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A Call From My Mother

It’s Wednesday morning. I’m working from home, face behind the computer. My kids and two neighborhood kids are tearing though the house, overturning everything in sight. Then the phone rings.

Mood music:

“It’s been five years,” the voice on the other end says. “Can’t we fix this?”

It’s my mother. I saw her at my cousin’s wedding two weeks ago but we largely avoided contact. We’re six years into an estrangement that I think is the result of shared mental illness.

Can we fix this?

I really don’t know.

I want to. I’ve never been happy about what happened, though I felt and still feel that the split was necessary.

Some folks think this stuff is simple. Life’s too short not to get along, they say. But life is far more complex than that. Relationships with a history of abuse? That’s one of the most complex and confusing beasts of all.

I’ve had a lot of love and blessings in my life in the last few years. I’ve come far in overcoming addictions and mental illness. Even the family discord has served a purpose. Somewhere along the way, I’ve found myself.

It would be nice if I could mend some more relationships. But I have to be careful.

At the wedding, my Uncle Bobby, the last of the siblings that included my grandmother, took me aside at one point and said life is too short to hate.

He is absolutely right.

But hate has nothing to do with it.

Mistrust, hurt feelings and deep disagreements over right and wrong? Absolutely. But not hate.

If it were about hate, all this would be cut, dry and easy.

I’ll have to do some hard thinking over this one.

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You Can’t Be Everyone’s Friend

I once wrote about an obsession with the Facebook friend count. I worried about offending people who de-friended me. Lately I realize it’s ok if I can’t be everyone’s friend. I’m even warming to the idea.

Mood music:

I’ve always had this stupid idea that I needed to be everyone’s friend. Even when I was bullying someone, I’d turn around and try to be their friend. I always wanted everyone in my family to like me, even when I was busy hating them.

I’ve carried that into adulthood and got obsessed about it with things like Facebook. This morning I glanced at my friend count and it was 1,713. I could have sworn it was 1,715 a few days ago. So I started looking around to see who might have gotten mad at me. I noticed that three relatives had disconnected from me. A year ago that would have bothered me a lot more than it did this morning.

“At least my ‘friends’ seem to be sticking around,” I thought to myself.

Sarcasm aside, I do think I’m turning a corner with this whole like-dislike thing. Slowly, it’s sinking in that I need to do a better job at listening to my own words. At the beginning of this blog is a post called “Being a People Pleaser is Dumb.” I wrote about how I wanted to be the golden boy at work more than anything back in the day, until I realized it was absolutely impossible to please everyone all the time. In fact, some people are unworthy of the effort.

I’ve had to learn that lesson all over again in the social networking world.

When people walk away from me online, I figure it’s because they don’t particularly enjoy this blog. So be it.

You can’t be everyone’s friend. You shouldn’t be everyone’s friend.

I’m slowly warming to the idea that if some people don’t like you it’s because you have the stones to take a stand on the things you believe in.

You either like me or you don’t. It’s all good.

I’m connected to a lot of people I’m not particularly fond of these days. It’s nothing personal. I just find find the whiny, woe-is-me status updates grating. Facebook is full of that stuff, along with all the self-righteous, pre-manufactured statements people wrap their arms around.

But it’s your profile.

Do what you want with it, and I’ll do what I want with mine.

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A Link Between Prednisone, Mental Illness

Since I have Crohn’s Disease, I’ve been asked if it’s linked to OCD. Yesterday, someone took the question a step further and asked if I think Prednisone led to my mental illness.

Mood music:

Here was the question, as posed to me on Facebook:

“Bill, do you think prednisone had anything to do with your OCD? You are the second person I know to have Crohn’s and depression, I have taken the drug in the past and it definitely messed with me mentally.”

The short answer is that I don’t know. I’m not a doctor and I can’t speculate on scientific questions I know nothing about. All I have are scientifically unsupported theories based on personal experience. I’m willing to explore the question from that perspective.

