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Firing Someone For Mental Illness Is An Outrage

If someone does a lousy job at work, they deserve to be fired. If someone does the job well but is fired because they have a mental illness, that’s an outrage.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:0OGwOky2l941SPRkE56kU9]

This morning’s tirade brought to you by this comment posted on the LinkedIn NAMI group discussion board:

I lost my job as Director – Communications from a regional Chamber of Commerce after disclosing my 30 years of living and working with bipolar in Dec. 2009.

Now after trying to find another job, I applied for SSDI. I just got rejected with a letter saying,”The medical evidence in your file shows that your condition does cause restriction in your ability to function, however, while your condition prevents you from doing previous jobs, you still have the ability to do unskilled work.” 

I was diagnosed with bipolar in 1980, have bouts of depression, social anxiety, migraines, gerd and visable essential tremors in my hands and legs. I cannot stand unsupported for more than a few minutes and the tremors make me not want to leave my home and when I do anxiety worsens them. I can take medication to calm the tremors but those meds also negatively effect my memory, errors, and cognitive abilities. 

I know most people get rejected but I am almost 60 and have worked in public marketing communications at managerial levels since 1984. What should I do?

 I felt I needed to disclose as the work was socially demanding and my tremors showed.

I felt in disclosing that especially a Chamber of Commerce would be somewhat more understanding. Instead they became hostile and took away my startegic job duties and bumped me down to a typist.

Now, let’s start with some clarifications: If this person’s illness prevented them from doing their job, that does put the employer in a bind. I get that. If her condition has suddenly nosedived and it prevents her from doing what she used to do, that’s a tragedy.

The question I have is this: If someone loses their ability to do their job because of heart disease, a terrible injury or cancer, do they get dropped cold by their employer? Do they get treated in a hostile manner? Not from my experience.

I’ve known many people who developed a disease or got in an accident, and none lost their jobs. Their seat simply stayed empty and, in some cases, temps were brought in to do their work until they either recovered or resigned. They were treated with support.

If this woman did her job admirably for many years and just recently hit a period of intensified mental illness, she should be treated like the cancer or heart patient. To fire her because she’s “gone crazy” is, in my opinion, unacceptable.

It’s as insidious as, say, putting limits on coverage for mental health care.

These stories ratchet up the fear level for those suffering from depression, OCD, bipolar disorder and the like. It proves to the sufferer that mental illness is still viewed as a less-than-legitimate illness, something that’s more a figment of the sufferer’s imagination.

I’m not an expert. I can only base my opinion on personal experience. But I’ve heard enough horror stories from other people to know this crap is for real.

That’s exactly why I started this blog.

I chose to out myself and share my experiences so other sufferers might realize they are not freaks and that they have a legitimate, very easily explained medical problem that’s very treatable. It takes that kind of understanding for someone to get up and get help.

I try not to engage in political debate because this is such a personal issue, though sometimes I have to make a point on current events like I did when Health care Reform passed last year.

I do know this, though: Many good people have died because of mental illness. They were ashamed and afraid to get help because of the stupid notion that they are somehow crazy and either need their ass kicked or be institutionalized. So they try to go it alone and either end up committing suicide because their brains are knocked so far off their axis or they die from other diseases that develop when the depression forces the sufferer into excessive eating, drinking, starvation, drug taking or a combination of these things.

There’s also the ridiculous idea that a person’s workmanship becomes valueless when they’re in a depression. If someone misses work because they have cancer, they are off fighting a brave battle. They are fighting a brave battle, of course. No doubt about it.

But depression? That person is slacking off and no longer performing.

I’ve been able to debunk that idea in my own work circle. It helps that I’ve been blessed to work with exceptional, amazing and enlightened people. At work, I’ve gotten nothing but support. I do my job well, and that’s good enough for them. That’s how it should be.

Luckily for me, I got rid of my fear and anxiety long ago, so I’m going to keep sharing my experiences. It probably won’t force change  or tear down the stigma single-handedly.

But if a few more people get just a little more fight in them after reading these diaries, it will have been well worth the risks.

