My family is overwhelmed and grateful for the massive outpouring of support and kind words in the wake of Dad’s death. I’ve heard from so many of you on my Facebook timeline, in private messages on Twitter and by phone.
Mood music:
I’ve written a lot about these final weeks with my father. I hope readers have taken it in the spirit I meant to get across — that while grief and loss is hard, there’s also a lot of beauty in the journey.
It’s been a hell of a week between Dad’s passing and that of my Aunt Marlene, but I’m overjoyed knowing that both are now free.
All the love and support comes on top of all the support I got last weekend when I did the Boston Walk All Night Against Suicide. Thanks to all your donations I raised $1,670 for suicide prevention programs. The walk lasted six hours and covered 17 miles in the driving rain. I met some great people along the way and we were cheered on all along the route by folks standing outside bars and hotels. My feet hurt at the end, but it didn’t last long.
Some of you continued donating to the cause while the walk was happening, which was awesome to see.
Now we’re preparing for Dad’s funeral. After that, we’ll take a few days to decompress. Then we go back to work.
I’ll be back to blogging soon. Meantime, I just wanted to say thanks.
My father and aunt aren’t doing well. Dad is bedridden, a series of strokes and heart attacks having taken their toll. My aunt is in the hospital unable to do anything more than utter a stray word after having her own stroke.
And so continues a sick game, where we try guessing how much longer they’ll be with us, who will go first, etc. That’s the game I’m playing anyway. When you’re like me and you can’t help but worry about what’s out of your control, these mental exercises take over.
Mood music:
I’ve seen many relatives and friends deal with critical health issues, and I’m no stranger to death. Each time, I played the game of what-ifs, worries about my always busy schedule and what I might have to cancel.
This time, I’m a week out from traveling to San Francisco for RSA Conference — one of the biggest events of the year for my industry — and I’m worrying about whether or not I’ll get there.
It’s a hell of a thing, worrying about that when two lives hang in the balance. It’s a human thought process, but I feel selfish all the same.
I wouldn’t have the life I have today if not for my father. He made sure I learned the value of hard work, sent me to college, helped out when Erin and I bought our home and has helped out during more than a couple financial squeezes.
My aunt helped me deal with some of the more traumatic events of my early life. When my parents were divorcing, she and my grandmother took me on trips to the New Hampshire mountains. When my father worked late, I could usually go to the house down the street where she and my grandmother lived, where I could watch TV, do homework and have dinner. That house was an oasis when I needed it.
They gave and they gave. I’m trying to give back and want to do so freely and fearlessly. But I can’t stop worrying about how their condition might impact my carefully made plans.
I know I’m not the only one who does this. I’ve talked to others who have had to deal with situations like this, and they all experience such thoughts. It just doesn’t make me feel any better. Writing about it is my way of keeping myself honest so I can move on and make the right choices.
If it helps some of you see that you’re not alone in getting swallowed up by this monster, so much the better.
Online marketplace Etsy caused a kerfuffle recently by selling shirts emblazoned with the suicide note of the late Kurt Cobain.
Etsy and other e-commerce sites have since pulled the shirts from their virtual shelves, but the big question remains: Who in their right mind would wear such a thing?
Mood music:
http://youtu.be/jDyvClUsCJU
To be fair, some would wear it to make a statement about depression. But most kids just want to shock people.
I know, because I was one of those rebellious kids. Let’s go back about 23 years.
It’s 1992, I am in my early 20s and am pretty much pissed at the world. I have a chip on my shoulder the size of a bowling ball and harbor immature notions of what is cool.
At that time I was all about shocking people. Shocking people is a good way to change the subject, especially when the subject is why you’re such a fuck up. Of course, wearing the shirt proved I was just that.
I thought it would be a cool statement if I went around in a Charles Manson T-shirt. Guns ‘N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose was wearing one on stage, so I knew it was the cool thing to do.
Patti Tate picked up the crusade against the Manson killers when her mom, Doris, passed away in 1992. In the book, she recalls seeing Rose in a video on MTV, sporting the infamous T-shirt. Here was a guy reaching millions of kids every day, essentially telling them that Manson was cool, a guy to look up to.
Fast-forward to 2015. With the Cobain suicide shirt, some worry that those wearing it are sending the message that suicide is cool. Cobain gave us important music, and there are far better ways to honor the man than wearing the symbol of his lost fight against the demons.
Cobain’s daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, has spoken out against the romanticizing of suicide in recent months. Shirts like this further illustrate the problem she has tried to address.
Those who knew me growing up remember the family business, especially the blue-and-gold building on Route 1 in Saugus across from Kappy’s Liquors. The business is closed, but it leaves a lasting legacy.
