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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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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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Sometimes, I Take It Too Far

Most of you know by now that when I like a person, I tend to tease them a lot. Most people know it’s in good fun and give it back in spades. But sometimes I worry that I’m taking it too far.

I’ve written about it before in the posts “The Power of Sarcasm” and “Sarcasm or Gallows Humor? For me, sarcasm is a mental release that allows me to see the humor in some of life’s bigger challenges. The danger is that sarcasm can sometimes slide into outright cruelty, and I know I’m guilty of that at times.

Here’s how it works:

If people in the family, office or church community are butting heads, you can easily get caught up in what one person is saying about the other. After awhile, you can grow bitter and that will compromise your ability to do your job or be the family member you should be. That’s the danger with me, anyway. But the sarcastic, gallows humor in me will instead look at those situations and find the lightheartedness of it all.

We’re all dysfunctional to some extent and we all screw up. And let’s face it: Sometimes it’s fun to watch. If you can laugh at someone’s quirks and, more importantly, laugh at your own, it’s easier to move on to other things. Easier for me, anyway.

The alternative would be for me to grow bitter to the point of incapacitation. It’s happened before, especially after I realized managing a daily newsroom at night wasn’t fun anymore. I took every criticism as a knife to the core and my workmanship slid steadily downhill. A healthier sarcastic perspective back then would have helped me through that.

I’m sarcastic toward a lot of my friends and family, especially the in-laws. The truth of the matter is that I’m almost always sarcastic toward the people I like. Most of them get it and give it back in equal measure, including my father-in-law and kid sister-in-law, who probably gets the heaviest, most ferocious dose of my brand of humor. My brother-in-law is a regular target as well.

When I’m not sarcastic, family and friends ask if I’m feeling ok. A lack of sarcasm becomes a warning sign. For normal people, this usually works in the opposite direction.

Of course, sarcasm can sometimes work against you.

If you don’t catch someone on a good day, hitting them with sarcasm does more to hurt than to lighten the mood.

Sarcasm is also a root of dysfunction in other parts of my family. Several of my family members are equally sarcastic, if not more so. But I sometimes get offended by it because I feel like people are laughing AT someone instead of laughing WITH them. This has produced a fair share of strain on that side of the family, and I have to claim fault on my end.

If you can direct sarcasm toward someone but get offended when it’s being sent in your direction, that’s hypocrisy. It’s a hypocrisy I’m sometimes guilty of.

My wife once decided to go digging for the actual definition of sarcasm and here’s what she found:

“Sarcasm” is “a keen or bitter taunt : a cutting gibe or rebuke often delivered in a tone of contempt or disgust” or “the use of caustic or stinging remarks or language often with inverted or ironical statement on occasion of an offense or shortcoming with intent to wound the feelings.”

She pointed out that I’m not really a bitter person, and that my jabs are playful. So why bring myself down in the gutter and suggest I’m a bad person when I’m not?

But yesterday, she also noted the particularly sharp, dark edge to my teasing ways of late.

It’s been a brutal winter for all of us, and in my case too much winter weather depresses the mental faculties. So I tease even more, to the point where it can be hurtful.

That’s especially true when I start teasing the kids.

Sometimes I’ll take a picture of one of the sisters- or brothers-in-law in unflattering situations and shoot them up to Facebook. I did it yesterday to my sister-in-law Sara. We were dropping off Madison, who spent the previous night with us, and Sara had that just-rolled-out-of-bed look. I thought capturing her that way was funny as all hell.

But probably not to her.

I do these things because I love my family so much. But it gets to be too much for them.

It’s pretty whacked of me to translate affection into meanness.

Given my own experiences with that, I should know better.

So there it is: Something else for me to work on.

I don’t say that in self pity. It’s just a simple acknowledgement that I can always do better. We can all do better, can’t we?

I think so. I’m just admitting it.

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Facebook Depression: It Happens

A post from one of my Facebook friends got my attention the other day. He was sharing a new item about something called “Facebook depression” and if his comment is any indication, I don’t think he was buying it:

“Really? Facebook depression? Pardon me but ‘Assholes!'”

Mood music:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b93qfTYbROg&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

Here’s a snippet from the article, which appeared on WCVB Channel 5’s news site:

According to a recent poll, more than 20 percent of teens log on to their favorite social media site more than 10 times a day. Now a new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics warns social media can lead teens to sleeplessness and depression. The report urges pediatricians to plug in to potential problems.

