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I’m Getting Too Old For This, But It’s Worth it

Erin and I drove 90 minutes north yesterday to see The Avett Brothers perform in Portland, Maine. By the end of the night, we realized we just don’t have the concert-going energy we had in our early 20s.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/2L6XJOjCaAE

The band didn’t begin until 9, and we were surrounded by people in their 20s and early 30s. The smell of pot hung in the air, giving us headaches. It used to be the smell didn’t bother me, especially when I was using the stuff. But then I stopped smoking it in the early 1990s.

The Avett Brothers is a folk rock act, one of those middle-of-the-road sounds both of us like (Erin likes mostly folk and bluegrass, while I’m a metal head.) I used to go to metal concerts all the time, seeing Metallica five times in 1988-89 alone. I’d get home at 3 in the morning, then be up and at ’em by 6 a.m. as if nothing was out of the ordinary. Back then, I guess that was normal for a 20-year-old.

Now, getting by on three hours of sleep destroys me. But there’s no sleeping in when there’s a job to do and two kids to get off to school. I’ll pay for this for days. But it was worth it. I’d also do it again.

But now that I’m in this 40-year-old body, maybe I’ll take a long afternoon nap beforehand.

Some people look at getting older with dread. Not me. After my childhood illness and the craziness of my young adulthood, it’s a blessing that I’m here at all. So even when my knees ache and my back is about to collapse, I still feel every inch of the good life.

Erin doesn’t seem to mind getting older, either. Aches and pains aside, she remains healthy, knock on wood.

As we watched the young pups party it up last night, we both chuckled, because we were in the seats section with other older folks, and we weren’t bothered by that one bit.

Despite being tired and not as full of pep as we used to be, we still showed up for the concert and drove 90 minutes to boot.

Since the goal for someone like me, with a history of depression and addictive behavior, is to show up for life, it’s hard to see it as anything other than a victory.

We came. We enjoyed. We went home.

We may need a couple bottles of ibuprofen and a bath tub full of caffeine to reach the finish line, but we have plenty of that stuff lying around. That’s how we roll.

We just roll a little more slowly than we used to.

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The Perfect Gift For The OCD Chef In Your Life

Though OCD is no laughing matter for the sufferer, I personally like a good gag that pokes fun at my disorder. If you can’t laugh at the problem, you’re going to have a much tougher time getting a handle on things.

But it has to be a gag that’s cleverly done.

My friend Andrea Holbrook found just the thing for the OCD case in your life who likes to cook, on the Perpetual Kid website:

THE OCD CHEFI don’t like cooking all that much, but maybe I’d do the meal prep some more if I had one of these.

The Perpetual Kid site also sells one of my prized possessions, the OCD hand sanitizer:

Got any more OCD gag gifts? Send them my way and I’ll post ’em here.

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Soundtrack For The Pissed Off

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’m in an uneasy state. Fortunately for me, music is the perfect coping drug. Since my uneasiness is mixed with a feeling of being pissed off, I’m turning to my prescription of heavier, louder fare:

http://youtu.be/Yxa3li_Zjgk

http://youtu.be/TP06kxW_M3I

This stuff won’t send me to a happy, shiny place, but it will keep me from punching someone in the face.

For now, that’s all I need.

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Morning After The Twisters

This is one of those mornings where I wake up uneasy. Several tornadoes tore through our state yesterday, but that’s not it.

Mood music:

I used to panic at the sight of a yellow-green sky, because that’s usually a sign of imminent tornadoes and hurricanes. But as I looked out the window, all I could muster was a “meh.” I guess that’s progress.

But then I had other things on my mind.

Yesterday I visited my father in the hospital, where he’s been since Sunday night. He suffered a stroke, and looked like it. His mind was clear, but one eye was covered with gauze and the other was drifting off to the side.

I left the hospital to go back to work and drove right into an hour-long traffic jam. It turns out the Red Sox were playing. When that happens, the area around Fenway Park becomes a sea of humanity and a graveyard for drivers trying to get from points A to B.

On the plus side, I didn’t erupt into a white-hot temper tantrum like I used to when getting stuck in traffic. I wasn’t happy. The F-word escaped my mouth a half dozen times, but I didn’t beat on the steering wheel and scream like I used to. More progress.

Still, it left me in a bad mood for the rest of the day. My mood sunk even further when I learned that Dad has some breathing difficulties AFTER I left.

I’m still in a bad mood, but at the same time I have hope. This stuff always works itself out, because God sends us helpers.

