I appreciate those feelings. I really do. But when I look in the mirror lately, those words don’t ring true.
Maybe I’m being too self-critical, maybe not.
But the feeling is there. And it stings.
Here’s the thing: I do open up about a lot of things on here. That’s why I do this thing. If one person can open up about himself, I figure, others will be less afraid to be honest with themselves and they’ll be happier for it.
But don’t think for a second that I tell you everything.
I still have trouble sometimes being honest with myself and other people. It’s not that I hide anything particularly insidious. It’s the more typical things:
If I run into a PR person who wants to pitch me something I’m not interested in, I often lack the honesty to tell them I’m not interested. That strings them along and gives them false hope, and it’s not fair to them.
When I talk to people about how I’ve cleaned up from an addiction, I’m not so revealing about the other addictions I still let control me (computer gadgetry, for example). Sure, I wrote about that and just linked to it. But I think I’m far more hooked on technology in ways that make life less manageable than I initially let on.
I’m also not honest enough about just how hard it is sometimes to be social and sober-abstinent at the same time. Last night I stayed in the hotel because I wanted nothing to do with people.
I’m not saying what I’ve written before was a lie. It wasn’t. But it wasn’t the full, naked and ugly truth, either. I hold little details back. Some things just feel too private to share.
I guess that’s just part of being human.
Whatever the case may be, I don’t want people thinking I’m better than I am and inflating my head with high praise.
My mind has been raw all week for a multitude of reasons. Mostly, it’s a case of winter getting to me. The sun is setting later each day, which is good for me, but the cold and snow have done their damage and plunged me into a depression.
I’ve pushed myself hard with work and at home I’ve been a slug. I forget to do simple things and I just want to collapse on the couch. I sigh a lot and swear even more.
It’s not fair to my family. But I can’t seem to help it.
On a positive note, I’ve kept my recovery intact. That’s real progress, because this kind of mindset used to make me binge my brains out. Those days were so much worse.
That doesn’t make me satisfied about my current state of mind.
On one hand, I’m excited for the coming trip. I love the fast and furious writing and the copious networking that gets done. I love seeing friends I usually only see on Twitter and Facebook.
On the other hand, I feel terrible about abandoning my family for four days.
The depression hit me later this time than it usually does in winter. The happy lamp, proper Prozac dosage and program of recovery have served me well. But I’m starting to realize I’ll probably never be able to go an entire winter without feeling this way.
Tough shit. That’s my cross to carry, and I just have to keep getting better at managing the load without complaint and without becoming useless to those around me.
Back then, I fancied myself a poet. I joined the Poet’s Society. I grew my hair long and started wearing a pair of leather pants I had borrowed from Sean Marley (back then, I could actually fit into them). I wore a suit jacket and leather boots to complete the look.
I didn’t like who I was, so it made perfect sense to try being someone else. It was a habit I would indulge in many times over.
It was also a side-effect of the fear I used to carry around. The first Gulf War was about to begin and there were a lot of kids worried about getting drafted, including me. So we tried to relive the lives of Baby Boomers from the 1960s as a bizarre comfort ritual.
One guy from Lynn took it further than me. He wore tie-dye t-shirts with fringe boots. He was a big guy and looked more comical than anything else. He would tell anyone in the smoking room who would listen that John Lennon was something close to the Second Coming of Christ.
Me and Sean took a bus ride with this guy down to Washington D.C. for a peace rally in front of the White House a couple days after the war started. That was quite a sight: Me trying to look like Jim Morrison, the other guy trying to look like Jerry Garcia. Sean was the most normal looking of the three of us. Those who knew Sean and his frequent hair-color changes will appreciate the absurdity of the sight.
The war ended quickly, but then Oliver Stone’s “The Doors” came out, with Val Kilmer playing Jim Morrison. I latched on to Morrison’s rejection of his family. I wasn’t getting along with various family members, so there was another easy out from dealing with life.
I started drinking harder alcohol and fasting because that’s what Morrison did. When I would shift from fasting to binge eating I would grow a beard and just carry on like I was the Morrison of later years, when he got bloated from drinking and grew facial hair.
The dean of students at N.S.C.C. brought me in a copy of Rolling Stone from 1971 — the issue covering Morrison’s death. He let me keep it, and wrote a note across the bottom right side of the cover about how Morrison was an interesting figure, but that I needed to find my own path.
I also started singing in a band called Skeptic Slang, where I started trying to perfect the grunge version of Morrison.