The suicides of 17-year-old Phoebe Prince and 11-year-old Carl Walker put a new spotlight on bullying and uncovered a dark side of social media, where insults and taunting are inescapable. While those cases may be extreme, a new report warns parents and doctors that sites like Facebook can lead to depression in teens.

“Facebook seems to be an amplifier for those feelings,” said Dr. Gwenn O’Keefe, the report’s author. “They’ll think ‘People don’t like me, I’m not pretty or studly. How come I only have 100 friends and she has 300?’ Those thoughts are going to amplify that sense of social isolation and make it get worse,” said O’Keefe.

Take it from someone who’s been through his share of depression: There’s something to this notion of Facebook depression.

My biggest bouts of depression — back when I was really out of control — came well before Facebook and Twitter came along. But today, when I have the more minor episodes of depression (for me, it’s a chronic side-effect of OCD), I totally feel the power something like Facebook has over my mood.

I touched on it in an earlier post called “Facebook Un-friend Syndrome” but the focus there was largely on how the friend count can become an OCD trigger.

Since I write about technology for a living, I’ve learned a lot about the psychological side of social media. The bad guys of cyberspace didn’t need a college degree to know that with the right headline, you can easily dupe a person into clicking on a malicious link that’ll leave your computer infected.

People are duped with fake news headlines, especially the gossipy kind. But they’re also duped — all the time on Facebook — by messages and links that promise to show you who exactly has un-friended you or who said what about your sexual prowess (or lack of it).

Meanwhile, a lot of people have gotten so hooked on things like Facebook and Twitter that these places have become more than just a computer activity — they have become part of the real world.

That’s especially the case for younger people who don’t recall a time before social networks existed.

The notion that things that go down on Facebook can leave a kid depressed — even suicidal — is very plausible against this backdrop.

If there were no Facebook, many of these people would probably go into depressions about other things. But I think this is a legitimate issue for the medical community to chew on — for adults as well as kids.

I have found — for me personally — that it’s good to have a code of conduct for what I can and can’t do on social networks. It’s not a silver bullet by any stretch. But it helps me:

–Don’t bitch about the little things. There’s a ton of drama on Facebook already, and there’s a lot of drama in this blog. I’m not going to complain about the little things on top of that.

–Never complain about work. I wouldn’t anyway because I love my job, but I see work grievances on Facebook all the time, and it’s just not smart when you consider that the boss is probably watching.

–Keep the sex life to yourself. The reasons for this are simple. I’m an ugly guy with a hairy back and a bald head. I’m not about to gross people out or scare them. Hell, I get scared and grossed out when thinking of myself in a romantic context. Yet there are folks out there who think people really want to know about their sex lives. I’m not talking about someone who shares their joy over a new romantic relationship or the sadness of a romance that dies. I’m talking about those who give the several-times-a-day, blow-by-blow account of the ups and downs. I’m happily married and my wife loves me despite the fact that I’m funny looking. That’s all anyone needs to know — or would ever want to know.

–Do you really care about what I ate for dinner? Well, given the nature of this blog and the fact that I focus a lot on my binge-eating addiction and the food plan I live by today, I guess you would care. But I’m also sure I’d piss you off if I mentioned what I was about to eat before each meal. I get annoyed when other people do it. My younger brother is a chef and he talks about it a lot. But that’s different, because cooking is his craft.

–Politics. I love to talk politics with people, especially those who really know what they’re talking about. But some folks will take their disdain for Democrats or Republicans too far. Being a moderate myself, I think both political parties are damaged beyond repair. But I try not to get mean, arrogant or hateful about my positions. I’ve un-friended people for being that way.

– Religion: I’m pretty sure people have un-friended me for sharingmy Faith. I can’t get around it because my Faith is at the core of everything I do, especially when it comes to marriage, parenthood and my program of recovery. If someone has dropped me because they don’t believe in God and they think I’m an idiot, I don’t care. I’m not about to change on this one. 

Here’s what I will continue to do on Facebook and Twitter:

–Share some of the things my kids say. Because my kids are pretty damn witty.

– Post my blog entries, three times a day. The blog is one of the things I have to offer people. It’s one of the things I’m on here to promote. I push out each entry three times a day, to ensure it’s seen by those who do most of their social networking in the morning, at lunchtime or in the evening.

–Post my security articles. This is my livelihood. Many of my connections are security people, so there’s no getting around this one. If someone un-friends me because they don’t want so much information about information security, I’m cool with that.

–Share family and travel pictures. Who doesn’t do this?

Of course, expecting teenagers to live by what I just mapped out is unrealistic.