I mentioned this in a recent post about Mister Rogers:

Mr. Rogers learned a powerful lesson from his mother. I wish I had it in my head to focus on the helpers growing up. In hindsight, they were always there:

–The doctors and nurses who saved me from brutal bouts of Crohn’s Disease.

–The therapists who guided me through a diagnosis of OCD and showed me how to manage it.

–My family, especially my wife, and also my father and even my mother. My relations with the latter are in mothballs right now, but I think she tried to do her best for me. The help Erin has been to me is way too big to be measured here.

–My friends, who have always helped me make sense of things, made me laugh and done all the other things a person needs to get through the day.

–Many of the people in my faith community, who showed me how to accept God’s Grace, even if I still suck at returning the favor.

Fast-forward to the present. I’m uneasy, but I know that in the end, somehow, things will be alright.

My prayers are with those in the state that lost property and people in the tornadoes.

My prayers are obviously with my father.

The helpers are always around us, and they will help us through it all.

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The Killer — And Opportunity — In Every Marriage

Several divorces in our circle of family and friends has made Erin and I a little uneasy in recent months.

Mood music:

There are the usual reasons for this: Complications develop when you’re close to both people in the marriage that’s breaking up. But something else happens: You start to worry if your marriage is next.

We’ve been together for nearly 18 years and probably love each other more today than we did the day we got married in 1998. We’ve each done a lot of work to make ourselves better people and, as a result, a better couple, in recent years.

But, as they say, marriage is hard work, and we’re no exception.

As the years march on, things happen. Work and children fill up all the hours in a day and couples end up so focused on family business that it starts to become just that — a business. You forget to share the simple or the deepest thoughts with each other. Let that go on long enough and the relationship decays before you know what hit you.

I carried on for a long time thinking everything was just perfect because I considered myself better than the average husband. After all, I did a lot of chores around the house. Surely that was enough.

It wasn’t, of course.

I wasn’t communicating. I wasn’t telling Erin what was in my head. And, because I feared she would take off if I pushed too hard, I always kept things inside when something she did made me angry. Do that long enough and you become a brutally passive-aggressive time bomb.

Mix in the fact that my OCD and addictions were running wild and you get a large marriage problem.

I eventually confronted those demons head on, and after several more years I emerged free of the fear and anxiety that had crippled me.

I’d think to myself that that’s enough self improvement to make the marriage perfect again. I even got up the courage to push back during arguments. Monumental improvement, wouldn’t you say?

Well…

More time goes on.

Erin quits her job and starts a business. I urge her on. And when the going gets tough and she’s putting in so many hours that we lose out on quality time, I grow impatient, forgetting about how patient she was while I was spending years gluing the pieces of my shattered brain back together.

Naturally, I keep those frustrations to myself for a long time, until I explode about everything in one argument.

We talk about it a lot and settle into a new, stronger pattern. I think we’re all set, and then I go on a couple business trips close together. Somewhere during that trip, I realize I forgot to sign and seal the Valentine’s Day card and, before I know what I’m doing, I lie about it.

Naturally, I get caught. She’s furious with me for that and because I appear to be enjoying the road a little too much.

We do a lot of talking in the weeks that follow. I tell her I feel like I’m competing with her business. She gets it. We resolve to work on it and we do so. Things get better.

Then we get busy again, and one night she tells me she misses my sharing things with her.

The statement floors me. Of course I’ve been sharing. I tell her everything.

Only I’m not, really.

I write everything in this blog, and in telling the world everything, I have it in my head that I’m telling her everything. So we work some more on how to better communicate.

And the battle rolls on.

I don’t tell you all this to complain. The reality is that this is something EVERY married couple deals with. I don’t care how perfect you think your marriage is. Chances are, you and your spouse have been through all these things and more. It’s the way it is.

Marriage is hard work. You either want it badly enough to keep working on it, or you stop trying and things fall apart.

Here are a few things we’ve learned. It is by no means a complete to-do list, because like you, we’re still learning new things all the time — whether we like it or not.

For one thing, communication is always something we can be doing better.

We have to learn to speak our minds, even when it means an argument might develop. We have to remember to share the loftier ideas in our heads.

One thing I’m making a point to do is share my blog ideas and drafts with her before posting them.

Did I send this one to her for feedback before posting? If I hadn’t, I’d be in some deep trouble right about now.

Another thing we’re remembering: Like any married couple with kids, we need our date nights and weekend getaways. We just had one and it was great. We walked around Salem, Mass., one day and drove to Hartford, Conn., the next day to see Mark Twain’s house. We traded some good project ideas in the car and took turns with the musical selection in the stereo.

But we know the work goes on.

It’s worth it.

Because we love each other.