Posted on

And The Sea Will Save You

When I wrote a post called “Summers of Love and Hate” last year, the theme was a childhood mixed with joy and rage against the backdrop of Revere Beach.

The memories are still stained with sorrow. But, truth be told, the location of my upbringing is one of the things that saved me.

Mood music:

The sea could be terrifying, especially in the winter. The Blizzard of 1978 is my clearest memory of that. But when calm, it brought be back from the brink every time.

This quote from JFK captures my own feelings about the sea as healer and helper:

I really don’t know why it is that all of us are so committed to the sea, except I think it’s because in addition to the fact that the sea changes, and the light changes, and ships change, it’s because we all came from the sea. And it is an interesting biological fact that all of us have, in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea — whether it is to sail or to watch it — we are going back from whence we came.

I’m thinking about this after reading some Facebook status updates from an old friend I grew up with in the Point of Pines. She was messaging from Cape Cod, where her family has gone for some rest. It’s a painful time for them, because a friend has been found dead, allegedly murdered at the hands of her ex-boyfriend.

“On the cape awaiting the rest of my children and my honey. We need to regroup, relax and help my girls start to heal. Hug your loved ones, tell them you love them everyday. Life is hard.”

Losing close friends and family is hard. I’ve been there three times. They are doing the right thing, though, going to the ocean for solace.

During the worst moments of my younger years, the ocean was an escape route within feet of my front steps. I would sit on the rocks and think things through. I would walk from the Pines all the way to the other end and back.

The process would usually take about 90 minutes — enough time to process what I was feeling. It didn’t necessarily make me happier, and much of the time thoughts just swirled around uselessly in my head.

But I always came back from the beach a little calmer, a little stronger and ready to deal with whatever I had to face.

You could say the ocean would speak to me, talking me off the ledge.

I live away from the coast now, in a city sliced in half by the Merrimack River.

The river has an equally calming effect on me, and I walk along it every chance I get.

But every once in awhile I go back to Revere or a closer place like Newburyport or Salisbury to get my pep talk from the sea.

I hope my old friend and her family get what they need from the sea this time. I suspect they won’t walk away with any less pain than what they feel right now. But I have no doubt they’ll leave there with the added strength to get through the sadness.

Posted on

Not What God Wants Me To Be, But Not The Person I was

The title of this post is a popular saying among those who use the 12 Steps to bring their addictive behavior to heel. It’s a good line to keep in mind when you’re ready to lose patience with yourself and slip into self-loathing.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/jYpydtdlWxA

There’s a lot about myself that still has to change. I still get angry too easily. I still get self absorbed. I still give in to OCD thinking and actions, even when I know better. I still suck at saving money. Little problems still turn into big crises in my head.

But I don’t see a reason to beat myself over it, because I used to be much, much worse.

A temper today involves angry thoughts and self pity. As a young punk a temper meant punching dents into walls (I lacked the muscles to make a hole), flipping off people on the highway for cutting me off or, worse, getting touchy when I cut them off. It also meant unleashing a torrent of verbal vitriol.

Getting self absorbed back then meant spending what I wanted, eating what I wanted and making the decisions I wanted with no regard for anyone else. I still fall into that behavior, but I catch it more quickly than before and correct myself as much as possible. Doing service has been good for me because it gives me fewer opportunities to stray. Being a husband and father has helped, too.

Giving into OCD today means I may go on a cleaning spree at the moment I need to be doing other things. It means I may check and re-check my laptop bag to make sure the machine is inside, dooming myself to a longer, more traffic-laden commute in the process. It means I’ll occasionally run short on patience. But back then, it meant being blinded to everything around me by obsessive worrying about things that in hindsight were a lot of nothing. Which, in turn, led to the selfish behavior.

I bring this stuff up because everyone has a cross or six to carry on a daily basis, and it’s easy to give in to the worst kind of thinking and write yourself off as a failure.

In times like this, it’s also helpful to remember what Clarence the angel scribbled in the book he gave George Bailey at the end of “It’s a Wonderful Life” — “No man is a failure who has friends.” I used to think I had no friends. Then I realized the problem was that I was ignoring my friends in favor of isolation.

We all have something to offer and to live for. We’re all screw-ups — nothing like the people God wants us to be.

But if we’re just a little better than we once were, that’s huge.

I’m going to keep working on being who God wants me to be. It’s an almost impossible task, because how do you ever really know what God wants you to be (until you’re dead and he tells you directly, anyway)?

He always leaves clues, though. So instead of feeling sorry for ourselves we can simply do the best with the clues we’ve got.