As for what the woman above can do about her situation, the folks in the LinkedIn forum offered some good advice. The best, in my opinion, came from mental health advocate Bonnie Neighbour:

You have two possible areas of recourse. You can sue for unlawful termination. I am not referring to that choice with the rest of this comment. 

Or you can appeal the SSDI denial. Something people need to k ow that is not commonly talked about is that, in deciding on your application for SSDI. the Social Security Dept. will only request records from your doctors, etc. one time. If the applicable records are not submitted within the time frame (and it’s wires short) the Social Security Dept. Decides upon (and they most likely will not tell you the time frame but it’s a matter of weeks) they will automatically deny the claim. You can appeal and get the appropriate records submitted for the appeal. Thus is one reason so many people are denied. 

For those who have not applied for SSDI but who may in the future, the prudent thing to do is collect all your records before you begin the application process and submit them all at once. If you depend on hour doctors’ offices to respond the a request by the Social Security Dept., the likelihood of receiving a denial based on incomplete records is huge. And you will most likely never know why. 

Good luck. 

A third option for you is to find your passion and start doing it — even if it’s volunteer only. For it is by living a fulfilling and passionate life that we stay healthy and can find and maintain mental health recovery.

You can pursue option three while considering option one or two.

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Stuff My Kids (and Their Friends) Say, Part 5

Welcome to another installment of Stuff My Kids Say. Life is full of daily struggle and it can be hard to stop for a moment and appreciate one’s blessings. Fortunately for me, my kids are good at pulling me back down to Earth. And, I realized this past weekend, so are their friends.

Mood music: Primus, “John the Fisherman”

Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 of this series were based on random moments around the house and in the car. You can read part 1 of the series here, part 2 here and part 3 here.

I think you’ll walk away feeling that life isn’t so tough when you’ve seen it from a child’s perspective.

This episode is brought to you by our weekend Scouts camping trip to Battleship Cove in Fall River, Massachusetts, where we spent the night on the battleship U.S.S. Massachusetts.

Duncan, seconds before being "offed" for being a Nazi invader

One of the challenges of hanging out on a battleship is that Duncan just wants to run around unencumbered by his old man. He likes to hang out with his older brother and his friends, who don’t always want to hang around with him. They are 10 and he’s 7. To a 10-year-old, it’s just not cool to let a 7-year-old hang out with you.

So off Sean goes with his buddies, Jack Dalton and Lukas Rouleau. Sean considers Lukas to be one of his best friends.

Describing Lukas’ value as a buddy, Sean says:

“The thing about Lukas is he turns every party into a war game.”

The three run off and Duncan goes to follow them when he’s pulled back by my hand on his jacket.

Annoyed, Duncan says, “I don’t understand why I can’t run around and why I have to hang out with you, Dad. The camp leaders did say ‘enjoy.’ You’re not my idea of enjoyment.”

He gets over it quickly enough, and we make our way to the top of the ship, where he settles into the captain’s chair on the bridge.

Then, in his moment of glory, Sean, Jack and Lukas appear. The three have been searching the ship for Nazis to kill. They look at Duncan and decide he’s one of the evildoers they’ve been looking for.

Jack puts his thumb and finger into the shape of a pistol and executes his Nazi catch at point-blank range. Satisfied, the older boys run off in search of more bad guys.

Duncan, looking like someone just pooped on his birthday cake, lets out a mournful protest.

“Daaaaad! Those morons shot me again!” he bellows.

I decide to help him get over it by crawling down to the lower decks. Somewhere along the way, he sees a repairman crouched into an opening in the wall, hand reaching for tools.

“Dad, why is he making repairs to the ship?” Duncan asks, adding, “He’s wasting his time. The war’s over.”

Later we reunite with the older boys. Lukas has been on this adventure before, and knows where the bombs are hidden. He warns his friends:

“No one should sleep in one of the bunks above Jack’s dad.” Something about wind.

Later, just after lights out, Lukas warns that there are additional wind problems.

“Guys, Jack’s gonna fart and we’re all gonna die,” he says in a matter-of-fact tone. I understand his concern. It’s pretty tight quarters with nowhere to escape from the random clouds of gas.