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Lies Of The Not-So-Beautiful People

I’ve been hooked this week on the new Sixx A.M. song “Lies of the Beautiful People.” The video includes a lot of the photography that inspired the upcoming album and book, “This is Gonna Hurt.”

Note: The videos below, when you click on them, will direct you to watch on YouTube. Please do, since you have to see it to get the point of this post.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxMHtjQW6ZQ&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

In interviews, Nikki Sixx describes his passion for photography and how he was drawn to subjects that most “normal” people would find freakish. He photographed people with a variety of deformities and other features most people would find grotesque or even humorous.

This week he released the first two parts of a documentary on the project. In part one, he describes how the projects he embarked on brought him back to things in his childhood that affect him to this day:

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

Part 2 focuses on a person named St. Goddess Bunny, who describes the rough life he has lived, including a lot of physical abuse.

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

Reviewing this material takes me back to my own past. I was never one of the beautiful people the new song describes. But my perceptions and reactions to people who were different could be just as grotesque as the song describes.

The “Lies of the Beautiful People” are also the lies of the plain, average, ugly, fat and poor people. In my case, and that of others I’ve known, it becomes about knowing you’re ugly and mis-shaped and tormenting other, similar people just so you can feel better about yourself.

It’s a subject I’ve covered before, particularly in the posts “The Bridge Rats,” “Stiffy” and “Welcome to the Outcast Club.”

I was quite a prick to a kid named Stevie Hemeon. I used to punch him in the Theodore Roosevelt School yard because he was one of the few kids I was strong enough to hit. He never deserved it. Yet he still hung with me, kind of how high school chum Aaron Lewis did later on. I did it because he seemed weaker and weirder than me.

Stiffy had a monotone voice and was freakishly thin. People were terrible to him. Including me. The name allegedly comes from him getting an erection in the shower of the boy’s locker room, but I wasn’t there and tend to doubt it.

I haven’t seen or heard from him since the day we graduated nearly 22 years ago. I often wonder where he is, what he’s doing and if he’s ok.

He was the kid everyone made fun of — brutally. And I was probably one of the biggest offenders for the first two and a half years of high school.

On the surface he took our taunts with an expressionless face. How he reacted out of view I can only imagine.

There were a lot of bullies at Northeast Regional Metro Tech (it used to be “Vocational School” and we all called it the Voke) and I was made fun of a lot. I was picked on for being fat, for my lack of skill in sports and other things real or imagined.

So what did I do after being picked on? I turned around, found the kids who were more “pathetic” than me and attacked them verbally and physically. Mostly verbal, but I remember throwing punches at some point. Some of it was the reaction to getting picked on. Most of it was from the growing chip on my shoulder over my brother’s death and other unpleasantness at 22 Lynnway in Revere.

By junior year, I had lost a lot of weight and grown my hair long. I was deeply into metal music by then and I started to make friends among some of the so-called metalheads. He had also latched onto metal as a refuge from his pain (he was also pretty religious), and we started to relate over music.

Junior and senior year I made a big effort to be nicer to him, and in the mornings before classes began I would hang out with him. Or, I should say, I let him follow me around. I was still a jerk but was trying to be nice because I was under the influence of another brother, Sean Marley.

These and other memories remind me that we have to be better — much better — to the people around us. It’s what’s inside that counts.

I’m glad Sixx is tackling this issue. He’s inspiring me yet again.

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Good Anonymity Vs. Bad Anonymity

In the halls of recovery and in my daily work I deal a lot with anonymity. People hide behind it for good and bad reasons. This is where I separate the honorable folks from the cowards.

Mood music (Click the “Watch it on Youtube” link. It’s worth it):

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxMHtjQW6ZQ&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

I’ve met a lot of inspirational people who prefer to keep their identities hidden with good reason.

In the 12-Step program I embraced to overcome a blistering binge-eating addiction, anonymity is considered a vital tool of recovery. We know each other by first names and home towns, mostly. That’s so people in these meetings can share openly and let out all the pain and confusion they feel, which is an important step toward setting things right. They can do so without fear of being outed in their circle of friends and relatives and in their work places.

To blow someone’s anonymity under those circumstances is a terrible thing to do. I regularly share my 12-Step experiences here, but I made a choice to take a chance and out myself. Nobody gets put at risk except for me. Thankfully, everything turned out fine and I get a ton of support from the people in my personal and professional lives.

I often write about my 12-Step experiences here, but I never name names unless I’ve gotten someone’s permission. Even with permission, I usually leave names out.