Posted on

Social Anxiety, Alcohol And Whatever Else Numbed Me

Addicts often become the way they are because they suffer from severe social anxiety. To carry on in a large group setting is as painful as having a leg sawed off while wide awake.

I know the feeling very well.

 

Item: It’s December 2001 and I’m at the home of the big boss for the annual Christmas party. I skipped out on this celebration a year earlier because talking to co-workers about anything other than the work at hand terrified me. I came up with a good excuse, though I can’t remember what it was. I couldn’t get out of two in a row, so off I went with Erin to the party. For the first hour I stood there like a stone, not knowing what the hell to say to these people, many of whom I was butting heads with at the office.

I’m offered a glass of wine. I suck it down in two gulps and start to loosen up. So I have another. And another. And another. Conversation becomes easier, so I have another.

I walk away realizing that enough alcohol will numb that itchy, edgy feeling I get around people. So getting drunk becomes standard operating procedure.

After awhile, the social settings are no longer enough. I need to numb myself every moment of every weekend, then every night after work. When I’m back on the newsroom night desk I stay up late on Sunday nights watching TV. Wine is a necessity, followed by a nice food binge.

Item: I leave that job and go to a company full of young, just-out-of college party hounds. The company likes to have long offsites where the free booze flows like tap water. Being an addict, I make sure to get my fill, followed by my fill of food. There’s nothing quite like a food binge when you’re drunk. For someone like me, it’s heaven for the first hour, followed by shame and terror over my utter loss of control. I gain up to 50 pounds in this job as I binge my way through the social discomfort I feel in a setting like that.

Item: It’s 2009 and I’m several months into my abstinence from binge eating. I’ve dropped 65 pounds on the spot and my head is clearer, but the defect in my head is still there, so I go looking for other things: Wine — lots of it. It becomes a necessity every night with dinner. I get itchy when the supply is cut off. By Christmas I realize wine is no longer compatible with a clean life — the kind I have to live, anyway. So I take my last sip on New Year’s Eve and put it down.

Two things are worth noting here:

1. I was never a fall-down drunk. There was always a line I refused to cross, to that zone where you become stupid and incoherent. But I needed to have some. Not having some led to that feeling like your skin is either two sizes too loose or too tight. The OCD behavior worsens, and I’m twitching, pacing and bouncing off walls and furniture until I have some. THAT is addiction. You don’t have to be smashed and stoned 24 hours a day to qualify. All you need is that unquenchable thirst; the kind that drives you mad until it’s fed.

2. My need to fill the hole in my soul with food and drink has almost always been connected to social anxiety. It’s not just the big work party settings. It’s the small family settings, where I feel the pressure to say something useful every two minutes. I stopped drinking and binge eating, but other crutches have emerged to take their place. I stare at my Android phone or flip through a book. I break off and take walks to be alone for a few minutes. I don’t think it’s awful behavior. It’s certainly better than what I used to do. But it goes to show that you never heal 100 percent.

I’m much better with people settings than I used to be. One reason is that in recovery I’ve come to enjoy people more. I even enjoy watching a little dysfunction.

I can speak in front of a room full of people and often do for work. That’s better than when I would be terrified to do so. I can certainly express myself in writing in ways I could never have done a few years ago. But when I’m at a family gathering or with friends I haven’t seen in awhile, the social anxiety still sets in.

I know a lot of people with social anxiety. Some think they are freaks. Others think they’re either too intellectually inferior or superior to those they are with. Others don’t beat themselves over it. It simply is what it is.

The key is wanting to get better, then doing whatever it takes to get there.

I’m better, but I still have a lot of work to do.

It’s like they say in the halls of AA and OA: I’m not yet the person God wants me to be, but I’m not the person I was, either.

Progress is progress.

Posted on

The Heaviest Rock, The Mightiest Recovery Tool

Something about the Fourth of July really gives me a craving for heavy metal music. Of course, not a day goes by where I don’t need to listen to some of it. It’s one of the major tools of my recovery from OCD and addiction.

Allow me to explain…

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. Home was no sanctuary. My parents were understandably all over the emotional map, especially my mother. Bitter feelings from their divorce four years earlier still sucked the air from the room. The Chron’s Disease continued to smolder.

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

I wanted to be surrounded by this stuff so badly that I got a job in a record store.

1993

Though I was still many years away from a diagnosis, the year I worked in that cramped little dive was one of the best therapy sessions ever. It was a particularly perfect place to get exposed to some of the best Boston bands at the time.

When I was an angst-filled teenager bent on self-absorbed periods of depression — and before I became an angst-filled grownup bent on self-absorbed periods of depression — it was a place where I could escape.