Of this I have no doubt:

Prednisone had brutal side effects that linger to this day. It damaged my vision, making glasses necessary at all times. It sparked migraines that still come and go. It gave me mood swings that have never really left me. And it had plenty to do with the binge-eating habit that has hounded me as an adult.

Prednisone does an excellent job of cooling down a Chron’s flare up. If not for the drug, chances are pretty good I wouldn’t be here right now. More than once the disease got so bad the doctor’s were talking about removing my colon and tossing it in the trash. Each time, the medication brought me back from the brink.

But there was a heavy price — literally and figuratively.

The drug quadrupled my appetite, which was already in overdrive because of the food restrictions imposed upon me during times of illness.

It corrupted my relationship with food forever.

But I can’t say it was the cause of me developing OCD. There are many reasons I developed the disorder. Prednisone may have had a role, but I’ll never know for sure.

But that’s fine with me.

At this point, it doesn’t matter how I got it. I have it, and the best I can do is manage it with all my coping tools, with extra help from Prozac and the 12 Steps of Recovery, which I use to control the addictive behaviors.

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Protecting Your Kids Isn’t Always Right

I’ve always been fiercely protective of my children. Part of it is that fear of loss. I’m like Marlin the clown fish in “Finding Nemo.” Like Marlin, I’m starting to realize I need to let the kids have some adventures.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/E5H8DwJI0uA

Any good parent is going to be over-protective to a point, and that’s how it should be. God gave us these kids to nurture, and we have to make sure they make it to adulthood and beyond.

But we’re also supposed to teach them how to survive adversity. For all my talk in this blog, I haven’t always done that part very well.

Some of it is my own background. Having watched my parents divorce, a brother die and a best friend commit suicide, I’ve had an overwhelming urge to shield Sean and Duncan from danger at all costs. That kind of compulsion is tailor-made for someone with OCD, because we drive ourselves mad trying to control all the things we are absolutely powerless to control.

I’ve gone crazy over all the usual things. I see a mosquito bite or two on their legs and I go into a fit of lunacy because mosquitoes can carry dangerous diseases. Letting them out of my sight would fill me with dread.

But I also remember something else from childhood: After my brother died, my mother, who was already overbearing, became absolutely suffocating. I think she wanted me to stay in whatever room she was in straight on through adulthood.

Naturally, I rebelled.

Thank God I did, because without taking some chances in life and breaking free of your protective sphere, you amount to nothing.

I can’t put my kids through the same thing, no matter how much I worry about them.

Learning to better control my OCD had been helpful. When I learned to break free of the fear and anxiety, I stopped going crazy over the little things.

This summer I’ve suddenly realized how far I’ve come.

Sean and Duncan have a couple new friends from the neighborhood. One boy’s family runs the farmland all around us and is accustomed to exploring all the woodland trails. Sean and Duncan now run off with their new friends, hanging out in a secret fort they built in the woods and digging holes in the mud by the culverts.

A funny thing has happened here. I find myself kicking the kids out of the house on sunny days, telling them to go explore and enjoy the outdoors.

A couple years ago, the prospect would have terrified me. Now it feels natural.

This doesn’t mean I no longer worry about my kids being in danger. I worry about it all the time. I don’t think that’s the OCD. I think it’s the normal reaction from a parent who adores his children.

But now, when I get uncomfortable about it all, I remember a scene from the movie I mentioned at the beginning of this post: Marlin and Dory are inside a whale, and Marlin laments that he failed to keep a promise to his son. The exchange went something like this:

Marlin: “I promised I’d never let anything bad happen to him.”

Dory: “That’s a funny thing to promise. If nothing ever happens to him, then nothing will ever happen to him. Not much fun for little Harpo.”

Kids need adventure. They even need to experience adversity. That’s how they learn to be good, strong adults.

That’s what I keep telling myself, anyway.

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From youngest child to oldest son: Anatomy of an identity crisis

When a sibling’s death turns the baby of the family into the oldest son, you get an identity crisis filled with anger and confusion.