In my professional life I deal with a slightly different kind of anonymity. I often get important information from people who would get fired or jailed for talking to me, so their identities are hidden for their own safety. I allow a source their anonymity when they give a valid reason for requesting it. I recently interviewed an Iranian computer programmer who fled to Europe after the government pressured him to use his talents as part of their quest to build a cyber army. To name him would put him in real danger. Usually, though, the anonymity is usually honored because someone with valuable information would be blackballed in the industry for sharing it.

Then there’s the bad anonymity, the kind that applies to the verbal bomb throwers.

Some people like to hurl insults and question someone’s character without being called on the carpet in return. So they leave an anonymous comment on one of my sites and resort to name-calling and whining.

I’ve dealt with this sort plenty in my 17 years as a writer and editor. They usually don’t bother me. They come with the territory, and I have a pretty thick skin at this point. And more often than not, the insults are wrapped around constructive criticism I fine useful.

But I’ll admit it: My tolerance goes through the floor when someone decides to be an outright asshole.

Yesterday was one of those times. I was checking my Twitter stream and found the following tweet by someone hiding behind an anonymous profile called the InfoSecDropBox:

“OMG, I’m @BillBrenner70, I’m fucked up and have to keep telling you how fucked up I am. LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! I’M A BLOGGER!”

The profile looked like it had just been set up yesterday and, when I checked it this morning, the last tweet said “Alright, alright. Enough.”

I should correct this person on one point: I don’t consider myself a fuck-up. I used to be one, but not anymore. Oh, I still screw up in spectacular fashion on a regular basis, but that doesn’t make me a fuck-up. It makes me human. Every one of us has struggles to contend with.

I reached a point where I found my equilibrium and chose to write about how I used to be, why I’m the way I am today and where the ongoing struggles are. I do it because there’s a stigma around the kind of struggles I’ve had and I decided to take a crack at breaking them down so people who are now dealing with what I once dealt with will know it’s OK and that they can turn it around.

I knew I’d face some criticism. I knew some people would misunderstand what the blog is about. But I felt it was worth it, and it has been.

I don’t mind the bomb throwers. But when they’re too scared to show themselves, they are cowards and I can’t take them seriously.

My name is out there for people to rip away at if they choose, and that’s fine.

But if you need to be anonymous, I have to wonder:

Are you so insecure about your own character that you’re too terrified to face the people you don’t understand and ask the hard questions out in the open like a grown-up? 

Since I don’t know who you are, I have to assume so.

By the way: If you see the posts that annoy you, that can only mean you’re following me on Twitter or we’re connected on Facebook or LinkedIn.

I suggest you un-follow or un-friend me.

The solution is as simple as that.

If you insist on maintaining the connection with me anyway, despite you’re distaste for what I do, that just makes you an idiot.

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How I Can Be Happy Despite Myself

I see a lot of moody people out there on Facebook and Twitter these days. Though I try not to put random complaints on my wall, my darker moods often come across in this blog. But in the big picture, I’ve found ways to be generally happy despite myself.

Mood music:

Allow me to share. But first, a couple acknowledgements:

1.) I stole this post’s title from somewhere.

2.) I readily admit that despite what I’m about to share, my reality doesn’t always match up with my words.

That said, no one who knows me can deny that I’m in a much happier place today than I was several years ago. I screw up plenty today, but I used to hate myself for screwing up. Today I may feel stupid when I fail, but I don’t hate myself. I’ve also learned that there are plenty of reasons to appreciate life even when things don’t seen to be going well in the moment.

–If I’m having a bad day at work, I remember that I’ve been in jobs I hated and that while the day may go south, I’m still lucky to have a job today that gives me the freedom to do work that makes me happy. I also know that I have a wife and children that I love coming home to.

–If I’m stuck in bed with a migraine or the flu, I can take comfort in knowing it could be — and has been — so much worse.

–If I’m feeling depressed — and my OCD ensures that I will from time to time — I can take comfort in knowing it doesn’t cripple me like it used to and I can still get through the day, live my life and see the mood for what it is — part of a chronic condition.

–If I’m feeling down about relationships that are on ice, I can take joy in knowing that there’s never a point of no return, especially when you’re willing to make amends and accept forgiveness.

–When I think I’m having the shittiest year ever, I stop and remember that most years are a mix of good and bad and that gives me the perspective to cool off my emotions.

–When something really bad happens, I know that people are always going to show up to help, and that it’s an extension of God’s Grace in my life.