Sean checks out the our bunks, where we will later be at the mercy of some ill wind

I don’t sleep a wink, but we all survive the night. Just after 6 on Sunday morning, we hurry back to Haverhill with the Dalton boys. Sean and Jack have to be at church by 8:30 because they’re both in the “Passion Play” at the children’s Mass.

We stop at Dunkin Donuts for coffee and breakfast. Jack asks for a coffee Coolata and is shot down. Sean says to me, “Dad, I’m going to need a lot of energy today. Can I have a Mountain Dew?”

Ten years old and he’s already relying on Mountain Dew. I shudder, then tell him no.

John Dalton, the other dad on this adventure, warns the kids not to get chocolate all over their faces, which would surely reveal the breakfast choice to Mrs. Dalton, who would be none too pleased.

I’m more stoic about the whole thing. Sean and Duncan never keep such things from their mom. They tell her they got doughnuts at the earliest opportunity, because they want her to know that they won.

The kids do a great job at Mass and we go home. A few hours later, the house is full of family for one of Sean’s two 10th birthday parties. Compared to the rest of the weekend, this is pretty tame.

At bedtime, I read Duncan a book about how to deal with your feelings when you’re angry. One page notes that it’s OK to get angry with God for life’s unfair twists, as long as you keep praying and get over the need to blame Him for everything.

Duncan says something stunningly insightful for a 7-year-old. Or, perhaps, he’s just proving again that kids have a clearer picture of the world than we grown-ups have:

“Dad, I don’t see how people could get mad at God,” he says.

“Why not?” I ask.

“Because while we’re all busy getting upset down here, we have no idea what God is doing up there.”

That’s probably the best way I’ve ever heard someone explain that God has a plan and we have no idea why things happen the way they do.

But Duncan is pretty certain about one thing God’s not doing up there:

“I know this much,” he says. “God’s not picking his nose, because he doesn’t like that.”

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The Pink FEAR-ies Strike Again

Since Duncan’s favorite color is pink, I get pretty pissed when I see stories about the high-and-mighty going nuts because they mistake a color for a gender or sexual orientation.

Mood music:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwQ0fVShIZk&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

The latest example is this J. Crew ad, where a mom is painting her son’s toe-nails hot pink:

People have been going absolutely crazy over this, suggesting that the boy will be scarred for life and need thousands of dollars of counseling when he gets older.

And then there’s the fear that — shudder — the kid will grow up to be gay. American society will decay around the edges, and we’ll all be dope-slapped for this on Judgement Day.

I always knew nail polish was nothing but trouble, a bottle of sin dropped on our laps by Satan himself.

Here are a few bullshit comments from an article in Yahoo’s Lookout blog:

“Yeah, well, it may be fun and games now, Jenna, but at least put some money aside for psychotherapy for the kid—and maybe a little for others who’ll be affected by your ‘innocent’ pleasure,” Dr. Keith Ablow wrote in a Fox News op-ed. “If you have no problem with the J. Crew ad, how about one in which a little boy models a sundress? What could possibly be the problem with that?”

Erin Brown of the Media Research Center took the criticism a step further — after being sure to remind readers that J. Crew is a fashion favorite of First Lady Michelle Obama — accusing the company of exploiting young Beckett to advance the cause of “liberal, transgendered identity politics.”

Good fucking grief.

There are more reasoned comments in that article, stuff that I agree with:

Sarah Manley, who set off a similar firestorm last Halloween after posting photos of her young son dressed up as his unconventional idol: Daphne from “Scooby Doo,” said of the J.Crew ad, “If the roles had been reversed and the photo…had been of a little girl playing in the mud with trucks, nobody would have batted an eye.”

You know what? she’s absolutely right, as is  Jeanne Sager, who wrote the following on the parenting blog The Stir:

“So go back and look at that picture in the J.Crew ad, will you? What do you see? Do you see pink nail polish on a boy? Or do you see a little boy named Beckett, with beautiful blond curls, and a mom who looks like she is impossibly in love with her kid, in the very best way? Because that’s what I see.”

That’s what I see, too.
This is one of those issues where Duncan has taught me a lot. 
He has a pink winter hat and a pink knitted coin pouch. When a priest saw him wearing the hat last year, a look of concern came over him. “Well, I guess there’s still time,” he said.