As part of my treatment for OCD I’ve had to dig deep into my Revere past for clues on how I got this way. Recently, this huge piece of the puzzle presented itself.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:5QJ7GsolBcJP0tQnEZIU6i]

I’ve written at length about my brother Michael, who died of an asthma attack when I was 13. That experience will test any average kid, and I was no exception. The loss infused a deep reservoir of fear and anxiety in me that would bubble over many times over the years.

But something else happened that would make me feel strange and alone for a long time.

I started my life as the youngest of three kids, the proverbial baby of the family. Michael was the oldest, and in the Brenner family much has always been expected of the oldest son.

My father was the middle child of his generation, but he was the only son. My grandfather, who came off a boat from the former Soviet Union with all the typical old-school values, expected the world of my father. As my grandfather descended deep into old age and illness in the mid-1960s, my father became increasingly responsible for the family business.

Growing up, my older brother became the one my father leaned on the most. Michael was encouraged to chart his own course and was studying to be a plumber. But he was expected to help out with the family business and do a lot of the grunt work at home.

I was the baby, and a sick and spoiled one at that. I came along almost three years after my sister Wendi, and by age eight I was in and out of the hospital with dangerous flare ups of Crohn’s Disease. I got a lot of attention but nothing hard was expected of me. I was coddled and I got any toy I wanted.

The result was a lower-than-average maturity level for my age. At age 10 I acted like I was 5 sometimes. I would crawl into bed with my father for snuggles, just like a toddler might do.

During Christmas 1980 — the first after my parents’ divorce — I wanted it to look like Santa had come, even though I knew by that point that he didn’t really exist. I clung hard to the delusion, because my parents played Santa all the way up to their last Christmas as a couple, when I was nine. So on Christmas Eve 1980, I took all the gifts I had already opened and arranged them as if Santa had dropped them in my living room. I even wrote a “To Billy from Santa” note. Christmas morning I got up, went in the living room and expressed all the excitement of a kid who discovers that the jolly fat guy had come overnight.

My maturity level hadn’t changed much by the time I hit 13. I probably regressed even further right after my brother died. But as 1984 dragged on, I was slowly pulled into the role of oldest son.

All the stuff that was expected of my brother became expected of me, and I wasn’t mentally equipped to deal with it. My brother had a lot of street smarts that I lacked.

As I descended into my confusing and angry teen years, I would be sent on deliveries for the family business. I’d get flustered and lose my sense of direction. One time my father sent me to Chelsea for a package. It was 4:30 and the place I was going to was closing at 5. I got there at 5:10 and had to drive back to Saugus without a package. I felt humiliated and ashamed.

As I reached my 20s all that immaturity and feeling of inadequacy hardened into an angry rebellious streak. I started getting drunk and stoned a lot and would hide behind boxes in my father’s warehouse, chain-smoking cigarettes and binge eating while everyone else did the dirty work.

I spent three years hiding in a community college so I wouldn’t have to work. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, though I saw myself a poet and musician.

I try hard to remember the point where I started to finally act like the oldest son and accept responsibility for my life. There’s no single moment I can think of, though I trace the turning point to when Erin and I started dating in 1993.

I stayed selfish for many years after that, but I had at least found my career choice and work ethic. My work ethic would become excessive like a lot of other things in my life, but the feelings of inadequacy would linger.

Every time I got a raise or promotion, I’d call my father, eager to show him how I was moving up in the world and becoming the oldest son he always wanted.

He would ask how much the raise was and I’d tell him.

“That’s it?” he would ask.

Never, ever good enough, I thought bitterly.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come around to see and respect his point of view. Becoming a parent probably pushed me hard in that direction. I realized along the way that Dad was doing his best to teach me how to be a man and fly on my own.

He wanted me to understand the value of a dollar and a hard day’s work. He wanted me to understand what it was like to care about things other than myself.

Slowly but surely, I figured it out. Thanks, Dad.

Still, to this day, I still need to work at it.