–When I’m angry about something, I can always put on headphones and let some ferocious metal music squeeze the aggression out of me.

–If I’m frustrated with my program of recovery from addiction, I just remember how I felt when I was in the grip of the disease and the frustration becomes a lot smaller.

–If I feel like people around me are acting like idiots, I can recognize that they may just be having a bad day themselves and that it’s always better to watch an idiot than be one.

I could go on, but I think you get the point.

shine on

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Change Is Pain, But Not Impossible

Last night’s 12-Step meeting reminded me of just how hard real change is. I used to measure change by who won the next election. I’ve realized that the only real change that matters is within myself. Naturally, it’s the hardest, most brutal kind of change to achieve.

Mood music:

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

Last night’s AA Big Book reading focused on steps 8, 9 and 10:

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

The first few steps were much easier for me. Admitting I was powerless over my addiction was a piece of cake. I was so desperate by then that the admission was the reason I walked into an OA meeting. It takes desperation to walk into a room full of people you’re certain are crazy fanatical freaks. That’s exactly how they came across. Then I realized I was just like them and was in just the right place. Nearly three years in, I’ve determined that we’re not crazy and we’re not freaks. We’re just TRYING to be honest with ourselves and those around us. It makes us uncomfortable and edgy because it’s much more natural for an addict to lie. People like us are weird and often intolerable.

Acknowledging a higher power was easy enough, because I’ve always believed in God. But this step brought me closer to realizing my relationship with God was all wrong. It was transactional in nature: “Please God, give me this or help me avoid that and I’ll be good…” Because of OCD that was raging out of control, I tried to control everything. I couldn’t comprehend what it meant to “Let go and let God.” Once I got to that point it got easier, though I still struggle with a bloated ego and smoldering will.

Still, that stuff is easy compared to steps 8-10. To go to people you’ve wronged is as hard as it gets. You come face to face with your shame and it’s like you’re standing naked in front of people who have every reason to throw eggs and nails at you. At least that’s how it feels in the beginning.

Step 9 has been especially vexing. There are some folks I can’t make amends with yet, though Lord knows I’ve tried.

I feel especially pained about my inability to heal the rift with my mother and various people on that side of the family. But it’s complicated. Very complicated. I’ve forgiven her for many things, but our relationship is like a jigsaw puzzle with a lot of missing pieces. Those pieces have a lot to do with boundaries and OCD triggers. It’s as much my fault as it is hers. But right now this is how it must be.

I wish I could make amends with the Marley family, but I can’t until they’re willing to accept that from me. I stabbed them in the gut pretty hard, so I’m not sure of what will happen there.

But there have been some unexpected gifts along the way.

Thanks to Facebook, I’ve been able to reconnect with people deep in my past and, while the need to make amends doesn’t always apply and the relationships can never be what they were, all have helped me heal. There’s Joy, Sean’s widow. She’s remarried with kids and has done a remarkable job of pushing on with her life. She dropped out of my world for nearly 14 years — right after Sean’s death — until recently. The contents of our exchange are private, but this much I can tell you: I was wrong all these years when I assumed  she hated my guts and wanted nothing more to do with me. I thought my old friend Dan Waters hated my guts too. But here we are, back in touch.

Miracles happen when you get out of your own way. But it sure can hurt like a bitch.

I’ve also half-assed these steps up to this point. There’s a much more rigorous process involved. You’re supposed to make a list and only approach certain people you’ve wronged after talking to your step-study sponsor. It hasn’t exactly worked out that way. I just started the Big Book study in January, so I have a long way to go.

It’s funny how, when we’re still in the grip of our addictions, we dream of the day when we’ll be clean. There’s a false expectation that all will be right with the world. But that’s never the case.

I’ve heard from a lot of addicts in recovery who say some of their worst moments as a human being came AFTER they got sober. 

That has definitely been the case for me. I’d like to think I’m a better man than I used to be, but I still screw up today. And when I do, the results are a spectacular mess.

But while I’m far from done with this stuff, I can already say I’m happier than I used to be.

Change is hard and painful, but when you can move closer to it despite that, the results are beyond comprehension.

I guess the old cliche — no pain, no gain — is true.

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What’s This Freakin’ Blog Really About, Anyway?

I’ve gained several new readers in the past month. They have a lot of questions for me, which I like and appreciate. The most common question goes something like this: “What exactly is the focus of this blog?”

Mood music:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4eVul99m50&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

It’s a fair question. Here’s the explanation. In this case the embedded links are important to seeing the whole picture. But don’t try to read them all at once. That would be insanity.