Located off of Route 1 northbound, Rockit Records was literally a hole in the wall, not much bigger than a walk-in closet. It later expanded in size, but even then it seemed small. But the sounds booming from speakers above were always big.

It was the perfect safe house.

To this day, I’m grateful as hell for Al Quint for helping me get in there.

Al is still going strong, producing the Sonic Overload radio show and publishing his Suburban Voice magazine in blog form.

The store was crammed with cassettes, vinyl and eventually CDs. You could sell and buy used music. You could buy all the hard-to-get metal fanzines.

True story: On Aug. 3, 1987, I was the first kid in the store to buy Def Leppard’s just-released and long-awaited “Hysteria” album. The band was already spinning in a downward spiral toward candy-coated pop. I just didn’t realize it at the time. And in those days, I was a BIG Def Leppard fan.

A year later, I believe I was the second or third kid to buy Metallica’s “And Justice for All” album.

The owner eventually sold the place and that essentially meant I was out of the job. I wasn’t exactly in the new owner’s good graces. But by then, it was time for me to move on.

There’s now a Subway sandwich shop where Rockit Records once stood. A pity, really. But a lot of music stores suffered the same fate as the iTunes age dawned.

For me, it served its purpose. A jewel of an escape closet from a world of hurt.

2003

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 tore a path straight into my soul.

2011

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.

usa_flag

Posted on

Music To Play When Blowing Stuff Up

This being Independence Day, I thought I’d do something different and make a little soundtrack for ya. When blowing up those illegal Chinese fireworks, play this.

http://youtu.be/irskrVvKR1E

Posted on

A Tried & True Marriage, A Blessed Anniversary

Dad and Dianne were married on this day back in 1984, and theirs is one of the most tried and true marriages I’ve seen.

Mood music:

They married months after my brother’s death and, a little over a year later, had a daughter who brought enormous joy to a family that was still trying to get over that death.

They’ve lasted through the many illnesses of their children and have kept a business going together through 27 years of economic highs and lows.

They’ve traveled the world together a hundred times over and are closer today than ever.

This is a particularly special anniversary because Dad is a month into his recovery from a stroke. His mind and body have been through hell, and Dianne hasn’t left his side. Some days I wonder who has had it tougher this past month — him or her.

But the important thing is that theirs is a union that has survived and gotten stronger.

If you want to learn a thing or two about true love, watch them for five minutes.

I’ll end here, and just say to my father and step-mom: Happy Anniversary, from the core of my heart.

Here’s to many more, in sickness and in health.

Posted on

Erin’s Avett Brothers Birthday Present, Part 2

This post is for Erin on her birthday.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/3uy4tK5q0KE

I know I gave you your birthday present early: an Avett Brothers concert almost a month ago. But I’ve been thinking about this band lately and realize that one reason I like them so much is that a lot of their songs make me think of you.

A lot of their songs are about love that gets tested only to grow stronger than before, and that’s been our journey.

The song “And It Spread” makes me think about how self destructive I used to be and how you pulled me through it and made me a better man.

There was light in the room
then you left and it was through
then the frost started in
my toes and fingertips

and it spread into my heart

then for I don’t know how long
I settled in to doing wrong
and as the wind fills the sail
came the thought to hurt my self…

then you came back from space
with a brand new laugh and a different space
you took my hand and held it up
and shot my arm full of love

and it spread
and it spread into the world
and it spread
and it spread into the world 

One of my favorite songs is “Head Full Of Doubt / Road Full Of Promise” because of this one section:

When nothing is owed or deserved or expected
And your life doesn’t change by the man that’s elected
If you’re loved by someone, you’re never rejected
Decide what to be and go be it

When I think of your love for me and others and the things you do for everyone — no matter how ungrateful some people are — I think of that song. I hope you feel the same way, that “If you’re loved by someone, you’re never rejected.” Some friends and family will get self-absorbed and stupid sometimes, making you feel unloved and under appreciated. But I know they love you a lot, too. But like me, they just lack the ability to show it sometimes.

“Kick Drum Heart” has a great line that makes me think of my life with you.

There’s nothing like finding gold
within the rocks hard and cold
I’m so surprised to find more
Always surprised to find more

I won’t look back anymore
I left the people that do
Its not the chase that I love
Its me following you. 

I’m always going to follow you, because when you lead the way, we find more gold.

Not material gold. I’m thinking gold in the form of our children and the beautiful experiences we continue to collect.

You fill in all my holes. I hope I’m doing the same for you.

You often make remarks about how you’re getting old. It’s usually after a long day, when your tired and all the aches and pains are amplified.

