The OCD Diaries

May 30, 2011

Mark Twain And The Brenner ‘Curse’

My father had a minor stroke Sunday while Erin and I were off exploring the home of Mark Twain. The two seemingly unrelated events have me thinking strange things.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/RFsOwnZkIm8

I’ve always wondered if there’s a curse over my family, given our tendency to embrace our destructive impulses and pay the consequences.

At the end of the day, I know it’s not a curse. We choose to behave a certain way and we pay the price. I paid for years of compulsive binge eating by swelling to the upper 200s on the scale and puking up stomach acid in my sleep before I started treating it like the addiction it is with a 12-Step program.

In my father’s case, he apparently spent the weekend pushing himself too hard physically. With a bad leg, bad back and high blood pressure, he should know better. With heart trouble, diabetes and a history of hardened arteries in the Brenner family history, he SHOULD be afraid to eat the wrong things. But he does it anyway.

Much of that behavior was passed down to my brain, where it mixed with OCD, depression and other nasty byproducts. I do therapy and go to 12-Step meetings.

That’s not my father’s style and never will be. I think in his mind, he’s going to do what he’s going to do and when God calls his number, so be it. In that regard, he reminds me a lot of my maternal grandfather. Papa defiantly smoked his cigars until the end, and I don’t think he would have had it any other way.

Lucky me. A fatalistic tradition coming at me from both sides of the family tree.

The thing is, while fate handles people like us accordingly, others get off scot-free. Going through Mark Twain’s house Sunday brings that to mind now.

I identify with Twain on several levels. The obvious one is the writing. Another thing is the dark humor. Another thing we have in common, which I got a better picture of Sunday, is that he, like me today, was madly devoted to his wife and children, and that he had a habit of pissing his wife off anyway with his cussing and avoiding phone calls from people he didn’t want to talk to. According to one story, his wife took him down a few pegs for paying a visit to their next-door neighbor, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” author Harriet Beecher Stowe, without wearing the proper attire.

Home of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain's next-door neighbor

One other, important thing I identified with: Twain reveled in his bad habits. He smoked 20-40 cigars a day and loved to have a drink or five. Everywhere in his house is evidence of his constant smoking: the smoking table next to his chair in the library, the cigars and pipes strewn about in the study-billiards room where he wrote such masterpieces as “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “The Prince and the Pauper.”

It all made me want to smoke a big, fat cigar. I enjoy the occasional smoke, though nothing remotely close to how Twain did it.

Twain was a lot like my father. He was going to do what he did, and that was that.

I mentioned to Erin how funny it is that some folks, like Twain, can do what he did without consequence and live a long life (Twain died at 74), while someone like me has to pack it in and change my ways earlier in life. Then there’s my father, who is nearly 66 and has gotten that far despite his habits. Papa died a few months shy of his 71st birthday. Since 70 seems to be the new 40, that doesn’t seem like much longevity in this day and age.

Of course, medical treatments back then weren’t what they are today either, so whatever.

“You’re an addict,” Erin said. “Was Twain an addict?”

“Not sure,” I said.

“Either way, it’s still destructive behavior that affects you and everyone around you,” she said.

That was true in Twain’s case. Learning to live with a guy like that couldn’t have been easy for his wife.

Learning to live with a guy like me certainly hasn’t been all fun and games for Erin.

And living with my father probably hasn’t been without bumps for my step-mom.

History has it that Winston Churchill smoked cigars nonstop and was perpetually buzzed on every kind of alcohol there is. He lived to be 90.

I know from the history books that he was no fun to live with.

I can’t speak for my father, but for me one of the challenges is to remember to be me and not try to do self-destructive things because some of my heroes did them.

I tried hard to be my brother after he died. It didn’t work.

I tried hard to be Jim Morrison at one point because I thought he was cool. That didn’t work, either.

And sometimes, when I’m doing something that’s bad for me, I feel like Mark Twain, Winston Churchill and other big guys from history would approve.

There’s just one problem: I’m not them.

I try to be like my father in many ways because he’s a great man. But in other ways, I need to break the self-destructive cycle we seem to embrace.

May 27, 2011

Why We Judge Each Other

This whole debate over security curmudgeons has me thinking about our tendency to judge people. We all do it. I sure as hell do. But where’s the line between fair and unfair?