I call it THE OCD DIARIES because it’s primarily about my struggle to manage the disorder. If I have an OCD moment, I write about it. Where I’ve had success in gaining the upper hand, I share what I’ve learned so other sufferers can try it for themselves. Where appropriate, I laugh at what it makes me do. Sometimes, the result of an OCD incident is humor. But this isn’t a blog that tosses the acronym around to loosely describe every hyper moment of my existence. A lot of people say they have OCD to describe their Type-A personalities. This blog is about the real thing and why it’s so insidious.

It’s also about my upbringing in Revere, Mass., my childhood battle with Crohn’s Disease and how those things helped shape the manifestation of OCD within me. Every person’s struggle is shaped by where they’ve been in life. Historical perspective is important.

It’s also about the byproducts of my OCD, specifically addictive behavior and, even more specifically, my struggle with a binge-eating addiction. Part of that means telling you about how I brought it under control, which is why you see a lot about the 12 Steps of Recovery and Overeater’s Anonymous. I also tell you about all the stupid behaviors that goes with being an addict, including the secondary addictions that surface after you’ve put a lid on the main, most disruptive addiction.

It’s also about relationships, specifically with my wife and children, extended family members, colleagues, friends and the legions of nameless souls who have come and gone, helping me along the way. It’s about relationships that were destroyed along the way, and about broken relationships I’ve been able to repair in my recovery.

It’s about my Faith, which is all over the 12 Steps and is central to my ability to get honest with myself and get the help I needed. You’ll see a lot about my church community, the beauty as well as the warts, which we all have. 

It’s about daily learning experiences. Sometimes the mood of the writing is depressed and sometimes it’s joyful. It’s merely a reflection of all of us.

Finally, it’s a blog about metal music and why it’s so important in helping me with all of the above struggles. Most posts include musical selections that capture my emotions at the given moment.

Some posts will reassure you. Many will make you uncomfortable.

In the end, it’s just a collection of my experiences.

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Sometimes, Un-Friending Is The Right Thing

A friend of mine is angry and hurt because another friend deleted him and me from his Facebook friends list. The hurt is understandable: We grew up in Revere with this guy, and we went through a lot together.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:3XGbYvyi3sW9L5fzWluoAv]

I sent our friend an e-mail asking why he un-friended us. His answer to me specifically was that this blog is dredging up too many painful memories from the past:

Bill your OCD diaries became to much for me. I felt the pain of the losses of Sean and Michael creeping back into the fabric of my life and some of the held secrets that still have not been spoken. Hence, I am not locking you out of my life, just out of Facebook. If I could filter THE OCD DIARIES out of Facebook and keep you I would do that in a minute. Please remember this is about me and my healing and is not meant to be offensive.

I’ve covered the Facebook un-friending subject before — specifically how my OCD had latched onto my Facebook friend count. Ridiculous, you say? Of course. But having OCD is all about worrying about ridiculous things. When I wrote the first post on it back in August, my friend count was 1,169. At last check this morning it was 1,451. Go figure.

Every time someone has un-friended me, I’ve worried about what I did to offend them. I keep my language mostly clean and I don’t whine about everything on my wall. But I push out a lot of my writing on Facebook, and for those with smaller friend counts, all my stuff can overwhelm their feed. But I also know some people un-friend me because this blog is just too much for them. One former colleague sent me this note a few weeks ago:

“Bill, I’ve grown to find your OCD posts too painful and am going to unfriend you. You realize you are an obsessive poster, I hope? I wish you luck, but I think you need help and compassion, not exposure. I have a daughter who’s mentally ill, so I am particularly sensitive to watching people flay themselves alive. I wish you all the best, really.”

It’s funny how attached we’ve all become to our Facebook friend lists. To be un-friended is to be slapped in the face and told to go away. That hurts.

But my thinking is starting to shift on this issue.

I still don’t like it when someone un-friends me because it still feels like a rejection. But I’m starting to see that sometimes it’s the right thing for a person to do.

For example, this blog covers a lot of heavy stuff. A lot of people have become daily readers and tell me my openness has inspired them to deal with their own issues. But for others, especially those with a lot of pain in their lives, every post is going to feel like a baseball bat to the head. And so it was with my old friend.

Facebook is still fairly new for a lot of people. We’re still learning how to deal with each other in this world of social networking. I doubt we’ll ever figure it out.

I’ll just have to  keep being me and hope for the best.

I suggest you all do the same.