All the confusion and anger over going from the baby to the oldest son has settled into gratitude. I have an amazing life and the inner piece that has always escaped me. I wish my brother was still here to corrupt his nephews, but in a sick sort of way, maybe his exit from the stage was required in order for me to have a chance.

That too might be delusional thinking, and make no mistake: I’d still give up a large percentage of my personal growth to have him around today.

But as this whole experience demonstrates, it’s not about me. Today I’m the oldest son and I think I’ve finally gotten the hang of it.

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When Playing It Safe Makes Things Worse

I had coffee with a friend from the security industry yesterday. I thought I was coming to offer feedback on something having to do with the profession. Then he told me about a mental-emotional problem.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:4DA95pyBe6QORPGvTEuMWQ]

He told me he had a bunch of medical tests and they discovered that a small corner of his brain doesn’t work as well as it should. The result is that his short-term memory frequently takes a dive.

There are far worse problems to have. But his main concern is that it’s keeping his career from going where he wants it to.

We went back and forth about whether he should make his condition public or whether he should pursue other medical options.

As I sipped my iced Starbucks it became clear that something else was going on.

His biggest problem, I discovered and told him, is that he’s held back by fear — fear of what might happen if his short-term memory acted up in the midst of a job he really wanted to be doing.

He admitted that his recent career moves have involved a lot of playing it safe, doing things where there’s the least opportunity for failure at the hands of his mental tick.

I’ve been down this road before. And you know what? Playing it safe never helps. In fact, it just makes things worse.

Several years ago, when it became clear to me that my brain didn’t work normally, fear engulfed me until my self esteem was reduced to an ash pile. I held back in my work as night editor of The Eagle-Tribune. I tried playing it safe, never going toe to toe during disagreements with other editors.

Then I decided that the solution was to get out of there and find something less stressful to do. I opted to go back to straight reporting and went to TechTarget. Fortunately, the job turned out to be far more challenging than I expected. I realized this right at the time I decided to tackle my mental illness head on.

Luckily, my boss was a nurturing soul who was willing to let me go for the throat and get better. Miraculously, my work didn’t suffer. In the years to come, in fact, my workmanship would get better.

Now I do a lot of stuff in my job that’s out of my comfort zone. I give talks in front of groups of people. I get on airplanes. I venture an opinion on topics that I know will draw heavy disagreement. I give my boss a hard time when I don’t agree about something.

A few years ago, the very idea of doing those things would have scared me into an emotional breakdown.

I’ve screwed up along the way. But I’m still here.

I do my job well enough, often enough. And the more I succeed, the more confident I get.

Had I played it safe because of the things that might have gone wrong because of my OCD and anxiety, I wouldn’t be doing what I love today.

It’s not worth worrying about the mistakes you might make. You WILL make mistakes. And most of the time, you’ll be the only one to notice.

When my kids worry about making mistakes, I play them some Def Leppard and remind them that a one-armed drummer makes mistakes, but that all you can hear is him driving the heartbeat of the song despite a missing limb.

He could have retired from music and that would have made his life worse.

But he took a chance and designed a drum kit that helped him get past his problem.

Call me overly idealistic. Tell me I’m blowing sunshine up your collective asses.

It’s what I believe. Because I’ve been down this road.

My life today is far from perfect. It can get messy at times.

But it beats the hell out of playing it safe.

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Diary of a Thumb Sucker

My son Duncan sucks his thumb. No big deal, but since he’s going to be eight soon, he’s coming around to the realization that it’s probably time to stop. There’s just one problem.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/TraSBSNfpCg

Much of the time, he’s not aware that he’s doing it, which can make quitting all the more difficult.

Duncan usually does it when he’s tired or feeling insecure. It’s the latter part I worry about most.

This is one of the many challenges of parenting this loving, witty and all-around beautiful boy.

As I’ve mentioned before, we’ve had Duncan evaluated in recent months and have learned he fits all the textbook symptoms of ADHD. He’s still too young for an accurate diagnosis, but we’ve blasted full steam ahead at getting him the help he needs.