One Sunday, Duncan showed the school principal his coin pouch. “That’s an interesting color,” she said. The pouch was stuffed with coins Duncan couldn’t wait to put in the poor box.

I once asked Duncan why pink is his favorite color. His answer: “Because girls like pink. And I like girls.” Innocent words from a 7-year-old boy.

And yet there are those who try to tell me this is dangerous. He could grow up gay.

This is how you start a child down the path of social anxiety, pain and dysfunction. You take something as innocent as a color choice and start suggesting there’s something wrong with him.

When I was a kid, I got hassled over the more old-fashioned stuff, like being overweight. I also kept believing in Santa Clause longer than the other kids my age. Being fat meant being damaged, unworthy of the same respect everyone else got. In high school, I used to watch teachers belittle students who dressed like hippes. The kids were drug-injecting wastoids as far as some of the teachers were concerned. I knew some who were, but I knew others who were not.

Make a kid feel stupid over how they look or what they wear and after awhile they’re probably going to start believing they are damaged goods.

Don’t get me wrong. I think the pink fear crowd have their hearts in the right place. They just want children to be happy and grow into “normal” and happy adults.

But their thinking is flawed.

Here’s my take on the J. Crew ad: It looks like a typical fashion ad: over the top, depicting people with overly big smiles. But it’s harmless.

Hell, I remember painting my own finger nails red as a teenager because I wanted to look like people in the glam metal bands that were all the rage in the 1980s. It was harmless. And trust me, it did nothing to dampen my enthusiasm for girls. I was having no luck with the opposite sex in high school, mind you, but nail polish had nothing to do with that.

As for Duncan, he can like whatever color he wants to like. If you have a problem with that, you can come talk to the boy’s ugly, still overweight Dad.

I’ll probably tell you you’re being shallow and judgemental. I might even tell you you’re being a dickhead.

You’ve been warned.

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Coffee With My Therapist, Part 3

I had mixed emotions as I drove to my therapy appointment this morning.

On the one hand, I was pissed that half my morning was getting blown out for the appointment. I wasn’t happy about all the tasks bearing down on me, either. On the other hand, the coffee I got at Starbucks was pretty damn good and the ride allowed me to get my fill of vintage Ozzy and Randy Rhoads.

Mood music:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSnj8X1zAZI&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

I walked into his office with my extra-large cup of caffeine, as I always do. He commented on my having brought drugs to the appointment again, so I told him about my delight at discovering a coffee blend recently called Jet Fuel.

Then I unloaded about how Holy Week was very late this year, colliding with the kids’ vacation week and a crap load of Scout activities and various other appointments.

It’s nobody’s fault, I told him. It’s just one of those perfect storms that sometimes downpours all over the calendar.

A few years ago I would have been feeling enormous pressure. I’d be binging my guts out over it. This time I’m just a little cranky. That’s progress. I even stopped to hold the door open for a guy whose arm was in a sling on the way into the building.

I patted myself on the back for remembering to do a good deed in the middle of my crankiness.

The therapist listened patiently, then cut to the question he always asks me:

“So, are you going to try yoga sometime soon?” he asks.

He loves to talk about yoga. It’s his favorite subject.

It’s not mine.

I switch the subject, telling him about the nice cigar I enjoyed with a friend last Sunday.

“I see,” he says.

He takes me through the complete inventory: How’s the medication working? Am I less moody now that the days are getting longer? Am I getting enough alone time with my wife? How’s the blog doing? Did I remember to pack my Prozac before flying back from the last business trip?

Very funny, I respond to the last question. When I came home from San Francisco in February, I forgot the pills in my hotel room.

He asks me what I still want to improve about myself. I tell him I’m still learning to live in the present, instead of drifting between the past and the many different futures before me. I’m also still struggling with the concept of patience. I’m still a badly impatient person, especially toward my youngest son.

It’s not long before the yoga comes up again.

“You know yoga helps keep you in the present and learn techniques for patience, right?” he says with a wide grin. He loves when he scores a point.

“I just can’t see myself ever wanting to do Yoga,” I tell him.