Then I started to really get out of shape and lost the ability to keep up with the hours musicians typically kept. I turned my attention to journalism, and that’s where I made my career.
Of course, I developed a lot of the bad habits that fit the stereotypical image of a reporter in the 1970s and 80s — bad eating habits, drinking and smoking and other things a person can rarely afford on a reporter’s salary.
I stopped listening to The Doors for a long, long time. But the other day, for whatever reason, I started listening again.
But it’s not the same as it was back then.
I have a real life now, and it’s easier to be me than somebody else.
Besides, I’ve tried to be other people at other points of my life.
It didn’t work out.
I do still have the facial hair, but I found it easier to maintain a bald head than maintain the hair style.
To be me is much simpler in that respect — even if being me is hopelessly complicated in other areas.
A lot of people read this blog because I always try to put a silver lining on tough stuff. But some days I fail to live up to the image. Yesterday was one of those days, when I let a 7-year-old get the better of me.
You see, Duncan is like me in that too much winter messes with his mental balance. He’ll get goofy, sad and every emotion in between at the drop of a hat. And he has a terrible time focusing.
We’re not sure what it’s about, but since it happens every year between December and March, it’s not a stretch to conclude there’s a winter-related cause.
Yesterday he was unfocused when he needed to be getting his homework done. He had a Cub Scouts meeting early and that put some added pressure on us. When he does his homework, you really need to stand over him. But I always struggle with this, because the OCD pushes me to do seven things at once, especially on a tight schedule.
So Duncan kept fooling around and doing his homework in an excruciatingly slow manner.
So my voice started to get a little louder every few minutes. And Duncan still stayed all over the place.
So then I really snapped at him.
I didn’t hit him. We don’t believe in hitting our kids. But I yelled. A lot.
I nixed his going to the Scouts meeting. That was appropriate, since he still had too much homework left and that comes before the fun stuff.
To some or most of you all this may read like a typical afternoon with children. Kids get a little out of control and the parent in the room has to open the can of whoop-ass.
But to me, it was a loss of control. Worse, I feel like I should be A LOT more patient with the boy, since he’s under the same spell I’m under.
Whatever it was, I didn’t feel good about it.
I am thankful for a few things, though:
–We’re getting Duncan evaluated by a medical professional to see if he has any disorders. Whatever the verdict, we’ll get some direction on how to help him along.
–Duncan is a sweet boy, and it’s impossible to stay mad at him for long. Especially when he gives you a big hug and apologizes for being difficult.
–Erin was a calming presence, reminding me that this is a particularly bad winter and everyone is on a short fuse because of it.
–At the end of the day, I kissed my wife as she was leaving for a school board meeting, I tucked Duncan into bed and got some one-on-one time with Sean.
–There isn’t the thick, stinking cloud of rage hanging in the air. Love wins out over anger.
Because of all these things, this family is going to be just fine, thanks.
I reigned in my addictions to food and alcohol. I brought the compulsive spending down to a dull roar. But the Android. The Laptop. Technology is a new addiction and I’m a slave.
In some respects, it’s strange that this is now my lot in life. For most of my adulthood, I was never an early adopter of the latest gadgetry. I didn’t own an iPod until late 2008, and it’s one of the older models. I was still using a Walkman and cassette tapes long after everyone started switching to digital music.
And yet here I am, skilled to the gills in the ways of smartphones, social networking and squeezing Internet connectivity out of the most remote places.
How did this happen? The easy answer is my job.
I write about technology — information security, specifically — and I have to use all this stuff to know how it works and, obviously, how to write about it.
But to blame it all on the hazards of work would be an over-simplification and a cop-out.
The bigger truth is that the same hole in my soul that led me to the other addictions has wrapped its thorny fingers around technology.
I don’t regret it the way I regretted the binge eating and the alcohol I used as a crutch while bringing the food under control. The fact of life is that a lot of good reading has shifted online. That’s now where I go to read various newspapers, get the weather report and watch the news.
We used to turn on the TV to get the weather and watch the news. A favorite Sunday pastime used to be reading a stack of newspapers on the living room couch. It was a way to be informed and unwind at the same time.
Now I can do all these things from my laptop AND my Android phone. But to the passers by, I have my face buried behind a screen while the world hums along around me.
There’s definitely a perception issue. But I won’t lie. A lot of my computer use is obsessive, compulsive and addictive.