He goes to a therapist and loves it. As she talks to him, he gets to make cool things: A pink lizard he made out of beads, for example. He does a lot of writing and drawing exercises, and is slowly learning a lot about himself. He’s also beginning to learn a bunch of coping tools for anger, insecurity and focus.

When school resumes, he’ll be getting help with his fine-motor skills, which will make him better able to express himself through art and writing.

The boy has come a long way since the start of the year, and we’re very proud of him.

This makes me especially happy, because he’s learning things now that I only started to learn after I brushed up against multiple emotional breakdowns and spiraled into addictive pursuits.

Maybe, just maybe, Duncan will be the Brenner who breaks the cycle of mental illness that has a deep history in the family.

Right now, it’s like we’re watching him in his own personal springtime, where his abilities are starting to sprout and bloom. His sun is rising.

There’s still a way to go, of course, and to me his thumb sucking illustrates that. A lot of insecure thoughts continue to swirl around in his head. He sucks his thumb to sooth himself, just like I did with binge eating. I know that after developing coping tools, it takes a long time to master them. Hell, I’m still trying to master them.

The other part of the challenge is that we still don’t have a rock solid diagnosis.

Duncan’s doctor says his ADHD-like symptoms could also be the very beginnings of something much different — bipolar disorder, depression, maybe even OCD like his old man.

I’ve always had the fear that my kids would inherit my defects. I don’t worry nearly as much now, though.

Duncan may have his struggles. Everybody has their struggles. Tell me you’ve never had a wave of depression or been addicted to something and I’ll tell you you’re full of shit.

But Duncan is not me. He’s his own person. And so far, his childhood has been much different than mine was.

He also has a phenomenal mother. Between her strength and goodness and the skills I’ve picked up on the road to recovery, he’s going to do just fine.

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Stuff My Kids Say: Summer Edition

I’ve said it before: When life gets you down and it’s hard to get back up, the best medicine is often the things you hear from children. My kids prove it all the time. Here are fresh examples.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/V1DOcke51iM

–Duncan, after listening to a couple minutes of the 360s song “Deadpan Superstar,” which I have playing on my laptop: “Why the heck would anyone write about a dust pan superstar?”

–Sean and Duncan have replaced high-fives with “high butts,” where they jump in the air and crash butts.

–I now say the following before each sentence directed at the kids: “Thanks in advance for not whining.” It works half of the time.

–Erin is making me and the kids pay 50 cents whenever we leave a light on. Now the runts are teaming up to blame me for every light left on.

–Sean just informed me that he “Just released something nasty from my nasty spot.” Yeah. Nasty indeed.

–I get home and the kids delight in telling me how Erin had to put money in the curse jar for saying a bad word. I ask for hints on what the word was and get this in response: Duncan: “She said d-a-m-m-i-t.” Sean: “You forgot the M, stupid.”

–Sean: “I’m doing this (chore) under protest.” My response: “Aint it grand to live in a country where you can protest without getting shot?”

–My kids get some sensitivity training, Def Leppard style.http://lnkd.in/eP97HE

–Says Sean: “Little Red Riding Hood was a stupid little girl who should have been eaten by a wolf. They made a PG-13 movie about her.”

–The kids requested Cheap Trick for the ride to see Dad and Thin Lizzy for the ride home. My rock n roll child corruption program proceeds apace.

–Sean get’s an education about OCD:

The setting: Our living room, where Sean and Duncan are folding laundry under my supervision. I’m nagging at the kids to get the job done. No getting distracted, I tell them. No complaining. Just get the chore done.

Sean: “Dad, is this your OCD acting up?”

Me: “What do you mean?”

Sean: “You insisting that we get this done right now. Are you having an OCD moment?”

Me: “No. If I were having an OCD moment, I’d get off this couch and finish folding the laundry myself, and I’d be crazy over it because I had to jump in and do it. In this case, I’m making you guys finish the job, and I’m nagging because you two will get distracted otherwise. Then I’ll have to keep staring at the pile of clothes on the floor.”