“There was once a time when you couldn’t see yourself not binging or suffering anxiety attacks,” he shoots back.

Those things were different, I respond. I was desperate to deal with those other things. Nothing today makes me feel so desperate that I’m willing to try yoga.

“I see,” he says with that grin, as he always does when he’s not buying my answer.

I tell him I’ll think about it.

Just not today — or this year.

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Wear That Depression Like A Friggin’ Grown-Up

Two of my closest friends, God Bless ’em, always think they can read my mood in real time based on something I wrote in this blog a day, week or month ago. But sometimes the written word is just a snapshot in time — a feeling that either intensifies or goes away in short order.

Mood music:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXahja5V9Wo&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

The conversation usually goes something like this:

Friend: “So, you’ve been kind of down lately, huh?”

Me, startled by the comment because I’m in a good mood at that moment: “What do you mean?”

Friend: “Your blog posts have been kinda dark lately.”

They’re just behaving like concerned friends, and I love them for it. But it illustrates the bigger challenge of writing a blog like this.

Since I deal with the darker side of human nature, the tone will inevitably be cloaked in black. Even when I write about feeling hopeful or joyful about something, it can come off dark because to express why something feels joyful, I have to compare it to some of the more depressing episodes in my life.

I don’t apologize for that. It’s the way it must be. You need to experience hell to understand just how good heaven is. And you need to paint an image of both so the reader will know the difference.

The fact of the matter is that I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have bad days, bad moods and outright depressive episodes.

Back when I was mostly unhappy and pissed at the world, I could display sunny moods that gave people a false impression of what was going on inside my head. It’s actually pretty typical for an unhappy soul to come of as happy because they mask what they feel through copious amounts of humor. Humor is a great coping mechanism. Abraham Lincoln certainly understood that.

Some of the most gifted comics in history lived brutally unhappy lives. Charlie Chaplin and all Three Stooges come to mind. Curley’s life was downright heart-breaking. Why he never picked up a machine gun and unloaded in a Hollywood parking lot is beyond me. Henry Rollins, a pretty dark fella whose spoken word performances are actually quite funny, once made this gem of an observation:

“I’d rather be funny than happy.”

I used to latch onto that quote for comfort. Fuck it, I’d think to myself. I’ll never be happy, so I’ll just be funny.

But that came with a price: My brand of humor lives on the razor’s edge. If I’m not careful, doing what I think is funny turns out to be hurtful to someone else.

That’s just as true today as it was during my deepest period of unhappiness.

Just as my dark streak is all over my writing today, even though I’m a much happier person.

How can I be happy when life can still be so difficult? I guess it was a case of lowering my expectations. By not expecting too much out of the world, I’m let down a lot less often. And as happy as that makes me, the statement is still pretty fucking dark.

It just goes to show life isn’t as black and white as some make it out to be.

The bottom line is that my writing will always be somewhat dark. It’s the product of where I’ve been. I’ll also continue to go through my periods of depression. It’s a chronic condition to be managed. But you’re never really cured.

I’m ok with that now. You might say I’ve learned to wear my depression like a grown-up.

When I wore it like a kid — which I did well into my 30s — melancholy could radiate off me like the stench of a decaying body. I’d walk into the room, and while I might be cracking a joke and smiling, you knew I wasn’t in my right mind. The body language said it all. My eyes said it all. And my inability to stay in that same room for long said it all.

Now, I can walk into a room and stay there for hours, talking freely with people and not really worrying if a piece of the last meal is hanging off my facial scruff.

But under that, I can still be depressed.

It’s all good, because while depression can still make me unpleasant at times (just ask my wife and kids), it can’t make me unhappy like I used to be.

I’ve learned that happiness is a state of inner peace and the feeling that if you keep trying to do what’s right, everything will actually turn out alright.

I prefer that to a simple good mood, which can be all too fleeting.

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Run For Your Life (Action Re-Defined)

A huge challenge of learning to live life in the middle lane is that much of my spiritual growth and sobriety-abstinence has come to revolve around the belief that like a shark, you either swim or you drown. Or, to earn my recovery and faith, I have to run for my life.