Mood music:
I’ve been helping my father manage the realty trust that’s been part of the family business, with the objective of selling the building. His eyesight is bad, so I frequently read documents aloud to him. Yesterday was one of those days, and my younger son was there, listening as I read a document that essentially described the history of the business.
On the way home, he said something that floored me: “It seems like such a waste, getting rid of an entire family business.”
I thought about it for a few minutes. Then I told him that some businesses go on for generations, while others have more limited lifespans. But like people, they leave something behind, no matter how many years they were around.
Our family business wasn’t going to go on for generations, as it turns out. None of us kids wanted to take it over. I forged a path in journalism and Internet security; my siblings took their own routes, as well. And with the advent of online shopping, our family business suffered the same fate as many other family operations, as people stopped going to mom-and-pop stores and started spending their money online.
But it wasn’t a waste. It provided the family with a living when it was needed and helped us shape the futures we wanted.
For me personally, the business produced the resources my parents needed to get me the medical care I needed as a child. Later, it provided me with the resources to go to college. I met Erin at college and studied journalism there. Erin and I got married and had kids, and my career is still going strong, 20 years later.
Without the resources of the family business, chances are that none of that would have happened.
The business gave a lot of long-time employees a living to raise their own families with, too.
The stuff my father and stepmom sold — headwear and footwear for weddings and proms, party supplies, wedding invitations, favors, and so on — gave countless customers what they needed to build precious memories.
Funny thing about us humans — especially those of us with mental disorders: When the going gets tough, we blame it on someone else. Call it the Woe-Is-Me Disease, where the sufferer is an eternal victim, forever screwed by everyone but themselves.
Mood music:
We all have people like that in our lives. They are clinically incapable of seeing their own role in the thing that goes wrong. It’s always someone else’s fault. They whine a lot, and when you suggest that they are whining, they call you the whiner. They repeat the same stories about how they were victimized over and over again.
They always seem to be involved in a bunch of projects but never seem to follow through on any of it — usually because of something someone else did or didn’t do.
I’ve fit that profile in the past, especially in my angry teens and 20s, when many of us might fit that profile.
It used to be that it was impossible for me to see the problems as my own. It was always the result of something someone else did to me or failed to do for me.
Seeing yourself as a victim every time the going gets tough is probably one of the worst things you can do. It holds you back, keeps you from improving yourself and makes you look pathetic in the eyes of people who don’t understand where the emotion comes from.
I was reminded of this a few years ago after getting a message from an old friend who was fighting his own battle with OCD. Here’s what he wrote to me at that time:
I recently finished my PHP for my OCD. It was a great program and I’m glad my wife recommended that I enroll. So many things helped me change my way of thinking. One of the most important things I learned was to find ways to be proactive and a problem solver (where before I would be reactive and put my head in the sand).
Additionally, I realized that I suffer from victim-type of thinking (such as “this is not fair,” “I can’t handle this,” etc.), and I need to think more like a survivor (“I can handle this”).
I have a huge folder of handouts that I need to organize. I do know that just because I went through the program doesn’t mean I’m miraculously cured. From here I on out, I have many tools in my toolbox to handle whatever life throws at me.
He’s right: people like us are never miraculously cured. We simply create a set of coping tools and pull them out when we need the help.
As a result, we stop being victims and become, as he put it, survivors.
Yesterday was the 10th anniversary of the murder of Pantera/Damageplan guitarist Darrell Lance Abbott.
For metalheads like me, the loss of “Dimebag Darrell” was painful. But for James Niggemeyer, the cop who stopped shooter Nathan Gale before he could kill anyone else, life has been hell.
Mood music:
More people almost certainly would have died that night at Alrosa Villa in Columbus, Ohio, where Damageplan was just beginning to play as the shooting started. Jeff “Mayhem” Thompson, the band’s head of security, was killed tackling Gale, as was Alrosa Villa employee Erin Halk. Audience member Nathan Bray was killed while trying to perform CPR on Abbott and Thompson.
Niggemeyer has been called a hero since firing the kill shot that ended Gale’s rampage, and he certainly deserved to be called that. But he hasn’t felt very heroic.
He told The Columbus Dispatch that he’s no longer a police officer. According to the article, he remained on patrol for three years after Dimebag’s murder, but the city eventually decided, with the advice of doctors, that he shouldn’t be a first responder. He was transferred to the robbery section as a detective. He told the paper:
I found out real quickly that you don’t have any control over your brain. It’s going to do what it’s going to do. Cops are regular human beings. Things affect us the same way they affect everyday citizens. We relive it and have to deal with the aftermath.
I was going to write an open letter to Niggemeyer, telling him how great I think he is. but I’m down and people try to buck me up by telling me how appreciated I am, it tends to make things worse. I appreciate the sentiment, but it usually leaves me wondering why people feel that way when I feel like such a mess.
And I don’t have PTSD. I suspect Niggemeyer feels that way times 10.
So I’ll end this post with a prayer for the former officer. I hope and pray he finds peace and a way forward and that he is able to appreciate his blessings more easily with the passage of time.
I’m all for vigorous debate. If I write something you think is bullshit, I want your criticism. The resulting discussion means we walk away a little smarter.
But if all you want to do is show how smart you are and how stupid the other person is, you’re not being a good debater or critic, you’re just being a peever
And nobody likes a peever.
Mood music:
As a longtime writer and editor, I’ve found no better example of peevery than the folks who equate a misplaced comma or misspelled word with stupidity.
I’m not talking about the folks who calmly reach out to you to let you know you’ve made a typo. It may be uncomfortable for the recipient, but the feedback is coming from a polite, neighborly place.
I’m talking about the people who have stylistic preferences. If you don’t follow their gospel to the letter, they go crazy and blast you on Facebook and Twitter for being grammatically impure. I’m talking about those who bash you publicly for the garden-variety typos. For them, it’s not enough to simply point out that you’ve put a comma in the wrong place. They have to berate you for slipping up because, you know, you’re a professional and mistakes are unprofessional.
Of course, you don’t have to be a writer or editor to be a peever.
People who tear down others online over their political beliefs are peevers. People who publicly judge others over their life choices are peevers. People who get self-righteous over other people’s posts are peevers.
To be fair, I think many of us have had our moments as peevers. I certainly have. For example, I really hate all those pre-written, self-righteous Facebook posts. One example:
I was RAISED, I didn’t just grow up. I was taught to speak when I enter a room, say Please & Thank you, to have Respect for my elders, lend a helping hand to those in need, hold the door for the person behind me, say Excuse me when it’s needed, & to Love people for who they are, not for what you can get from them! I was also taught to treat people the way I want to be treated! If you were raised this way too, please re-post this…sadly, many won’t, because they weren’t, and it shows~Thank you
One day, I told Erin I was going to write a post flaming all those stupid sayings.
“Tell me what that has to do with OCD?” she asked, giving me that stare she gives me when she’s certain that I’m full of shit.
“It’s a trigger,” I said, not really meaning it.
“It’s not a trigger. It’s a peeve. You going to go pet it now?” she asked, still giving me that stare.
I was being a peever, and she called me out on it.
None of us are perfect. We all say and write stupid things sometimes. When someone else does it, we should cut them some slack and, as needed, privately offer feedback.
Remember: Flaming people in public doesn’t make you useful. It just makes you a peever.
I’ve had an epiphany about my recent depression — a realization so brutally simple that I feel stupid for not seeing it sooner.
I’ve been miserable in part because I fell back into a habit I knew was corrosive. I once wrote a post about overcoming it. That made me feel even more like a chump, because this thing I had overcome was back, whipping me again. And I didn’t see it coming.
I relapsed into people pleasing.
Mood music:
http://youtu.be/7ZVbGj6wp_8
In recent months, I’ve obsessively tried to please colleagues, friends and family. I’ve worked myself to exhaustion trying to make everyone happy. In the process, I burned myself out and developed a low sense of self-worth.
Most of the time, you can’t please people. I learned that lesson a long time ago, but it seems I forgot it.
It used to be that I wanted desperately to make every boss happy, and I succeeded for a while. But in doing so I damaged myself to the core and came within inches of an emotional breakdown. It caused me to work 80 hours a week, waking up each morning scared to death that I would fall short or fail altogether. No employee gets back 100 percent of what they put in to the corporate machine. Sure, you can make your direct bosses happy, but the folks many layers above them in the food chain still won’t know who you are or care that you work 80 hours a week.
I wanted to make every family member happy, too. That didn’t work, either, because when you get right down to it, people are never satisfied for long. Humans have never-ending, ever-changing wants and needs.
Understanding that, I changed my ways a few years ago and spent more time being true to myself, playing to my strengths and passions and not worrying about who was happy and who wasn’t. I focused more on the things I love and put in 100 percent. I worried less about the tasks that bored me, performance review consequences be damned. When I did that, a lot of things fell into place and I had more career success than ever before.
So why the relapse?
Lately, there have been serious challenges at work and with my extended family. As the challenges started to arise, I dove headlong into dealing with them with the gusto I’ve had in more recent years.
But the challenges were too big and numerous. Without thinking, I let myself get sucked in deeper and deeper. I got so absorbed in the problems around me that I forgot an old lesson: The more you try to fix things, the more likely you are to just make them worse.
I’m not advocating selfishness. It’s absolutely right to want to do the best job you can at work. It’s absolutely right to try being a blessing to those around you. But there comes a point where certain situations are bigger than your ability to change things. You can play a part, but you can’t fix everything on your own.
Now that I’m aware again, I have to address the next challenge: remembering how to stop.
Life’s like Sanskrit read to a pony I see you in my mind’s eye strangling on your tongue What good is knowing such devotion I’ve been around, I know what makes things run
What’s good? Life’s good But not fair at all
–Lou Reed
When my addictive impulses were at their worst and I felt like I’d never regain control, I found comfort in an unlikely album: The Velvet Underground & Nico. Songs like “Heroin” and “The Black Angel’s Death Song” touched the core of my soul, where, it turned out, I had a big, gaping hole.
The music didn’t inspire me to stop my spiral into self-destruction, but it did inspire me to start exploring the roots of my unhappiness.
Mood music:
http://youtu.be/ffr0opfm6I4
I first discovered that album when I was living in Lynnfield, Mass., and my old band, Skeptic Slang, had carved out rehearsal space in a room under the garage. On nights when we weren’t practicing, I’d sit in an easy chair I had in the room, with the lights off and candles lit, reading Between Thought and Expression: Selected Lyrics of Lou Reed. That same year, when Erin and I first started going out, she introduced me to Lou Reed’s Magic and Loss album, inspired by the illnesses and eventual deaths of two friends.
It had been years since I listened to his music. But amid his death last year, I found myself re-exploring it. In more recent weeks, I’ve found myself once again drawn to it, as I work my way through a period of depression and uncertainty.
Thanks for your music and wisdom, Lou.
I’ll end with some of the lyrics to the title track of “Magic and Loss,” which may well be the clearest perspective of life’s terrors and triumphs out there:
When you pass through the fire, you pass through humble
You pass through a maze of self-doubt
When you pass through humble, the lights can blind you
Some people never figure that out
You pass through arrogance, you pass through hurt
You pass through an ever-present past
And it’s best not to wait for luck to save you
Pass through the fire to the light
I first wrote this in 2014. Amid COVID-19, a lot of us are going to go through bouts of depression. Back then, I found it useful to use the five stages of grief as a reference point for what I was feeling. It helped me get to the other side. May it help you now. It won’t make the depression go away. But it might help you deal with it.
There are plenty of articles out there about the so-called five stages of grief. Based on my experiences in that department, I find the writings mostly accurate and valuable.
I’ve been thinking lately about how there are also stages of depression, not unlike those of grief. Identifying them can help you know where you are and what’s going on. Note: this is not a scientific effort. It is simply based on my own experiences.
Mood music:
Denial and isolation. Things start to go wrong, but you’re not immediately aware of them. Your short-term memory starts to slip, you become disorganized, and you protest when those who love and know you best suggest you may be heading for an episode. You respond by clamming up and ignoring friends when they ask you to have coffee. You spend a lot more time on the couch.
Anger. After one too many days in denial, you start to realize you’re again slipping into depression. This makes you angry, and you start taking it out on those around you. Your self-worth begins to sink, and you start to feel you can’t do anything right. This leads to more anger, self-loathing, and self-pity.
Bargaining. During grief, this is the stage where a person repeatedly goes over the what-ifs: what if the loved one had gotten medical attention sooner, what if you’d recognized the problem for what is was, etc. With depression, the bargaining works a bit differently. You plays the blame game with the world around you. You’re depressed because of work. You’re depressed because of a disagreeable family member. If the depression is really bad, you blame anyone and anything but the disease within your own brain.
Melancholy. With grief, the fourth stage is depression. Within the depression itself, the fourth stage is melancholy, at least in my experience. A deep sadness and hopelessness take hold in your gut after too many successive days of feeling like shit. It becomes hard to do most basic daily tasks.
Acceptance After a while, you realize you have a few choices. The most extreme choice is suicide. I’ve never seriously considered it, but I know people who have and, sadly, gone through with it. Another choice is to start doing things to emerge from the depression. For me, that involves talking to people and writing to get the feelings off my chest. The other step is to re-embrace coping tools. It’s not like flipping a switch, but more like rebooting a computer. It takes time to start using your coping tools effectively again and more time for them to make a difference. But acceptance is a start.
Acceptance is where I’m at now. I long ago accepted that frequent bouts of depression come with being me and that there are things I can do to keep it in check. It’s time to reboot the system.