But as far as I can tell, you’re only getting better. That sounds corny and it is. But it’s true. You left a dead-end job and started a business that’s flourishing after less than two years. Sean and Duncan become more amazing by the day and that’s more because of you than me.

If this is what getting old is about, I’ll take it.

This is just another long-winded way for me to say Happy Birthday.

I love you more every day.

Posted on

A New(ish) Weapon Against OCD Fidget Syndrome

At any number of events, you can see me darting around all over the place, taking pictures with my Android phone. The obvious reason is that I want to capture the special events in life. But it has also become a good weapon against what I call OCD Fidget Syndrome.

Mood music:

I’ve mentioned the fidgeting before. A byproduct of my OCD is a serious discomfort with sitting properly for any length of time. One way I manage it is by putting my feet up on the desk when I work, which for some reason helps me minimize the bobbing and weaving. There’s also the windmill hands. Those who know me well have seen it at one time or another, usually when I’m sitting at a desk engaged in a project. My face gets slightly contorted and I start shaking my hands around like they’re on fire.

Taking pictures gives me a positive outlet for all that nervous energy. But I’m no professional. For that you have to talk to my sister-in-law Amanda or my friend Kevin Littlefield. I just mess around with the phone camera. But lately I’ve gotten more brazen about it.

Now I’m experimenting with all the nifty free camera apps available in the Android Marketplace.

My favorite is Retro Camera, which gives every image a rustic glaze. It was a life-saver earlier this month when Sean and I were camping in the driving rain. Sitting under a tent can be bad for my fidgeting ways, but the camera helped:

I also used the app to take one of my profile pictures. 

In this one, I took Retro Camera into the bathroom  and put the phone behind my head as I stared in the mirror:

Here’s one of Sean reading in a tree out back, also taken with Retro Camera:

I recently discovered some other apps that allow all kinds of craziness for the less-than-average photographer. There’s the Camera Illusion and Photo Illusion apps that let you take pictures that look like pencil drawings and infrared images. I’ve gone nuts with that one, as the following snaps show:

My niece, Madison, in the supermarket
Erin giving our nephew Owen a smooch
My massive re-usable Starbucks traveling cup
Someone left this Curious George stuffed doll lying around
Self portrait using the pencil feature and a red overlay

For this one I used the emboss effect, which didn’t make me any less ugly. But it was still a fun experiment.

Nothing special. But it beats fidgeting.

Posted on

A Visit To The Prozac Nurse

Last night was my annual pilgrimage to Beverly, Mass. for an appointment with the nurse who manages my Prozac intake. She has done better for me than my primary care doctor did. Here’s why.

Mood music:

Drugs used to treat mental disorders must be tightly controlled. Too little and it won’t help you. Too much can make your disorder worse.

When I first started taking Prozac in 2007, my primary care doctor was prescribing it. My depression and anxiety were melting a hole in my heart and I was at my wit’s end. I had resisted medication for a long time because I didn’t believe in them. I saw it as quitting.

Needing medicine to balance out my brain chemistry and make me human meant I was weak and couldn’t control the OCD on my own.

That’s the thing about OCD. The craving for control blinds you.

But years of therapy, though helpful, hadn’t helped me break the spell of fear and anxiety, and that was limiting me. So at my doctor’s suggestion, I gave it a try.

The anxiety and depression evaporated within two weeks and I felt like a new man. But I would still be in and out with mood swings. I eventually figured out that my doctor wasn’t the best person to manage this drug. He’s a fine doctor, but these capsules have a complexity I think was beyond his expertise.

When I started seeing my latest therapist, he gave me a hell of an education.  He was the first therapist to help me understand the science behind mental illness and the way an inbalance in brain chemistry can mess with your thought traffic. He also provided me with quite an education on how anti-depressants work. Indeed, there’s a science to it. Certain drugs are designed to shore up the brain chemicals that, when depleted, lead to bi-polar behavior. Other meds are specifically geared toward anxiety control. In my case, I needed the drug that best addressed obsessive-compulsive behavior. For me, that meant Prozac.

He also told me it was stupid to take my prescriptions from a primary care physician. Essentially, he said, that was like putting a 12-year-old in charge of a dynamite stockpile.

So he sent me to my current Prozac nurse.

Last year, she knocked my 60-milligram dosage back to 40 for the summer. With the longer days and extra sunlight, the logic was that I wouldn’t need as much. It worked until late summer, when a couple weeks of cloudy weather and earlier sunsets sent my brain chemistry out of whack.

I went back up to 60 and had some steep mood swings in the process. It evened out fairly quickly, but as far as I was concerned, those mood swings weren’t worth the experiment.