MOOD MUSIC IS, APPROPRIATELY ENOUGH, THIS RARITY FROM MOTLEY CRUE CALLED “RUN FOR YOUR LIFE”

To run for my life is to always be doing things: Helping to teach the R.C.I.A (Right of Christian Initiation for Adults), writing like it’s my last day on Earth, cramming a million activities into a road trip.

This leads to a lot of confusion on my part, and the result is a life thrown out of balance (a topic I covered in the post “Back Where I Belong“). But every once in awhile, people who are smarter than me bring home the point that there’s an art to the running; a way to do it without leaving people who need you in the dust.

The new pastor at my church, Father Tim Kearney, drove home the point in a column he wrote for the weekly church bulletin about how it’s much more important to do God’s work than to simply talk about how important it is. He used a Mother Theresa example where she’s listening to a young seminarian talk about the need to care for poor, sick, starving children. She hands the young man a baby to feed and take care of and walks away. Why talk about how important it is when you can just do it?

I’m not sure I captured the example with 100 percent precision, since I’m working off of memory at the moment. But you get the idea.

The second example came during my 12-Step study meeting last night, where we focused exclusively on Step 11:  Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

The evening’s speaker was an elderly woman, sober for many years now, who explained that this step is what has made it possible for her to live the other steps, which are all about action.

The need to meditate and pray so you can jump into action the right way.

It’s not like I didn’t already know about this. Erin makes a point to sit in a chair, do a reading and pray about it just about every morning. But she’s always been more patient than me.

I think yesterday God was talking to me, trying to remind me that yes, action is what’s needed, but that action and running are not the same thing.

Father Kearney’s example of action revolved around patience and slow, deliberate movement — not bouncing all over the place like an atomic tennis ball.

That’s something I still need to work on.

The other thing I’m learning is that action can and should be close to home as much as possible, not all over creation.

All this will be put to the test in the next two weeks. Saturday I take the kids on a 2-hour drive to Fall River for a Scouts camping trip at Battleship Cove (we’re bunking in the bowels of one of the battleships). The next morning we have to be on the road by 6 a.m. to get to church in time for Sean to do his part in a “Passion play” for the Palm Sunday children’s Mass. That afternoon, we’re having one of two birthday parties for Sean’s 10th birthday. From there it’s vacation week, complete with painting, cleaning and various appointments.

It’s the action of being present for family — the most important kind there is.

And for me, sometimes, the hardest action to master.

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You Think No Flour-Sugar Is Hard? Try This

This week at the CSO Perspectives conference in Naples, Fla., I gained a whole new level of respect for Akamai CSO Andy Ellis. Without meaning to, he reminded me that my abstinence from flour and sugar is pretty easy compared to how it could be.

Mood music:

Andy is allergic to dairy. Just a trace of it will make him sick. An Air Force veteran, he ties it to an anthrax vaccine shot he received several years back.

This kind of allergy is particularly tough to manage at a conference, where it seems every scrap of food has some kind of dairy in it. But the man didn’t complain. Not once. He made the hotel food providers get him something he could eat, but he didn’t cuss or fuss.

I’ve been so immersed in this no flour, no sugar thing that I had forgotten I was once banned from all dairy.

In the 1970s and early 80s, when my struggle with Crohn’s Disease was at its roughest point, I wasn’t allowed to have anything that has milk in the ingredients. It wasn’t just abstinence from a glass of milk or cheese. If bread had milk in the ingredients, no dice. A little trace of dried milk in a pot pie recipe? Forget about it.

Part of it was because doctors didn’t know as much about Crohn’s Disease back then. Since dairy is typically associated with the occasional stomach discomforts, I was banned from it.

In a turn of events both irritating and comical, the doctors decided around 1986 that I could have dairy after all. Other Crohn’s cases showed them that there was no direct link between milk and a flare-up. In some cases yes. But not all.

I’ve mentioned before how I think the forced fasting during flare-ups tilted me toward binge-eating as the ground-zero addiction later on. Thinking back, the dairy ban contributed as well. Without dairy, there was little I could eat. So once I could have it, I was going to have it all.

Now, I do envy Andy a little bit because he can enjoy a good glass of wine while I have to be sober. But in the grand scheme of things, he has it tougher than me. You’d be surprised how many non flour-sugar food choices are out there.

I always suspected the CSO of Akamai was tough as nails. Now I know he is.

Andy Ellis Akamai CSO with George

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Back Where I Belong

I’m sitting at the airport in Ft. Myers, Fla. waiting to board a plane that’ll take me home. I like to go on these trips. But it’s always better to go home.

MOOD MUSIC: “DRIFTAWAY” BY MOTLEY CRUE (the Corabi album)

Ever since I shook myself free of the fear and anxiety that came with my earlier form of OCD, I’ve had a craving for these journeys, perhaps for the simple reason that I can go through an airport and onto a plane without feeling like nails are being hammered into my intestines.

I think there’s also a high I get from going to a security show and kicking ass with my writing (I wrote eight posts in my security blog at this latest conference). Writing conference stories used to leave me harried. No more.

But on my last trip, to San Francisco in February, something went wrong. If you look at my OCD Diary posts from that week, you could see me coming unhinged. I wrote about discomfort I felt as everyone told me what an honest guy I am because I’m not always so honest. In fact, that week a lie was eating away at my conscience.

I came home to a wife who was understandably angry with me. I was also sick as a dog, burning with fever. We worked through it, but it woke me up to the fact that I can’t do it all, 24 hours a day like I sometimes want to.

I needed to find the middle speed, which is hard as hell when you have an obsessive-compulsive mind and an addiction or four to keep in check.

I re-realized that I had to be truer to my top priorities: God, my wife and children. I can’t stop doing all the things I do. My life has evolved this way because, I think, I’m meant to give a part of myself to helping others. At the very least, it’s payment for the second chance God gave me.

But, to use corporate business-speak, I need to do it smarter, and be willing to drop it altogether for family. That’s one of the truly sick things about OCD: You know who and what you should be paying attention to, but the mental pull still drags you to less-important things that seem awfully important at the time.

That’s my blessing and my curse.

Right now, all I care about is seeing Erin’s face and holding her again. That may sound sappy but it’s true. I also want to hug the kids awake in the morning. I want lots of quality time with them and to take care of the things around the house Erin has been stuck dealing with on her own.

I want coffee from the fancy machine I got for Christmas. And I want to return to the routine that is vital for my long term abstinence and sobriety. These trips make it hard to hold that part of my life together, though I’ve managed so far.

I missed some things at home this week, including seeing Duncan get dressed up as a character from a pirate book he read for a class assignment.

He and Erin made the costume together.

Erin always makes the boys’ costumes at Halloween and that is just one element of her greatness: We could just buy costumes in the store and the kids may not mind. There’s nothing wrong with buying a costume.

But to Erin that’s unthinkable. For those kids, only hand-made reflections of their fertile imaginations will do. It’s the harder way, but to her it’s the better way.

It’s that kind of spirit that keeps me trying to be a better man. It’s what I should do. But it’s also what she deserves: a better me.

Whether I’m pulling it off or not, the important thing for now is that I’m headed home. And that makes me extremely happy.

In a couple weeks there’s another security show, and it’s right in Boston. I love going to SOURCE Boston and I plan to write several advance stories about it next week.

But unlike past years, I’m skipping this one.

The kids are on vacation and have activities galore. Sean turns 10 years old that week. And it’s Holy Week. We’re devout Catholics, and the stuff at church is going to come first.

I won’t lie: It’ll be hard to miss it. I’ll miss seeing people and feeding off the energy.

But in the grand scheme of things, home is where I belong.

My security friends will understand.

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Guilt: The Blessing and the Curse

Everyone struggles with guilt from time to time. Guilt is good in that feeling it means you have the desire to right a wrong. But when you mix it with OCD, the results are catastrophic.

MOOD MUSIC: “Step Outside” by 360s

I’ve always had a powerful guilty conscience. For the most part it has served me well. In my moments of anger, hatred, depression and despair, it has kept me from going too far in my quest to seek revenge on people for whatever I felt they did to me at the time.

Without it, I probably would have done things that would have made people abandon me. Or, I might have done something that would have landed me in jail. The guilty conscience kept me from going too far. That’s probably why God put it in me.

At the same time, guilt would super-charge all of my OCD ticks: The worry out of control, the binge eating, the self loathing and the repetitive actions.

People like to joke about having Catholic or Jewish guilt thrust on them. Since I grew up Jewish and became a Catholic, I’ve found there’s some truth to that. My mother was and is the perfect stereotype of the so-called Jewish mother, using guilt whenever I made choices that weren’t to her liking. In the Catholic community, some people will push the guilt button if you let your kids talk too loud during Mass or if you vote for a Democrat.

But I can’t blame them. The fact that I’ve always had a guilty conscience stems from having done bad things: Lying, being cruel to someone, neglecting my soul.

In a lot of ways, I’ve caused it all on my own.

I still have a guilty conscience, but it’s not as destructive a force as it used to be.

I used to use guilty feelings as an excuse to beat myself to death. I’d typically do this by giving in freely to my addictions, binging until my gut hurt so much that I wanted to be dead. It would also cause me to avoid people I may have hurt along the way, when making things right with them would have been the better course.

In my biggest moments of guilt, I’d isolate myself in my room, not showering for days.

The smell would hit the few visitors I had like a punch in the face.

Somewhere along the way, though, I’ve been able to turn it around. The guilt is still there. I’ve just learned how to react to it in a healthier way.

If I hurt someone, instead of hiding I try to make amends with the person. In doing so, I’ve found that most people are kind, forgiving souls.

If I make bad decisions, I’m more likely to pray and turn it over to God.

Or I write about it here. That way, it’s at least out in the open, where I can get a better look at it and have a fair fight.

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The Time I Almost Left Revere

I sometimes wonder what kind of adolescence I would have had if we had followed through on plans to sell the Lynnway house and leave Revere in 1984.

Mood music:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbrF00Y4qE8&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

My father always talked about moving from Revere to Lynnfield, Mass., because he didn’t like the school system. At the same time, he fought for and won the Lynnway house in the divorce, partly on the promise that me and my siblings could continue to grow up there and not be uprooted. That’s how my mother used to tell it, anyway.

But by 1984, things changed and my father put the house on the market. My brother had just died and my soon-to-be step-mom, Dianne, and two step-siblings were now living with us. I think Dad and Dianne were looking for a fresh start, and despite my sister’s fierce misgivings, I was eager to leave Revere, too.

I was 14 and, three years into my parents’ divorce, there was still a lot of venom in the air. I was in my first year of junior high and hating every second of it.

There were also a lot of bad memories in that house, and I was hoping for a getaway.

There were the memories of me getting sick from the Crohn’s Disease and the Prednisone side-effects, of my mother beating the shit out of my sister every morning because inevitably one morning chore or another would fail to meet my mother’s standards; the fighting between my parents, and the fear of the ocean after the sea rose up and ravaged my neighborhood during the Blizzard of 1978.

There was always something strange about living there. One morning I woke up to find the kitchen table had been turned into a Ouija board. My mother used crayon to do that. It turned out she and some friends decided to have a seance the night before. That stuff was always happening. As an adult it wouldn’t have seemed all that odd. As a kid it was bonkers.

So I was happy in 1984 when Dad told us we were moving to Lynnfield. That was it: the new beginning I craved. They signed a purchase-and-sale agreement on a house in Lynnfield and we even got a tour of the place.

Then, at the 11th hour they backed out because of fierce resistance from my sister and step-sister.

I was devastated, and I think it fueled some of my rebellious nature from there on out.

By 1992 I was a grown-up still living like a kid under my father’s roof. My attitude about the Lynnway house had softened because I got to take over the basement apartment in 1987. It was my space, rent-free, and I took full advantage of it. I partied hard in that space. But in 1992 we did end up moving to Lynnfield.

Looking back, I’m glad we stayed as long as we did. I would go on to experience happier coming-of-age moments in that house, like the parties I mentioned in the last paragraph.

And, had I left Revere as a teen, I never would have made the friendships that would help define me as an adult.

It’s a good lesson for those who spend a lot of time dreaming of what could have been.

I think God puts us in certain places for a reason, and I was meant to spend my entire upbringing in Revere.