Sean: “I wish you were having an OCD moment.”

–“Not Christianary.” Sean’s term for doing or saying something that’s naughty.

–Me: “Sean, stop picking on your brother.” Sean: “But Dad, I haven’t picked on him for…minutes.”

OCD Diaries

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You CAN Revisit Your Past (A Trip to Revere)

Erin had an audio conference to record Thursday morning, so to ensure a quiet house, I put the kids in the car and went to Revere Beach, the scene of my tumultuous, painful, angry yet beautiful upbringing.

I’ve written a lot about Revere in this blog. How could I avoid it? But I’ve been short on photos to show you. I fixed that problem with this latest journey back in time. Sean and Duncan had a field day picking up shells and jumping in the water — things I took for granted at their age.

The most striking thing about visiting my old home is that as a whole, Revere Beach is a far more beautiful place than I remember growing up. Part of it is because there was a massive renovation of the beachfront in the 1990s. Pavilion roofs ripped off in the Blizzard of 1978 were replaced, sidewalks were extended to the entire length of the beach and, most importantly, the Deer island sewage treatment plant has cleaned up the ocean considerably.

Here’s the rocks behind Carey Circle, just footsteps from my front door. I used to hide here during moments of anger and depression, chain smoking Marlboro Reds:

The house on the right is where Sean Marley grew up. My house was two doors down. During my teenage years, I spent more time in the Marley house than I did in my own. The house on the left is where Sean moved in after he and Joy got married. It’s also the house where his life ended:

My house, dead center, as seen from Pines Road, across the street:

A lot of dead jelly fish used to wash up on the beach. Here’s the private part of the beach, where the bored among us would blow up the dead fish with firecrackers and, on the fourth of July, the bigger explosives.

 This is the first house after Carey Circle, where the Lynnway becomes Revere Beach Boulevard. Me and my siblings used to hang out in this house in the 1970s and play with the kids who lived there. Their father allegedly had ties to the mob and, sometime in 1978 or 1979, he was gunned down in the kitchen. It was believed to be haunted after that, but I never really took that seriously. The house did creep me out, though:

The trip ended with lunch at Kelley’s.

A good trip, I’d say.

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The Brady Bunch Offended Me

Sherwood Schwartz, creator of “Gilligan’s Island” and “The Brady Bunch,” has died at age 94. Naturally, I’m remembering how I hated “The Brady Bunch” for giving me a fake picture of family life.

Mood music:

I hated “The Brady Bunch” because it made me so angry that my own family was never like that. But then no one’s family is really like that.

I did like the movie adaptations that came out in the 1990s because the films mocked the feel of the original series. You had the family living in the 1990s but acting like they were in the 1970s. Some elements of the family were modernized, though: Alice the housekeeper and Sam the butcher get it on at one point.

When Mike asks Sam what he’s doing there in his robe in the middle of the night, rummaging through the fridge, Sam says, “Oh, just delivering some meat.”

Obviously, Schwartz’s point was to create the perfect picture of family, not because it reflected reality, but because it would be nice if it were reality.

Now that the chip on my shoulder has been filled in by time, experience and hopefully a little wisdom, I see “The Brady Bunch” as a nice idea, however unrealistic. In fact, the escape from reality was a welcome relief to a lot of people whose families were miserable and ugly. A little relief helps you regroup and carry on.

My problem is that I’ve always had a tendency to overthink these things.

I never took issue with “Gilligan’s Island.” As absurd as the show was, I’ve always liked the theme of people with nothing in common getting thrown together — forced to become a new family of sorts in order to survive.

I admit without shame that my favorite episode is the one with the Japanese sub pilot who didn’t realize the war was over; the one who complained that the Chinese stole the idea for water torture from Japan.

Despite how the younger, angrier version of me felt, the older me believes Schwartz did a lot of good for a society that tends to stew in its own, stinking, cynical juices.

Rest in peace. I hope you find the folks in Heaven to be something like the characters you created.