So last night, she decided to keep me at 60. If it isn’t broken, why try to fix it?

She asked how I was doing with my therapist.

“Excellent,” I said. “I walk in there with a large cup of Starbucks and he glares at me like a father who can’t get his kid to tie his shoes just right.”

She smiled. “Next time,” she said, “You should walk in with two large cups.”

To that, we laughed like schoolkids who had just shared a dirty joke.

My therapist has buttons I like to push. One button is that he thinks everyone should quit caffeine and do yoga. I’m apparently not the only one who likes to have fun with that. The beauty of it is that I can do that, he can take it, and I still get something valuable from my appointments.

As I’ve said before, drugs without therapy won’t work in the long run. Mental wellness requires a lot of things: Careful diet, therapy is a must if you have a disorder and sometimes you need medication, though that isn’t always the case.

When I have an appointment with the Prozac nurse I usually cuss about it. It takes me an hour to get to her office for something we could do over the phone.

Yesterday, I badly wanted to cancel.

Erin wouldn’t have let me, anyway.

“You need these appointments,” she said yesterday, as she frequently does when I balk at going.

And so I went. I’m glad I did.

OCD Diaries

Posted on

A Relationship That Changed for the Better

Since my father’s stroke last month, I’ve had some long talks with Dianne, my step-mom. Those conversations illustrate how much we’ve both changed over the years. Or is it just me who has changed?

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/S4v-_p5dU34

Let me be honest: Ours has never been an easy relationship. I spent the better part of my teens and 20s resenting her to the core. Our quarrels had all the drama of a TNT series. The two of us in the same room was like throwing a match on gunpowder.

I’ve often wondered who was more at fault along the way. Knowing myself as I do now, I tend to think the trouble was more my fault than hers, because she had the misfortune of joining the family right as I was hitting my malcontented, conflicted and rebellious teenage years. I had a chip on my shoulder the size of an ashtray and I was full of hatred for a lot of reasons real and imagined.

A look at the broader picture shows how she was really at a disadvantage.

My brother died only a few months after she appeared on the scene, and she was home the night he had that final asthma attack. She plunged the adrenaline needle in him while waiting for the ambulance because that’s what you were supposed to do in the event of these attacks. But his number was up, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

She was also there a couple months before, in October 1983, when Michael had a similar attack that almost killed him that night. The doctors didn’t think he was going to make it that night, but he bounced back from the brink just in time, just like I bounced back from the brink more than once when the Croh’s Disease was attacking me so bad that the doctors were ready to pull out the colon and throw it in the trash.

I guess I was just a little luckier than he was.

Anyway, me and Dianne were always in conflict. I thought she was in the marriage with my Dad for his business success. I fought constantly with the step-sister she gave me. I was jealous of the step-brother she gave me because he was suddenly the cute youngest kid. Before my parents divorced it was Michael, Wendi and me, the youngest. Being sick, I was also spoiled rotten. Then the step-siblings came along and Michael died, making me the oldest son, a title that carried a lot of pressure.

I blamed it all on Dianne.

Of course, she also gave me a beautiful half sister in late 1985 who came along at just the right time, bringing joy to the family I never thought we’d see again. I was always grateful for that.

But still we fought. By the late 1990s we were barely speaking to each other. The resentment and hurt ran too deep on both sides. Then, sometime in 2000, things started to change. We met in a small breakfast place on the Revere-Malden border and talked it out, civil in a way that had been inconceivable just a year earlier.

I don’t remember the contents of the conversation exactly. But somewhere in there, we agreed that something had to change. I think the change really set in after Sean was born a year later. Becoming parents gave her a whole new respect for me and Erin. Actually, I think that for me, becoming a parent was when I finally started to grow up. A decade into parenthood, I get a lot of what she was trying to tell me back when I was a self-seeking kid.

Fast-forward to 2011. I know now that back then I was looking for people to blame for my pain and she was too good a target to pass up.

She has stuck by my father through all kinds of illness and turmoil. She loves him deeply, and worries about him constantly.

Nothing has made that clearer than the past month.

I’ve watched her push past the point of exhaustion and borderline madness to care for him.

She’s lost a lot of sleep and you can see it in her eyes. This month has been vastly more brutal for her than the rest of us, except, of course, for Dad. She’s gone over the cliff for him. That’s what love is all about.

I’m sorry I ever doubted her feelings for him when I was younger.

But that’s in the past. We talk to each other as grown-ups now. The respect is mutual. Things can never go back to the way they were.

Thank God for that.

OCD Diaries