the South Shore, I hope everything goes OK and that the damage is minimal.
I still respect these storms, and when we’re under the gun I know we have to be prepared.
I’m just not letting the fear suck the life out of me anymore.
Sometimes God puts certain people in your life to show you how you’re screwing up and how to fix it. Sometimes, these guardian angels are disguised as people who need YOUR help. This post is about one such man.
In 12-Step programs anonymity is a big deal, especially in OA, because there’s an extra level of awkwardness that comes with being a binge-eating addict. So I’m changing this friend’s name to Dan.
I first talked to Dan on the phone a few months ago. He got my number from someone else in program and called me out of the blue. I picked up the phone and heard the following:
“Hiya Bill. My name’s Dan and I’m a compulsive overeater!”
The exclamation mark is appropriate, because that’s how he said it.
The first time I met him in person, I was picking him up for a Saturday-morning OA meeting. He’s so obese that he needed help getting the seatbelt on. His legs were purple from diabetes.
“This guy is going to be a lot of work,” I thought.
Then, at the meeting, I start to realize that he knows a lot of people there. He was greeting and hugging people like it was old home week. It turned out that he had been in OA before.
What’s more: He was a 20-year veteran of AA. He had done it all. He was once a drunk and a drug addict. He shot heroin. He had lost just about everything. After kicking booze and drugs, he turned to the food. He needs a truck scale to weigh himself and last time he did, he was an even 400 pounds.
But it didn’t matter. He was and still is one of the more cheerful people I’ve ever met.
And since then, of all my sponsees, nobody works the program as hard as he is. We talk every morning. Sometimes we talk several times a day. He’ll bend your ear for hours if you let him. Sometimes, it can get exasperating.
Here’s the problem: I can be a selfish, egotistical bastard. It’s not hard for me to think I’m better than other people, especially a 400-pound 50-something who lives in a room the size of my walk-in closet. And my ego is probably too big to weigh on a truck scale.
I’m pretty sure that’s why God put Dan in my life. That’s what He does, you know: puts people in your life who will help you, but he sneaks them in as people who need YOUR help.
Ever see “It’s a Wonderful Life?” It’s like the angel Clarence. He dives in the water and acts like he’s drowning so George Bailey, who is standing on the bridge contemplating suicide, will jump in and save him.
I guess you could call what I’m experiencing the Clarence Syndrome.
Dan, you see, is teaching me a lot more than I’m teaching him. I may be his OA sponsor, but he’s my own Clarence.
As a 20-year veteran of 12-Step programs, he knows every current and former junkie on the streets of Haverhill. We’ll drive up Winter Street or down River Street and he’ll point out every person walking the streets as we pass. He’s seen them all in AA meetings. He’ll tell you their full history and how they’re doing today.
He’s also taught me that people in AA are NOT the same as people in OA.
We have the big things in common. We developed addictions that made our lives unmanageable. Having found recovery, we latch onto each other pretty tight.
But something’s different.
In OA, there’s a tight fellowship in meetings and on the telephone. But the AA crowd really sticks together. It’s more like a gang. Recovering addicts often live together, several in a house. Not a halfway house. They just live together, watching out for each other.
It’s cool to see. But I’ve also found that there are some real animosities among the AA crowd. Another of my sponsees, an OA drop-out for now, spent a lot of time telling me about how I shouldn’t trust this person or that person because one likes to tell lies and the other likes to steal money. The lying part didn’t shock me. All addicts lie.
Come to think of it, Dan warned me that this other person does the same things and shouldn’t be trusted. Ah, the webs we weave.
Dan gives people nicknames. There’s Happy Harold, New York Mikey (called that because he has a pimped-out car with New York plates) and Georgie-B.
He’s always bringing new people into AA. He calls them prospects.
That was one of my first lessons: He’s not just a poor obese boy living in a box. He gives freely, helping others every day. He doesn’t have a job, but he fills his time in meaningful ways.
I’m better than him? Hell, no. He’s taking ME to school. He’s so busy looking for my guidance in OA that he doesn’t seem to realize it.
Don’t tell me God doesn’t have a sense of humor.
It’s been a powerful, humbling lesson for me about not judging a book by its cover or thinking of yourself as above others.
We’re all in the same struggle for redemption. And God keeps giving us a shot at it by sending along guardian angels disguised as people “worse off” than we think WE are.