Mood music:

[spotify:track:25RpoTWuW0SBd9XBrGzY5d]

I’ve said my thing on that matter, and promised that my post yesterday would be my final word on the subject. So I’ll ask you to read those posts, which I link to above, for the background.

The rest of this post is about the class warfare we seem to live with every day. In security circles, it’s the “rock star” hackers vs. the suit-and-tie security execs. Elsewhere, it’s about judging different people vs. normal people, rich people vs. poor people, ugly people vs. beautiful people, normal families vs. dramatic families. I could go on into infinity, but you get the point.

So why do we judge each other? I guess the easy answer is that we have an irresistible urge to compare ourselves to other people. If we feel like shit because of what our lives have become, we want assurances that what we have is still better than the next guy.

If we come from a family of drama queens, we want assurance that some other family is ten times as bad.

In high school I was a fat misfit (the girth carried over to adulthood to varying degrees). To make myself feel better, I bullied kids I thought were uglier and more socially inept. I’ve been working to make amends for that in recent years, and have covered it more deeply in the posts “The Bridge Rats,” “Stiffy” and “Welcome to the Outcast Club.”

To this day, if I see someone who seems to fit some misfit stereotype, I gawk. I’m ashamed of that, but it’s the truth. It’s also hypocritical since I described myself as a misfit in that last paragraph.

It’s something I continue to work on. When I’m in a situation where I end up getting to know someone I’ve judged prematurely and my view changes, I try to keep that in mind next time I go to judge someone. I stop myself and think, “I know nothing about this person. I’m in no position to decide if they’re good/bad/weird etc. I was wrong about the last person I judged.” Of course, I still fail at times. I need to force myself to keep taking that step back.

I’ve really been digging the new Sixx A.M. album lately. Much of the subject matter is on how we judge each other and have stupid ideas of beauty vs. ugliness. I haven’t read the Nikki Sixx book it’s based on yet, called “This is Gonna Hurt,” but from what I’ve seen an important theme is in smashing stereotypes and valuing people on what they contribute to society.

At the end of the day, I think we’re all imperfect beasts who try too quickly to figure each other out. In that rush to judgement, people get hurt. Whole groups get hurt as well as individuals.

The question is, can we — collectively and individually –take that hurt and do something constructive with it?

May 26, 2011

Two Bad Memories

I just got over a fairly typical stomach bug that had me feeling bloated and miserable. It wouldn’t be worth mentioning, except that it brought back a couple bad memories and served as a wake-up call.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/bWsYuW9ULdU

For one thing, I felt just like I used to feel after a brutal junk-eating binge. Not the usual ate-too-much kind of bloat normal eaters feel after Thanksgiving, but the kind I felt after a really messy, days-long bender.

It’s that hung over, junk sick feeling I used to get.

Before I found recovery, my demon would start harassing me long before getting to the scene of the junk. Forget the people who would be there or the weather and surroundings. All I’d think about was getting my fill. Then I’d get to the event and get my fill from the time I’d get there to the time I left. I’d sneak handfuls of junk so what I was doing wouldn’t be too obvious to those around me.

Halfway through, I would have the same kind of buzz you get after downing a case of beer or inhaling a joint deep into your lungs. I know this, because I’ve done those things, too. By nightfall, I’d feel like a pile of shattered bricks waiting to be carted off to the dump. Quality time with my wife and kids? Forget it. All I wanted was the bed or the couch so I could pass out.

The next morning would greet me with a bad headache, violent stomach cramps and blurred vision. Just like having a hangover or being dope sick.

I didn’t have the blurred vision, but last night I felt a lot like those mornings-after.

It also reminded me of how I used to feel during flare ups of the Crohn’s Disease.

I remembered the searing, knifing cramps, the bloated immobility and the blood.

Call me over dramatic, but that’s what I remembered. It is what it is.

It’s kind of funny that last night’s discomfort made me think of the binging first and the Crohn’s Disease second, since the latter kind of led to the former.

In the long run, the disease has been more damaging to my mental health than my physical health. It screwed up my brain and pushed me toward an adulthood of addictions and other hangups.

So here I am on Thursday morning, looking out the window at the sunrise and feeling grateful as hell that the feeling passed.

It’s like when you wake up from a nightmare and realize none of it was real.

But something in my distorted mind leaves me wondering if this was some sort of divine wake-up call; a warning from above that I’ve been too overconfident of my recovery lately.

In OA meetings you always hear people talk about this overconfidence as a precursor to their own relapse.

I don’t want to relapse, so I need to start keeping my confidence in check.

Funny, the things you think about when you’re lying down feeling like crap.

I guess I still have a fair amount of insanity in me.

May 23, 2011

What’s YOUR Insanity?

“Paint a garbage can platinum and underneath, it’s still a garbage can.” Nikki Sixx

In Chapter 3 of the AA Big Book, we’re introduced to an alcoholic named Jim. He has a successful business until he starts drinking at age 35 in an attempt to dull a nervous tick, and everything goes to hell.

From pages 35-36:

“In a few years he became so violent when intoxicated that he had to be committed. On leaving the asylum he came into contact with us.

“We told him what we knew of alcoholism and the answer we had found. He made a beginning. His family was re-assembled, and he began to work as a salesman for the business he had lost through drinking. All went well for a time, but he failed to enlarge his spiritual life. To his consternation, he found himself drunk half a dozen times in rapid succession. On each of these occasions we worked with him, reviewing carefully what had happened. He agreed he was a real alcoholic and in a serious condition. He knew he faced another trip to the asylum if he kept on. Moreover, he would lose his family for whom he had a deep affection.

“Yet he got drunk again. We asked him to tell us exactly how it happened. This is his story: “I came to work on Tuesday morning. I remember I felt irritated that I had to be a salesman for a concern I once owned. I had a few words with the boss, but nothing serious. Then I decided to drive into the country and see one of my prospects for a car. On the way I felt hungry so I stopped at a roadside place where they have a bar. I had no intention of drinking. I just thought I would get a sandwich. I also had the notion that I might find a customer for a car at this place, which was familiar for I had been going to it for years. I had eaten there many times during the months I was sober. I sat down at a table and ordered a sandwich and a glass of milk. Still no thought of drinking. I ordered another sandwich and decided to have another glass of milk.

“Suddenly the thought crossed my mind that if I were to put an ounce of whiskey in my milk it couldn’t hurt me on a full stomach. I ordered a whiskey and poured it into the milk. I vaguely sensed I was not being any too smart, but felt reassured as I was taking the whiskey on a full stomach. The experiment went so well that I ordered another whiskey and poured it into more milk. That didn’t seem to bother me so I tried another.”

—

This is what we addicts call insanity. We get into this stupid idea that we can drink, eat or do drugs in perfect moderation like so-called normal people. That might mean trying to moderate drinking by ditching the hard stuff for just beer, or ditching red meat.

In the former case, you’re still getting smashed on a daily basis on beer. In the latter case — my case — you binge on everything that isn’t red meat until you explode.

At one point in my time as an out-of-control food addict, I decided to starve myself during the week and allow myself crazy binges Thursdays through Sundays. I looked forward to Thursdays because I could go into the Ground Round and order one of those colossal plates of nachos with every kind of junk dumped on top. That’s an appetizer meant to be shared between three or more people, but I would eat that myself, then chase it down with something healthy like a salad.

I’d carry on that way until the end of the weekend, and work out an hour-plus each day to balance it out.

It was but one variation of the insanity I had always practiced. As a teen and early 20-something I would binge on fast food for weeks and then starve myself for one or two weeks.

I usually binged in the car, trying to drive as I stuffed one arm into the bag of grease, flour, sugar and salt. That’s insanity too, because it doesn’t exactly promote safe driving.

It’s all about as crazy as putting whiskey in your milk and carrying on like you’re just drinking milk.

In the big picture, the problem isn’t the food, or the booze, or the drugs. It’s not necessarily the insanity of engaging in the binge.

Instead, the real problem — ground zero — is a deeper insanity that takes up residence in our souls, causing us the nervous ticks that make us do the stupid things we do. In the TV show “The West Wing,” recovered alcoholic Leo McGarry describes the nervous condition nicely:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUwm6WJRPIQ&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

We all have some form of insanity within us. Some learn to manage it without substances. Many more don’t.

Which leaves me with the question:

What’s your insanity, and what does it make you do?

May 19, 2011

In Big Families, Drama Happens. Get Over It

When we fall prey to our demons, we almost always cite family dysfunction as the cause and not our own bad decisions. I’m certainly guilty of that one.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/ZQlM59sDJVo

Many times in this blog, I’ve cited my brother’s untimely death, my estrangement from my mother and various other family dramas as triggers for much of my OCD behavior and addictive pursuits.

I don’t take anything back. Our personal history is an important guide when we have to figure out how we developed certain quirks. And as part of my early therapy, a deep scouring of the past was necessary — painful as it was.

But it would be wrong for me to blame every bad turn I’ve ever made on my family. My bad decisions along the way were all mine. I have to own the things I’ve done.

And, in the big picture, EVERY family is full of drama. The bigger the family, the bigger the drama. When you have a large family, the odds are more favorable for dramatic things happening.

Look at the Kennedys. Right after Sen. Edward Kennedy was seriously injured in a plane crash in 1964 — a year after his brother’s assassination — someone asked Bobby Kennedy if the bad luck would ever end for his family. His response was that he had been thinking about how — had his parents stopped at the first four children — they would have “nothing now.” Fortunately, RFK added, “There’s more of us than there is trouble.

The Kennedy family is a drama that has played out on a much bigger canvas than what the average family is used to.

But every large family has drama, especially as we get older. When we’re older, we see more of the older generation dying off. That can be dramatic. I often joke that my father-in-law has become the messenger of doom because he frequently calls to tell us that someone died. My mother used to play that role, and still would if we were on speaking terms.

In the bigger picture, I think family drama has always been a typical part of the human experience. We’re all shaped by the scars we receive at the loss of loved ones and the conflicts we have between ourselves, our siblings, parents and cousins.

It’s natural for us to be knocked off balance during times of family drama. Binging for comfort, as one example, is a very typical response.

But for those of us with the deeply embedded demons — including mental and social disorders and addictive behavior — It would be wrong to blame everything on family drama.

At the end of the day, we have a choice: We can settle for a lesser life crushed under the weight of the struggles that are a natural part of every existence, or we can respond to the struggles by finding more patience and compassion for people worse off than we are.

We could respond to our troubled families by dropping off the face of the earth (one of Erin’s cousins did just that), or we can simply be there for each other.

Given the thing with me and my mother, that probably sounds hypocritical.

But I always hold out some hope of a future reconciliation.

And I’m more determined now than I’ve been in recent years to keep tabs on my family and be a calming voice when a cousin, aunt or sibling needs it.

It may sound like a pipe dream. But IT IS something I’m working on.

May 14, 2011

Back Story Of THE OCD DIARIES

Since I’ve been adding new readers along the way, I always get questions about why I started this thing. I recently expanded the “about” section, and that’s a good starting point. But more of a back story is in order.

Mood music:

Before I started THE OCD DIARIES in December 2009 with a post about depression hitting me during the holidays, I had always toyed with the idea of doing this. The reason for wanting to was simple: The general public understands little about mental disorders like mine. People toss the OCD acronym around all the time, but to them it’s just the easy way of saying they have a Type-A personality.

Indeed, many Type-A people do have some form of OCD. But for a smaller segment of the population, myself included, it’s a debilitating disease that traps the sufferer in a web of fear, anxiety, and depression that leads to all kinds of addictive behavior. Which leads me to the next reason I wanted to do this.

My particular demons gave me a craving for anything that might dull the pain. For some it’s heroin or alcohol. I have gone through periods where I drank far too much, and I learned to like the various prescription pain meds a little too much. But the main addiction, the one that made my life completely unmanageable, was binge eating.

Most people refuse to acknowledge that as a legitimate addiction. The simple reason is that we all need food to survive and not the other things. Overeating won’t make you drunk or high, according to the conventional wisdom. In reality, when someone like me goes for a fix, it involves disgusting quantities of junk food that will literally leave you flopping around like any garden-variety junkie. Further evidence that this as an addiction lies in the fact that there’s a 12-Step program for compulsive over-eaters called Overeater’s Anonymous (OA). It’s essentially the same program as AA. I wanted to do my part to make people understand.

Did I worry that I might get fired from my job for outing myself like this? Sure. But something inside me was pushing me in this direction and I had to give in to my instincts. You could say it was a powerful OCD impulse that wasn’t going to quit until I did something about it.

I write a lot about my upbringing, my family and the daily challenges we all face because I still learn something each day about my condition and how I can always be better than I am. We all have things swirling around inside us that drive us to a certain kind of behavior, and covering all these things allows me to share what I’ve learned so others might find a way out of their own brand of Hell.

I’m nothing special.

Every one of us has a Cross to bear in life. Sometimes we learn to stand tall as we carry it. Other times we buckle under the weight and fall on our faces.

I just decided to be the one who talks about it.

Talking about it might help someone realize they’re not a freak and they’re not doomed to a life of pain.

If this helps one person, it’ll be worth it.

When I first started the blog, I laid out a back story so readers could see where I’ve been and how personal history affected my disorders. If you read the history, things I write in the present will probably make more sense.

With that in mind, I direct you to the following links:

The Long History of OCD

An OCD Christmas. The first entry, where I give an overview of how I got to crazy and found my way to sane.

The Bad Pill Kept Me from the Good Pill. How the drug Prednisone brought me to the brink, and how Prozac was part of my salvation.

The Crazy-Ass Guy in the Newsroom. Think you have troubles at work? You should see what people who worked with me went through.

The Freak and the Redhead: A Love Story. About the wife who saved my life in many ways.

Snowpocalypse and the Fear of Loss. The author remembers a time when fear of loss would cripple his mental capacities, and explains how he got over it — mostly.

The Ego OCD Built. The author admits to having an ego that sometimes swells beyond acceptable levels and that OCD is fuel for the fire. Go ahead. Laugh at him.

Fear Factor. The author describes years of living in a cell built by fear, how he broke free and why there’s no turning back.

Prozac Winter. The author discovers that winter makes his depression worse and that there’s a purely scientific explanation — and solution.

Have Fun with Your Therapist. Mental-illness sufferers often avoid therapists because the stigma around these “shrinks” is as thick as that of the disease. The author is here to explain why you shouldn’t fear them.

The Engine. To really understand how mental illness happens, let’s compare the brain to a machine.

Rest Redefined. The author finds that he gets the most relaxation from the things he once feared the most.

Outing Myself. The author on why he chose to “out” himself despite what other people might think.

Why Being a People Pleaser is Dumb. The author used to try very hard to please everybody and was hurt badly in the process. Here’s how he broke free and kept his soul intact.

The Addiction and the Damage Done

The Most Uncool Addiction. In this installment, the author opens up about the binge-eating disorder he tried to hide for years — and how he managed to bring it under control.

Edge of a Relapse. The author comes dangerously close to a relapse, but lives to fight another day.

The 12 Steps of Christmas. The author reviews the 12 Steps of Recovery and takes a personal inventory.

How to Play Your Addictions Like a Piano. The author admits that when an obsessive-compulsive person puts down the addiction that’s most self-destructive, a few smaller addictions rise up to fill the void. But what happens when the money runs out?

Regulating Addictive Food: A Lesson in Futility. As an obsessive-compulsive binge eater, the author feels it’s only proper that he weigh in on the notion that regulating junk food might help. Here’s why the answer is probably not.

The Liar’s Disease. The author reveals an uncomfortable truth about addicts like himself: We tend to have trouble telling the truth.

Portable Recovery. Though addiction will follow the junkie anywhere in the world, the author has discovered that recovery is just as portable.

Revere (Experiences with Addiction, Depression and Loss During The Younger Years)

Bridge Rats and Schoolyard Bullies. The author reviews the imperfections of childhood relationships in search of all his OCD triggers. Along the way, old bullies become friends and he realizes he was pretty damn stupid back then.

Lost Brothers. How the death of an older brother shaped the Hell that arrived later.

Marley and Me. The author describes the second older brother whose death hit harder than that of the first.

The Third Brother. Remembering Peter Sugarman, another adopted brother who died too early — but not before teaching the author some important lessons about life.

Revere Revisited.

Lessons from Dad. The author has learned some surprising lessons from Dad on how to control one’s mental demons.

The Basement. A photo from the old days in Revere spark some vivid flashbacks.

Addicted to Feeling Good. To kick off Lent, the author reflects on some of his dumber quests to feel good.

The lasting Impact of Crohn’s Disease. The author has lived most of his life with Crohn’s Disease and has developed a few quirks as a result.

The Tire and the Footlocker. The author opens up an old footlocker under the stairs and finds himself back in that old Revere basement.

Child of Metal

How Metal Saved Me. Why Heavy Metal music became a critical OCD coping tool.

Insanity to Recovery in 8 Songs or Less. The author shares some videos that together make a bitchin’ soundtrack for those who wrestle with mental illness and addiction. The first four cover the darkness. The next four cover the light.

Rockit Records Revisited. The author has mentioned Metal music as one of his most important coping tools for OCD and related disorders. Here’s a look at the year he got one of the best therapy sessions ever, simply by working in a cramped little record store.

Metal to Stick in Your Mental Microwave.

Man of God

The Better Angels of My Nature. Why I let Christ in my life.

The Rat in the Church Pew. The author has written much about his Faith as a key to overcoming mental illness. But as this post illustrates, he still has a long way to go in his spiritual development.

Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely. The author goes to Church and comes away with a strange feeling.

Running from Sin, Running With Scissors. The author writes an open letter to the RCIA Class of 2010 about Faith as a journey, not a destination. He warns that addiction, rage and other bad behavior won’t disappear the second water is dropped over their heads.

Forgiveness is a Bitch. Seeking and giving forgiveness is essential for someone in recovery. But it’s often seen as a green light for more abuse.

Pain in the Lent. The author gives a progress report on the Lenten sacrifices. It aint pretty.

May 8, 2011

Mothers

Here’s a celebration of the moms in my life — the ones I can’t live without and the ones I don’t talk to anymore.

Mood music:

There’s my mother. We don’t talk these days ( I covered the reasons in a post last year) but I want to thank her for doing her best with the tools she had at the time. Having kids like us wasn’t easy. I remember a lot of yelling in my house as a kid. I remember a lot of hitting, too. And a lot of tears. But I also remember her worrying about me endlessly and sitting beside my hospital bed for weeks on end as the Crohn’s Disease raged inside me, and dragging herself to her wit’s end taking care of my grandparents and great-grandmother, all of whom could be difficult. Maybe one of these days a reconciliation will happen. For now, it is what it is.

There’s Erin, my love, best friend and mother of my two beautiful children. I’ve written a lot about my wife in this blog. The best place to catch up on that is a compilation post I did a few months ago called “How Marriage Saved Me.” To say she saved me is not an exaggeration.

She gave me two beautiful sons who remind me every day that this life is not all about me. I still fail to remember that frequently, but this family has without a doubt brought me a lot closer to salvation than I ever could have hoped for without them.

She has challenged me to be the best person I can be. She never lets it slide when I act like an ass, and she is THE reason I found God. An old priest friend once said a married couple’s job is to get each other into Heaven, and she’s done more for me on that score than I have in return.

She always makes the boys’ costumes at Halloween and that is just one element of her greatness: We could just buy costumes in the store and the kids may not mind. There’s nothing wrong with buying a costume. But to Erin that’s unthinkable. For those kids, only hand-made reflections of their fertile imaginations will do. It’s the harder way, but to her it’s the better way.

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

There’s Dianne, my step-mother.

Me and Dianne were always in conflict. As a kid I thought she was in the marriage with my Dad for his business success. I fought constantly with the step-sister she gave me. I was jealous of the step-brother she gave me because he was suddenly the cute youngest kid. Before my parents divorced it was Michael, Wendi and me, the youngest. Being sick, I was also spoiled rotten. Then the step-siblings came along and Michael died, making me the oldest son, a title that carried a lot of pressure.

I blamed it all on her. Of course, she also gave me a beautiful half sister in late 1985 who came along at just the right time, bringing joy to the family I never thought we’d see again.

Fast-forward to 2011. I’ve learned a lot over the years. One is that I was the asshole most of the time back then. I was looking for people to blame for my pain and she was too good a target to pass up. She has stuck by my father through all kinds of illness and turmoil. She loves him deeply, and worries about him constantly. I’m eternally grateful to her for that.

There’s my Step-sister Stacey, who’s a great mom to my niece and nephew, Lilly and Chase. There’s my sisters-in-law, Sara and Robin, who have given me a precious niece and nephew.

There’s my mother-in-law, Sharon, who is one of the most peaceful souls I’ve ever met. To be around her is to feel safe and loved. She brought up four beautiful daughters and she’s a natural at the role of grandma.

There are my friends who are moms: Mary, Stacey, Denise, Donna, Deb, Lauren, Linda, Betsy, Vickie, Christie and endless others. They all inspire me with the love they show for their kids. That sort of inspiration makes me strive to me better, too.

And that’s why moms are so important, no matter how much we boys may fight with them. They push us to be better.

Happy Mother’s Day, with all my love.

–Bill

April 30, 2011

Sean and Duncan Get A Lesson From The One-Armed Drummer

It started with Sean and Duncan doing what they usually do in the car — taunting each other. Sean told Duncan he has ADHD. Duncan didn’t like that.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/oF96Nvnf_IY

The fact of the matter is that we don’t know what Duncan has yet. He’s too young for an accurate diagnosis. Like everyone else, he has his challenges to overcome, and we’re working with him on it. Clearly, one of my weekend tasks is to take Sean aside and explain the role he needs to play. Task 1: Stop telling Duncan he has ADHD, and stop trying to set him off.

But I started the lesson right there in the car.

“You boys have heard about how I have Obsessive-compulsive Disorder, right?” I ask.

“Yeah,” they say in unison, their tone making it clear they’ve never really understood what OCD is other than an acronym that gets tossed around the Brenner home daily.

So I explain the basics: The mind that spins out of control with worry. The chest that tightens with anxiety. The fear and addictive behavior that goes with it, and the fact that I managed to get the right treatment and am doing well now.

I tell them: “We all have our struggles. That’s mine. Duncan’s is that he has trouble focusing and channeling his emotions. And Sean, one of yours is the inability to put down one of your Star Wars Lego ships before you’ve fixed a piece that came undone. You may not have OCD like me, but that kind of obsession is definitely an OCD trait.”

I tell them there’s nothing wrong with us for having these struggles. It doesn’t make us freaks. It doesn’t make us animals. It simply makes us human.

“True, I do have an issue with that (the Legos),” Sean says.

I drive home the point that we don’t have to let these struggles hold us back. Hell, I’ve managed to enjoy a successful career in journalism despite my struggles. And, I tell them, it’s the same with people who have other ailments and disabilities.

Then a Def Leppard song comes on the radio.

I remember that the drummer, Rick Allen, lost an arm in a car wreck many years ago. That didn’t stop him from drumming. He simply taught himself to use his foot to compensate for what he could no longer do with the second arm.

The kids have been getting into my music of late, so this gives me a good opportunity to make a nice teachable moment out of this.

I call up the Def Leppard albums in my iPod and let it play for the rest of the ride.

They like what they hear. Especially the drumming.

I spring the shocking truth on them: The drummer only has one arm.

That doesn’t stop him from being a good drummer.

The kids are more subdued for the rest of the ride, in awe of what they’ve just learned.

This won’t stop them from taunting each other. It won’t stop Sean from tossing acronyms around like sticks and stones.

But it’s certainly going to make them think a lot harder about who we all are and what we’re capable of, regardless of the challenges that dog us.

April 28, 2011

Over-scheduled Kids: It’s Not The Activity, It’s The Parents

I was talking to a co-worker yesterday about all the activities our kids are involved in these days. Boy Scouts. Sports. Martial Arts. Are we over-scheduling our kids these days? We couldn’t help but wonder.

Mood music (Pardon the coding gibberish around the video. There’s a glitch I haven’t figured out yet, but the music plays just fine):

As a kid, I resisted activities like those offered at the Jewish Community Center off of Shirley Ave., Revere. I preferred walking the streets or reading comic books.

The difference between then and now is that back then I had a choice. Kids today don’t seem to have a choice.

That’s how it looks sometimes, anyway.

I hated the kids involved in all the usual activities back then, so I chose to be a loner. Smoking cigarettes under the General Edwards Bridge connecting Revere and Lynn was a much better way to spend time, I firmly believed. There was a cool network of catwalks right below street level and you could hide up there all day and do all the things a reckless kid will do.

A few years ago, my then-boss Anne Saita was telling me about all the activities she had to shuttle her daughters around to later that day. I asked why her kids were so crammed with activities. I noted that I didn’t do that stuff as a kid and I turned out OK.

“The difference is that the world is a much more dangerous place today,” she said.

I brushed it off at the time. Every parent thinks their kid is living in a more dangerous world than the one they grew up in.

Now here I am, with kids who are older, and it seems they are involved with everything. Both are Scouts, which often has us running out to meetings and activities more than twice a week. There are talent shows and plays with constant rehearsals. I see friends’ kids running to Scouts meets from their martial arts meets.

In the case of my kids, I don’t mind. They seem to enjoy it all, though there are times they lament over the lack of free, unstructured time.

I do find myself wondering about how we schedule our children’s time, though: Are we creating an environment that’s too fast and stress-filled for them in an effort to keep them out of trouble?

Are we putting them under the kind of strain that will lead to drug abuse and suicide later on?

Like most things in life, there’s no easy answer to that question.

Would I have been spared an adulthood of OCD and addiction if my time were more structured and disciplined as a kid? Probably not.

Are we damaging our kids by making them do too much now? I tend to doubt that, too. My kids certainly didn’t complain about getting to camp on a battleship for one Scouts outing.

I’m no expert, and I have no interest in peppering this post with all the research that’s available on this question, because at the end of the day, I think there’s a simpler point to make:

It’s not the activities we have to worry about. It’s us. The parents.

I look at myself and see a guy who went through a lot of rough stuff as a child. I desperately want it to be better for my children.

That’s good in that I have a golden opportunity to raise them happy and raise them right. That’s bad because as a man with OCD, there’s a real danger that I’ll push them too far. Parents have a habit of trying to live vicariously through their children and I’m no exception.

My wife is better at thinking through the schedule, so I’m thinking Sean and Duncan have a better-than-average chance at surviving a childhood of hyperactivity.

On the other hand, I’ve seen parents that push their kids to the brink all the time. God help the kids if they don’t win an award every month. God help them if they lose a game. Remember the dad who went to prison for beating another kid’s father to death over a hockey game? That’s when the activity has gone well past something fun for the kids to do and learn from.

My parents didn’t push me to do more activities as a kid. My father kept recommending I do more at the community center, but in the end I got to make the choice. My mother was too absorbed in her own world to advise me one way or the other.

It would be easy to say it was a different time and place, but I have no idea how things might have been different if I were forced to live by a more disciplined schedule.

Since the mental disorder I eventually struggled with is tied to a problem with brain chemistry, I think I would have put all the stress on myself and been a lot sicker as a result.

It’s even possible that all the unstructured, even reckless time as a kid helped me survive the adult struggles later on.

Only God knows for sure.

All I know now is that I have to keep an eye on my children’s schedule. I have to make sure they enjoy what they’re doing and that they’re learning about life in a way where they’re not stressing too much over the little things.

As a parent I can push them off the cliff, or help them build the future they want.

I’ll end this one with a request for feedback. To the readers who are parents, what is your kids’ schedule like and do you feel strongly about them having a busy schedule vs. a more unstructured one?

April 22, 2011

Prayers for Old Friends

This morning my thoughts and prayers are with the Jones family, who mourn the loss of a daughter and sister.

Mood music:

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

Twenty years ago, I would hang out with this family for days on end.

Jeff Jones (he goes by Geoff Wolfe today) was my fellow Doors freak, and I remember many pleasant afternoon’s and evenings in their back yard. I was there for July 4 1991, which I remember because someone slammed into my car and took off that night. The car, a 1981 Mercury Marquis, never ran right again. I got pretty smashed that night.

The next year, we celebrated the 4th by blowing up a mannequin with M-80s.

I remember their children, Josh and Sarah, running around the house and yard.

We had a mutual friend in Bob Biondo, a kid who must have weighed in excess of 400 pounds. He had long, curly hair and always wore a cap and trench coat to hide his girth. He supplied me with a lot of weed and cigarettes and he was another mainstay in the Revere basement.

At some point in the early 90s I decided I was getting too grown up to hang around with these people. So I stopped coming around.

I moved to Lynnfield and made sure Biondo didn’t know where I lived. I simply stopped calling the Jones house.

What I didn’t know at the time was that I was beginning a deep slide into depression and addiction. I cut myself off from a lot of people and started to isolate myself.

Thanks to Facebook, I recently reconnected with the Jones family.

Yesterday, I received word that Sarah died.

As a parent, I shudder violently as I think of what Deb and Geoff are going through.

Fortunately, they have a strong Faith. As Deb said on her Facebook page yesterday:

“For those of you grieving … don’t! My daughter is at peace in the arms of her Lord. No more worries, no more pain. Remember the wonderful times you had with her. She was a very special person. Our lives will never be the same, but as for Sarah, she is fine.”

They can use a lot of prayers right now, so if you can spare some that would be appreciated.