Ah, yes. Facebook. I don’t know about you, but I can never let a day go by without seeing who is doing what on there. The funny thing is that most of what happens on there is the stuff we always got along without. We’ve always been busy enough with our own family dramas. Now we have to read about everyone else’s. Wanna punish someone for annoying you? Nothing says “Fuck You” like unfriending someone on Facebook or unfollowing someone on Twitter.
The whole addiction-to-technology thing came up a couple Saturdays ago while I was in Washington D.C. having breakfast with my friends James Arlen and Martin Fisher. Martin was recording the conversation for a podcast but somewhere in the conversation we veered away from security and started lamenting our dependence on our devices. I was lamenting, anyway.
James said something I hadn’t thought of before: Our phones and social networking tools have become like another sense. So instead of five senses, we now have six.
Make a person do without their phone or laptop and it’s like you’ve cut off an arm or deprived them of smell, hearing, taste or vision.
What’s so perfect about that description is that addictions in general are like that. The addiction becomes another sense of sorts. Deprive the addict of what they need and horrible withdrawal pains result. I experienced it when I put down flour, sugar and alcohol. And I experience it when I have to shut the phone.
I guess the reason I’m not more ashamed about it is that practically every person I know has the same problem.
Misery adores company. There’s nothing more comforting than the knowledge that you’re not alone in your stupidity.
So what do I do with this newfound clarity?
I don’t know.
A good place to start is to minimize my laptop use when I’m home. But I have a feeling I’ll fall short.
Meet the new slavery. Not quite the same as the old slavery, but still a bitch.
There’s something about living through one or two big snowstorms a week that puts your anti-depressant medication to the test. Let’s see how I’m doing on this one…
Like many of my fellow New Englanders, I’m getting pretty tired of all this winter weather. There’s nowhere to put the stuff anymore, and there’s the constant worry of one of these storms fucking up my travel plans.
I got a wave of depression rolling through me right now. Not the sad, everything sucks kind of depression, but the grumpy variety that makes me more of a curmudgeon than usual. On days like this I drop a lot of F-bombs with smug self-righteous satisfaction.
That’s OK. No one gets hurt, and I wait until the kids are in another room to let the profanity loose.
I’m working from home today because we’re supposed to get 8 inches. I’m working from home tomorrow because we’re expecting another 6-12 inches. Some folks would be excited about working from home all the time, but the truth is that I go bat-shit crazy if I’m separated from my Framingham office for too long. I need face-to-face interaction with my colleagues to help fuel my creativity. I get restless, and that’s not good.
Actually, I’m not going through a wave of depression right now. But it does come and go and I’ve had to learn how to be OK with it. A new friend who found this blog told me she’s struggling with the concept.
This post is directed toward her. It’s my attempt to answer some questions she asked me about it.
Mood music:
[spotify:track:3p7XSsT6AFs9lCkv6FtLbj]
You mentioned that you have frequent bouts of depression medication and therapy don’t seem to touch, and that you’re at a point where you’re learning — trying to learn, anyway — how to live with it and be happy, even though you’re kind of resigned to the notion that true happiness is beyond your reach.
The answer is complicated, but it goes something like this:
First, I should mention that I still have my ups and downs and always will. Bad things will still happen, but I know beautiful things will happen, too.
Too much OCD out of control will almost always send me back to the depressed place.
A couple years ago I started to wonder if I’d ever understand true happiness in the face of these chronic conditions. The answer, I’ve found, is yes. Sort of.
I don’t think I’m happy in the conventional sense. But I don’t think anyone really enjoys that kind of happiness.
And that’s the problem.
We have an overdeveloped sense of what happiness is supposed to be. I call it the Happily Ever After Syndrome. We have this stupid idea that if we can just get the right job, find the right mate, accumulate the right amount of material things and have as little conflict with people as possible that we’re going to be on cloud nine for the rest of our lives.
Deep down we know that’s bullshit. But we reach for it anyway.
It’s a battle of false expectations. And when we can’t reach those expectations, it’s a huge let-down. It creates a hole in our souls that we try to fill with more material things and with alcohol, food, drugs or a combination of the three. For others, porn works, too.
That stuff makes us feel better for a few minutes, but before long we feel worse than ever.
I think that hole is still in me. But through the Grace of God it’s gotten a lot smaller.
My faith is part of it. Some people shut right down when you mention faith, but I can’t avoid the subject, because believing in a higher power and fighting tooth and nail to devote myself to Him is something that filled me with a peace I didn’t have previously.
Some people have told me it’s a waste to live that way because after death there’s nothing but darkness. OK, let’s supposed their right. I still have no regrets, because living this way is better than living with the shame I always felt when I was all about me. I’ve also noticed something about people who think I’m crazy for that: They never seem to be happy, either. But I try not to judge them. I’ve done enough wrong in my life to know that I’m in no position to do so.
That doesn’t stop me from being an ass at times, thinking I’m better than the next person. But it helps.
The biggest thing, though, is that at some point I changed my expectations. Some might say I lowered them. More accurately, I think I just discarded expectations altogether. Sometimes the expectations still swell beyond reality, but they’re much more in check than they used to be.
And through that process, I’ve discovered there is happiness. In being more accepting about the low points, I can deal with them more quickly and move on.
I like to think of these setbacks as growing pains. We’re supposed to have bad days to test the better angels of our nature. We’re supposed to learn how to move forward despite the obstacles that used to make us hide and get junked up. When you can stay sober and keep your mental disorders in check despite a bad day, that’s REAL recovery.
This is where I consider myself lucky for having had Crohn’s Disease. That’s a chronic condition. It comes and goes. But you can reach a point where the flare ups are minimal.
It’s the same with mental illness and addiction. You can’t rid yourself of it completely. But you can reach a point — through a lot of hard work and leaps of Faith — where the episodes are minimal.
Accepting all this for what it is lets me be happy.
Prozac, therapy and the 12 Steps have helped me immensely. But they don’t take the deeper pain at your core away. These things just help you deal with the rough days without getting sucked back into the abyss.
The depression I experience now is more like a flare up of arthritis or a passing headache than that desperate, mournful feeling I used to get. It’s a nag, but it doesn’t break me. It used to break me all the time.
That’s progress.
Maybe I’m not happy forever after, but that’s OK. My ability to separate the blessings from the bullshit has improved considerably in the last five years.
Most of us love to beat on ourselves when something goes wrong. That’s certainly true when a recovering addict relapses. I’m fine now, but I’ve crashed and burned this way many times before.
I’ve learned that the only thing I can do is get back on the horse and ride on, even if I end up falling off a few more times. I either get back up or die. And unless God has other plans, I don’t plan to do that yet.
There’s a lot of music out there that’ll inspire people in relapse to carry on. One of my favorites is this Sixx A.M. song:
[spotify:track:3RXneTIRTlNELctDYlwg5L]
Sure, you can beat the shit out of yourself when the going gets tough. But take it from a guy who’s done that: There’s no fulfillment to be had in beating yourself.
Be good to yourself.
Don’t just do it for yourself.
Do it for the people you care about, because when you’re miserable, they’re miserable.
If making others miserable is OK with you, then you’re just being an idiot.
Twenty-seven years ago today, my brother, Michael S. Brenner, died of an asthma attack at age 17. I can’t blame his death on the demons I’d battle in the years that followed. But it left deep scars all the same.
Mood music:
I think the end came for him at 8:20 p.m., though I could be mistaken.
That day a trend began where I would befriend people a few years older than me. A couple of them would become best friends and die prematurely themselves. It was also the day that sparked a lifelong fear of loss.
It’s been so long since Michael was with us that it’s sometimes hard to remember the exact features of his face. But here’s what I do remember:
We fought a lot. One New Year’s Eve about 31 years ago, when the family was out at a restaurant, he said something to piss me off and I picked up the fork beside me and chucked it at him. Various family members have insisted over the years that it was a steak knife, but I’m pretty sure it was a fork. Another time we were in the back of my father’s van and he said something to raise my hackles. I flipped him the middle finger. He grabbed the finger and snapped the bone.
We were also both sick much of the time. He had his asthma attacks, which frequently got so bad he would be hospitalized. I had my Chron’s Disease and was often hospitalized myself. It must have been terrible for our parents. I know it was, but had to become a parent myself before I could truly appreciate what they went through.
He lifted weights at a gym down the street from our house that was torn down years ago to make way for new developments. If not for the asthma, he would have been in perfect shape. He certainly had the muscles.
He was going to be a plumber. That’s what he went to school for, anyway. During one of his hospital stays, he got pissed at one of the nurses. He somehow got a hold of some of his plumbing tools and switched the pipes in the bathroom sink so hot water would come out when you selected cold.
He was always there for a family member in trouble. If I was being bullied, he often came to the rescue. And when he did, he was fierce.
That last day was perfect for the most part. I remember a sun-kissed winter day. I was immature for a 13-year-old and remember reveling in the toys I got on Christmas two weeks before. The tree in my mother’s house was still up, though the decorations had been removed.
My mother and I think my sister took off to run an errand. My father’s house was only a five-minute walk from my mother’s, and when they drove by, an ambulance was outside the house. I’m told Michael walked to the ambulance himself, and he was rushed to Lynn Hospital, which was torn down long ago to make way for a Super Stop & Shop. I sometimes wonder if he died where the deli counter now stands or if it was where the cereal is now kept.
While I was at my mother’s waiting to hear from someone, a movie was on in which a congressional candidate played by Dudley Moore befriended a woman played by Mary Tyler Moore and her terminally ill daughter, who was about 13. At the end of the movie, the young girl succumbs to her cancer on a train.
That freaked me out, and I went to my mother’s room to bury my head in a pillow. To this day, I refuse to watch that movie.
It was in that room that my mother, father and sister informed me my brother was dead.
I spent the remainder of my teenage years trying to be him. I befriended his friends. I enrolled at his gym, Fitness World. That lasted about a week.
I started listening to his records. Def Leppard was a favorite of his, hence the mood music above.
I even wore his leather jacket for a time, even though it was about three sizes too tight. I couldn’t zip the thing. I looked like an idiot wearing it, but I didn’t care. It was part of him, and I was hell-bent on taking over his persona.
But then there could only be one Michael Brenner. I eventually grew up and realized that. Then I spent a bunch of years trying to be just like Michael’s friend and our neighbor, Sean Marley. But there was only one Sean Marley. Unfortunately, people tend to remember him for how he died rather than how he lived.
I eventually had to learn how to become my own person. I did it, but it was pretty fucking messy. There’s only one Bill Brenner, and he can be a scary sight to behold.
The years have softened the pain, though I still have some regrets.
I regret that I often have trouble remembering what his face looked like. Fortunately, I found this photo while rummaging through my father’s warehouse last summer:
It’s a good image, but it’s in black and white. I still have trouble picturing him in color.
I miss him, and find it strange that he was just a kid himself when he died. He seemed so much older to me at the time. To a 13-year-old, he was older and wiser.
At the wake of a friend’s mom right after Thanksgiving, I found myself thinking of Michael and others who died too soon.
In a bizarre game of mental math, I started thinking about how long it took me to bounce back from each death. It’s a stupid game to play, because there’s no science or arithmetic that applies. The death of a grandparent is part of the natural order of things. The death of a sibling or close friend, not so much. Unless, perhaps, everyone is well into their senior years. Even then, you can’t put a measuring stick on grief.
But I tried doing it anyway.
With Michael and Sean, I’m not sure I ever really recovered. To this day, I’m cleaning up from the long cycles of depression and addiction that followed me through the years.
Along the way, good things happened to fill in the black holes. I married the love of my life. We had two beautiful children. My career hummed along nicely for the most part.
As you might expect, I failed to emerge with a general timeline of the grieving process. It turns out we’re not supposed to know about such things. That would be cheating.
I do know that it gets better.
Understanding that as I do, I have the following advice for those trying to get through the grieving process:
–Take a moment to appreciate what’s STILL around you. Your spouse. Your kids. Your friends. If the death you just suffered should teach you anything, it’s that you never know how long the other loves of your life will be around. Don’t waste the time you have with them, and, for goodness sake:
–Don’t sit around looking at people you love and worrying yourself into an anxiety attack over the fact that God could take them from you at any moment. God holds all the cards, so it’s pointless to even think about it. Just be there for people, and let them be there for you.
–Take care of yourself. You can comfort yourself with all the drugs, alcohol, sex and food there is to have. But take it from me, giving in to addictions is nothing but slow suicide. You can’t move past grief and see the beauty of what’s left if you’re too busy trying to kill yourself. True, I learned a ton about the beauty of life from having been an addict, but that doesn’t mean I’d ever wish that experience on others. If there’s a better way to cope, do that instead.
–Embrace things that are bigger than you. Nothing has helped me get past grief more than doing service to others. It sounds like so much bullshit, but it’s not. When I’m helping out in the church food pantry or going to Overeater’s Anonymous meetings and guiding addicts who ask for my help, I’m always reminded that my own life could be much worse. Or, to put it another way, I’m reminded how my own life is so much better than I realize or deserve.
Like I said: This isn’t a science.
It’s just what I’ve learned from my own walk through the valley of darkness.
I’ve learned that life is a gift to be cherished and used wisely.