The trouble is, we’re often too blind and/or stupid to see it.
I’ve seen plenty of examples of failed justice in my day: A judge letting an abusive dirt-bag dad get unsupervised weekend visits just because he reappeared after a few years. A thrice convicted pedophile being let back out on the streets. I never expected to hear about the court discriminating against someone for having OCD.
I usually try not to write posts in response to comments that flow into this blog. I like to let readers’ statements stand on their own. But when someone flags something particularly insidious, I have to share.
The two examples that follow came my way by way of a couple mental health forums on LinkedIn where I post blog entries.
I’ll keep their names to myself to protect privacy.
But to help you appreciate the first person’s perspective, I’ll tell you she’s a certified mediator who provides psychotherapy for adults, children, couples and families. She also does group sessions for anger management, domestic violence and parenting.
I have a special respect for someone in this line of work. As a kid suffering from a particularly vicious form of Crohn’s Disease and, by extension, behavioral issues, I firmly believe I was saved by the children’s therapist assigned to me. That same person kept me on the sane side of the line when my parents’ marriage dissolved in hatred, abuse and mistrust.
I’ve had a couple really bad therapists along the way, too, so I never take someone’s word as Gospel just because of what they do for a living. But the person who contacted me yesterday seems solid and worth listening to. Here’s what she wrote to me in response to Monday’s post, “More Bullshit About Mental Illness“:
My clients just lost their kids in family court because the mom had OCD. She “counts” and so this was considered “traumatizing to the two older kids.” They are in their teens, however; the bureau allowed them to keep their two younger children. The Child and Family Services organizations are off their rocker. I see kids returned to abusers and drug addicts, I don’t get it.
There are elements about this that I have questions about. For starters, why take the teenagers but let the younger kids stay? I suspect it’s because the teenagers are at an age where seemingly abnormal behavior is going to freak them out more. Teens are almost always confused. But the larger suggestion that someone got a raw deal in the courts because of her OCD quirks is totally believable to me.
I’ve seen more than one fellow OCD sufferer scorned in the workplace for being a little different. Not in my workplace, but in other companies.
True or not, I think that when someone has OCD, they always need to be prepared to defend themselves against someone else’s stupidity. Of course, it’s not enough to say someone discriminated against you for having a mental illness. You need to be able to prove it. That shouldn’t be hard for obsessive people who are known to be painfully diligent at documenting things.
Breaking a stigma is hard. There’s no play book. There’s always the danger of coming across as delusional or whiney. Come to think of it, some of us ARE delusional and whiney.
Despite all I say about breaking stigmas and fighting back, I have to be honest and say that I’ve never experienced the kinds of things people write to me about. I’m very lucky. I’ve gotten nothing but support from every office I’ve ever worked in. If I was going through depression and needed time off, I got it. When I decided to write this blog, the folks at work were very supportive.
You might say that for an OCD patient, I’ve led a charmed life.
I do know this, though: When you take a skeleton like mental illness out of the closet and toss it to the middle of the street for all to see, the control it has over you lessens and the bones of the disorder turn to ash.
I’ve lived it. I know it. I used to live in mortal terror of speaking up for myself. Once I got over that initial hump, there was no turning back.
Another reader recently wrote to me about the injustices she has suffered for having a mental illness:
I have two very bad instances of discrimination based on mental illness. I worked for medical doctors for ten years, had all outstanding performance reviews, and received bonuses periodically. I began to have trouble functioning because of undiagnosed and untreated bipolar disorder. I had doctors working with me who told me I needed a leave of absence to get medical care. I went to my boss, the executive director and an MD, and told him what my therapist and neurologist recommended. His words were “I’m a doctor, I can’t have someone with a mental illness in a position of authority in a company I run!” Second case, my supervisor docked my pay for going to the doctor even though I was exempt. Also, she told me that I had to have therapy sessions via phone or email because she couldn’t afford to let me leave the office. She also told others about my illness without my permission. It was at that point I decided I have to try and find a way to work for myself even if I had to leave in a homeless shelter. I will never be treated that way again.
Me neither, my friend.
I can’t tell someone how to fight back when a judge or employer screws them over their illness.
I only know what I do: Minimize the impact of my OCD by exposing it for all to see through my writing.
He writes: