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Turning the Tables on Those Who Whine

The author has a low tolerance for those who bitch. But he’s about to do it anyway.

Mood music for this post: “Thorn in My Pride” by The Black Crows:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d-xq6q72cA&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

This post is about whining and hypocrisy.

For much of my adult life, I’ve had a low tolerance for people who whine about every little thing. I say adult life, because as a teenager all I did was whine.

Facebook has become a favorite hangout for people with lives packed with drama, and they whine on their profile pages with complete abandon.

I see those messages and I get all high and mighty, telling whoever will listen that these folks should keep their crying to themselves.

In the world outside of Facebook, not even my kids are safe from my low tolerance. Here’s an example:

Sean, 3 at the time, whines about something.

Me: “How about some cheese to go with that whine.”

Sean, being pretty sharp for a 3-year-old: “But it’s not lunchtime.”

The other night a friend from work marveled at how LITTLE I whine about things. He said something about how I’m one of the most optimistic people he’s ever met.

I am an optimist. After all I’ve been through, I’ve found the ability to see the silver lining around every cloud.

But I’ll be honest: Sometimes it’s all just an act.

I try to keep the optimistic face and only show people the confident, been-there-done-that-no-big-deal side of me. Sure, I spend a lot of time in this blog pointing out my weaknesses and failures, but I do it for the sake of testifying as to who I used to be and how I became the guy I am today. That requires taking a rigorous moral inventory of one’s self. Otherwise, I try to keep the happy face bolted on tight.

When I write about how life is so much better now that I’ve learned to (mostly) manage the OCD and related addictions, I mean every word. I’m one of the luckiest guys on Earth.

But that doesn’t mean things go smoothly every day.

Sometimes I still let the worries get the better of me. And when that happens, I whine. Just like all those Facebook friends I mocked earlier.

There’s a lot I want to whine about right now.

It pisses me off that in order to keep my most self-destructive addictions under control, I have to let myself be controlled by other addictions: Coffee. Cigars. Internet.

It makes me angry when I can’t spend money on unimportant things, which is another addiction. We’re so broke right now that I simply can’t afford to do that. I still have done it on a couple occasions, typically in the form of music downloads from the iTunes store. Fortunately, as readers here know from the mood music I put with most posts, all the music I could ever want is available for free on YouTube.

The lack of money is probably my biggest bitching point right now. We have never needed much, Erin and I. We don’t have expensive tastes, unless it’s the occasional splurge during a vacation trip.

Even then, we stay in the cheap hotels, and we’re fine with that.

But lately the basics are getting hard to cover. Bills are getting paid late. We’re not used to paying bills late. Erin has always been very much on top of that.

The cause is a deliberate choice we made over a year ago: That Erin would quit a full-time job and attempt to get a freelance copy editing business off the ground.

She’s handled it like a champ. She works her ass off every day, and her clients are always happy with what she delivers. The trick is finding enough of those clients to stay afloat.

We sometimes find ourselves in the position where bills come due before the money she’s owed arrives in the bank account. But we usually manage to muddle through.

I also take comfort in the fact that money is tight for everyone these days. Hell, even my father is broke. And he’s the best there is when it comes to money management.

I’m also a firm believer that if you hold onto your Faith, God will always provide. And He always has, even when we don’t realize we’re getting what we need and not what we want.

But lately, the money problem is becoming a mountain we’re not sure we can climb. I think we’re going to figure it out and I have no doubt all will be well.

I just hope reality matches my optimism.

How’s that for a bitch fest?

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Notes on Being a Dad, a Son and Grandson

The author shares some writings on his father, grandfather and kids for Father’s Day.

Mood music for this post: “Holiday in the Sun” by the Sex Pistols. Has nothing to do with the topic, but tomorrow is Father’s Day and I felt like hearing some Sex Pistols.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWF9MMxnekQ&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

Since it’s Father’s Day weekend, I thought the appropriate thing to post would be these items on my father, grandfather and my children…

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. This is where the author introduces his kids.

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

Courage in the Crosshairs. The author has been thinking a lot about his grandfather and the meaning of courage lately. Some have told him it takes courage to write about his OCD battles. He thinks it’s more about being tired of running.

Like Father, Like Son. The author finds that OCD behavior runs strong among the men in his family.

Peace at the Scene of the Crime. The author, his dad and children visit the Point of Pines and find something that had been lost.

Too Young for the Truth? Sean learns more about the man he’s named for than the author intended at this young age. All things considered, he took it well.

Parental Overload: No Big Deal. Nothing like a week of screaming kids to realize OCD aint what it used to be.

Happy Birthday, My Sweet Boy. Sean turns 9.

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Parental Estrangement

The story of a relationship ruptured by mental illness.

I told myself never to write this one. Too many people would feel burned. Then I remembered those who won’t like this are already angry with me. This is a critical piece of my journey through mental illness, addiction and recovery. So in I go.

Those who know me well know I haven’t gotten along with my mother and step-father for a long time. It’s been more than six years since our relationship imploded. There really is no blame to be assigned. No one person is completely innocent or at fault. Depression, addictive behavior and anger run deep in the family line, and ruptured relationships are often the tragic result.

I take full responsibility for my wrongs along the way. I also hold out hope for a reconciliation, despite several failed attempts in the past three years.

My mom yelled a lot when we were kids. She was capable of serious rage. She could speak in a threatening and cutting way. As a kid, I was completely incapable of understanding the pain she was going through. A failed marriage that was as much my father’s fault as hers. The death of a child and life-threatening illness of another child.

I 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.

We often look at abusive relationships in black and white. There’s the abuser and the victim. But it’s never that simple.

I forgave my mother a long time ago for the darker events of my childhood. I doubt I would have done much better in her shoes. Her marriage to my father was probably doomed from the start, and the break-up was full of rancor. Me and my brother were sick a lot, and one of us didn’t make it.

I didn’t fully appreciate what a body blow that was until I became a parent. After Michael died, she became a suffocating force in my life. I did the same to my own kids until I started dealing with the OCD.

I think she did the best she could under the circumstances.

So why aren’t we talking today?

There are many reasons. Some her fault, some mine, and a lot of other relationships have been bruised and broken in the process.

There’s a lot I can get into about this, but the simplest answer is that this relationship is a casualty of mental illness and addiction. This one can’t be repaired so easily, because much of my OCD and addictive behavior comes directly from her. She is my biggest trigger.

This is an old story. Mental illness and addiction are almost always a family affair. I was destined to have a binge-eating addiction because both my parents have one. They were never drinkers, though my stepfather was. Food was their narcotic. And so it became for me.

The fatal rupture in this relationship came in the summer of 2006. I was two years into my treatment for OCD and the binge eating was still in full swing. I was an emotional mess that summer. Late that July I had surgery for a deviated septum and was lying around drugged up all week. The kids were home and Erin was trying to do her job and take on all the stuff I couldn’t do around the house. So I asked my mother to come over for a few hours and play with the kids.

That morning, the phone rang.

“So tell me again what you need me to do when I get there,” my mother asked, after going on a tirade about what an inconvenience this was for her.

“I just want you to play with the kids for a few hours while Erin works,” I said. It seemed a reasonable request, since she was always on me about seeing more of her grandchildren.

“I’m coming up there so YOUR WIFE can work?” she asked.

That was the breaking point. I got angry and hung up. I figured it would blow over. What followed was a brutal e-mail exchange where she ripped my wife to shreds and blamed her for everything. There were also a lot of swipes in my direction about how I was the laughing stock of the family and that my wife had me whipped.

Since then, we’ve tried a few times but failed to repair the relationship. Our differences are simply too deep.

As far as she’s concerned, I’m a heartless, selfish bastard who does everything my wife tells me to do and that I’ve denied her the right to see her grandchildren. As far as I’m concerned, I need to keep my distance from my OCD triggers, and she is the biggest trigger I have.

I’ve wrestled with this mightily. My Faith tells me I need to honor my mother and father. Every time I go into the confession booth at church it’s the first thing I bring up. One priest put it this way: “Honor thy mother and father doesn’t mean you roll over and allow abuse to continue.” Still, I wrestle with it.

More than one person has asked me why I can’t just accept the disagreements and love my mother despite it.

That’s complicated.

I do love her. That’s never changed. But we both see things in each other that we can’t tolerate. That’s the best explanation I’m capable of giving right now.

77882-xs

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Every Gift But Length of Years

An untimely death has the author rethinking the meaning of life.

Mood music for this post: “Alive” by P.O.D.:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFG820EwvUQ&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

After JFK Jr., his wife and sister-in-law were killed when the plane they were in hit the ocean in the summer of 1999, the late Sen. Edward “Uncle Teddy” Kennedy said at the memorial service that his nephew had “every gift but length of years.”

It reminds me of an interview done years ago with Rose Kennedy in which the matriarch was asked if she would have preferred more normal lives for her dead children had it meant a longer life. Here answer was no. The lives her children had were full and left a mark on history, even if they didn’t make it to old age. She also noted that there’s no messing with God’s plan.

I’ve been thinking about these things since having coffee with my dear friend Penny Richards this morning.

Her only child died in a motorcycle accident late last year, and it has made a lot of us think about the fragility of life and how every moment we’re here counts. As Henry Rollins sang, “There’s no such thing as downtime. All there is is lifetime.” [I’m not sure I got the lyric down perfectly, but that’s the essence of it.]

My friend’s daughter, 25-year-old P.J., had been working at Mass. General Hospital and was well on her way to a career in the medical field when the end came. She was there about four months, but made a huge impression on those she worked with. The proof is in the tree that’s been planted in her honor there.

I read Penny’s blog every day, and let me tell you: The stuff she’s writing is going to help a lot of grieving people get through their melancholy in years to come. I so wish she didn’t have to be the one to set the example because she has to carry around deep pain. But for those who suffer from depression or go through any brand of adversity, her experiences must be shared.

Do yourself a favor and read her blog.

Also, take some time to learn about her daughter. I never really knew P.J., though I remember her hanging around the Eagle-Tribune newsroom all the time when her mother was a lifestyles writer and I was night editor.

I’ve since been inspired by her life story, as told my many people. She died too soon, but when she lived, she really lived, and brightened the lives of everyone around her in the process.

It’s a story that really helps us understand how to spend the time God gives us, whether its 100 years or just 25.

Which brings me back to that Kennedy quote: “Every gift but length of years.”

This in turn makes me think of some words of wisdom often repeated by Father Michael Harvey at my parish, All Saints in Haverhill, Mass. [Funny I should mention Father Mike and Kennedy in the same entry. Father Mike is not a Kennedy fan.]

Father Mike often tells us that our job as parents is to get our children into Heaven, whether the child lives to old age or dies young.

By that measuring stick, Penny and Dave Richards did their job and then some.

And their “pretty girl,” as Penny calls her in her own blog, rubbed off on enough people in her short life that the world in general has been left a better place than what she was born into.

That’s how I feel, anyway.

Our instinct as parents is to shield our children from danger. But sometimes a long, safe life isn’t in God’s plan. Since that’s the case, we need to instill in them the goodness they need for whatever may come.

This might sound weird, even preachy, to some of you. But it’s what I believe and where my head and gut have taken me today.

Thanks for indulging me.

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Too Young for the Truth?

Sean learns more about the man he’s named for than the author intended at this young age. All things considered, he took it well.

Mood music for this post: “Leslie Anne Levine” from The Decemberists:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ml0VI8VZO2U&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

Sean and Duncan were fighting in the bathtub. I can’t remember what started it, or what sparked this angry comment from Sean: “I’d rather commit suicide than apologize [for whatever he did].”  I punished him by making him go to bed a half hour early. Then I did something unexpected. I told him why that word makes my skin crawl.

I know Sean didn’t mean the statement literally. He was pissed off and wanted to land a verbal crusher, as kids do.

In that split-second where Sean was melting down over his punishment, I told him statements like the one he made will get him in trouble every time.

“I don’t understand why it’s such a big deal,” he said.

And then I told him that the man we named him for had taken his life. That’s a lot for a 9 year old to hear, and I wasn’t going to tell him until he was much older. It just sort of fell out of my mouth.

Sean gave me an intense stare, and his face went from red to white. His lower lip trembled. I felt 1,000 kinds of awful. I started thinking about how this might scar him for life, and how I always promised God that as a parent I would never do something to scar my kids.

I started to backtrack. I told Sean the man he was named for was a great man, and that he had a mental illness that unhinges the sufferer’s ability to make sane, rational decisions. I told him he should be proud of his name, and that I was proud of him.

He recovered pretty quickly, and seemed to understand. I often forget this boy is smart beyond his years, and I don’t always give him credit for being able to process weighty subjects.

Still, I always figured I’d wait until he was much older to tell him.

After Sean went to bed, I went upstairs to the loft where Erin and I have our desks. She was working late again on a freelance editing project. I told her what happened, thinking she wouldn’t be all that happy with me. But her reaction was pretty reasoned and calm. In all likelihood, she said, he wouldn’t be scarred from the knowledge. Besides, she added, young or not, he needed to feel awful about what he had said so he’ll think twice before saying it again.

Time will tell.

I’ve said before that Sean Brenner shares some of Sean Marley’s traits, particularly that deep intellect, and that I was going to be damn sure to watch for signs of the darker traits.

To that end, perhaps all this was necessary.

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Time to End This Sentimental Journey?

The author realizes it’s time to let some things go.

I’ve been making frequent visits to my father’s warehouse in Saugus, Mass., lately, digging through a bunch of boxes jammed into a crevice behind many pallets piled high with more boxes. The boxes I’ve been rummaging through are 15-20 years old, and some of them break apart at the slightest touch.

I’ve been hunting for my old notebooks from the late 1980s and early 1990s, the ones I filled with poems and lyrics I’d eventually use in the band Skeptic Slang. I figured I’d be lucky to find at least one notebook, and if I was really lucky I’d find one of our old recordings.

This hunt began a couple months ago, the day I rummaged through my grandfather’s old footlocker, which I’ve kept over the years and filled with all kinds of stuff. Among my finds:
A poem my old friend Joy — Sean Marley’s widow — wrote about me. Reading it brought on a feeling of loss, because she dropped out of my life after his death.

That should have been my first clue to stop looking for material things from the past, and yet I persisted.

I recently reconnected with Joy, which probably accelerated my drive to find the notebooks. If she could come back into my life so soon after I found that poem, what other shards of that old life could I reconnect and glue back together?

Two storage dives later, I haven’t found the notebooks. But I found some other, interesting things, including a ton of old pictures of my great-grandmother, who was a major force in my younger life, along with pictures of my late brother, Michael.

During yesterday’s rummage fest, I found an old inhaler of Granny’s that had to be some 30 years old. When I pressed down on it, spray still came out.

Yesterday, as I emerged from the pile covered in dust, frustrated that I had failed to find the notebooks, a feeling came over me. Why, I wondered, was I trying so hard to find these things? The more I thought about it, the more it bothered me.

I realized this was becoming an obsession — a typical OCD-driven pursuit. My life has been pretty damn good in more recent years. I’ve experienced sanity, clarity and joy I never thought possible a decade ago. So what the fuck was I looking for? Clearly, I’m still trying to fill a hole in my soul. But I thought I’d already stitched that hole shut. I suppose the lesson here is that you never fill the hole completely, you just learn to manage it and keep it from sucking in all other life.

This obsession isn’t just about MY notebooks. Sean Marley kept journals, and I’ve been yearning to look through his last couple years of entries. Something in me needs to see what, if anything, he had to say about his deepening depression and whether or not there was anything I could have done to steer him to the light.

I don’t think I’ll ever see the inside of those journals, because I really have no right to see them. They’re in Joy’s possession, and while I thought about asking if I could see them, I’ve decided not to. I have no right to see them. None of my business. Period. Besides, as my friend Mary put it, seeing those journals won’t change a thing about the past or the direction life took. And since that direction has been a good one, why would I want to change it anyway?

I’m also done looking for those notebooks.

What if I found all those lyrics? I’m never going to sing them again. And they won’t fill the hole — whatever that hole is — either.

I mentioned all this to Erin last night, and she pointed out that we humans are the sentimental sort. While finding old things won’t change anything, there’s still the sentimental value.

There’s nothing wrong with that in and of itself. But I’ve decided it’s time to let go.

That doesn’t mean I never want to see the notebooks again, but I’m done looking for them. if they turn up, great. But I don’t need them.

I don’t need to read Sean’s journals, either.

The reasons are simple:

–The brotherhood between me and Sean Marley was a defining thing in my life. As badly as it ended, we each got something important out of the friendship. I probably got more out of it than he did, because he helped me get past the rubble of childhood and come into my own. I’ve been told — and I’m starting to believe — that there was nothing I could have done differently that would have steered Sean down a better path. But I can honor his memory now by being a good Dad to the boy I named for him, and by using this blog to smash the stigma that keeps people with mental illness from getting the help they need.

— I’m chatting with Joy again, and that’s huge. I don’t need to bother her for the sake of my own craving for closure. Just having her back as a friend is good enough.

— I also remain friends with my former band mates, so why keep trying to rehash the creativity behind Skeptic Slang? What we had was good, but the music wasn’t meant to go on. It’s the friendships that were meant to go on.

— In the final analysis, God is going to keep pushing me in the direction I need to be in, and I learned long ago that messing with God’s will is futile, if not stupid altogether.

I’m just going to be myself and see what happens.

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How I Became the Easy Parent

Here’s a side of my recovery that the kids enjoy: I’m more of a push-over than I used to be.

Mood music for this post: “Mama Weer All Crazee Now” by The Runaways:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RTipAZuMRI&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

Back when my OCD was out of control, I craved order. When you have kids, order is impossible.

I was very big on sticking to routines. Brushing teeth and getting in pajamas by 6:30. Bed by 7:30. If it went later than that, I freaked out. That was my time to collapse on the couch in front of the TV.

I’m not sure when this stopped being important to me, but it did. Maybe it’s the Prozac. Maybe it’s the mental coping tools I use. Whatever the case, the chances of my kids running wild and burning the house down are greater than they were, say, six years ago.

I knew I had reached a turning point a couple years ago when one of the kids’ friends, Wolfgang, slept over. Right at the time they were supposed to be in bed, I dozed off on Sean’s bed while the three kids ran up and down the stairs chanting like Indians. I woke up an hour later to find them doing the same thing they were doing when I nodded off.

Then there was the time Sam and Grace White came over for a couple hours. I had to give Sam a time-out on the couch for reasons I can’t remember. I forgot about him and 20 minutes later he was staring at me with his lopsided grin.

“What?” I asked.

“Mr. Brenner (pronounced Bwenna),” Sam said. “Can I get up now?”

I used to panic when I had to get the kids ready for school and drive them there. It always came down to how I’d do my work and that, too.

Now it’s no big deal.

Go figure.

I think part of this is that my concept of rest and relaxation have changed. Having rigid control over what the kids do and when they do it is no longer as important as it used to be. I’m just happy to be spending time with them and just being together.

It’s one of the strange things that happened to me on the way to recovery: I started finding peace and relaxation in the very things that used to fill me with fear and spark anxiety attacks. [SeeFear Factor] Not the kid duties, but everything else in life that made me want to rush the kids to bed so I could enter my mental coma.

It used to be that relaxing meant holing myself up in the bedroom watching endless episodes of Star Trek. I watched a lot of the news, too, which instead of relaxing me would send my brain into an endless spin of worry about things happening at the far corners of the world.

Lying on the couch all weekend — sleeping for a lot of it — was relaxation.

Then Sunday night would arrive and I’d go into a deep depression about the tasks that awaited me the next day at work.

Before Sean and Duncan, the above was pretty much all I ever did.

Now the idea of doing nothing — even when I can — is repulsive to me.

I didn’t spend all that time on recovery so I could go lie on the couch. And besides, there’s never anything good on TV, anyway.

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Just a Little Patience

I recently stumbled upon this live version of GnR’s “Patience” and wanted to post it here because it’s always been an inspirational song to me.

Being an OCD-wired control freak with a knack for impatience and  endless attempts at recovery before I finally pulled it off, patience was a virtue I simply did not possess. It would be a stretch to say I’ve mastered it at this point in my life, but I at least appreciate it more than I used to.

I used to drop F-bombs to myself while driving every time I saw those bumper stickers that say things like “Easy Does It,” “One Day at a Time” and “Let Go and Let God.” Already seething in whatever traffic jam I happened to be sitting in at the time, those sayings would raise my anger level into orbit.

Years later, I understand those sayings and appreciate them in a way I never thought possible. My favorite is “Let Go and Let God,” just as the Serenity Prayer is one of my favorite prayers.

Anyway, I hope you get as much out of this song as I do:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjto02iDNZA&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

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It’s a Disease, Not a Choice

An open letter to those who are angry with a loved one whose addictions are off the rails.

Mood music:

This is one of those posts where I’m leaving names out to protect privacy. Still, the person this is meant for will know it’s for them, and he/she will be pissed at me. But that’s OK, because I’m saying something that needs to be said.

Right now, someone close to you has relapsed into alcoholism. This time it’s bad. You’re hurt and mad as hell because you remember a childhood where this sort of thing was a constant.

You might feel like hating this person right now because his relapse feels like a betrayal against you and you alone.

You’re wondering how the hell he could do this when he has so much to live for: grandchildren as far as the eye can see, a lot of the gifts he found a few years back when he got sober. It doesn’t make sense.

Here’s an attempt to explain it from someone who has been there. My problem was binge eating and a growing dependence on wine, further complicated by the variety of pain pills I was prescribed for the aches and pains caused, ultimately, by my bad habits. I was a less-than-ideal husband and dad. I couldn’t be relied upon.

I’d sneak around feeding my addiction and then cover my tracks. Sometimes I would blatantly lie about it. [See “The Liar’s Disease“] I didn’t lie to be evil. I did it because the shame was too much for me to handle.

You might also say I didn’t know any better.

One thing’s for certain: I didn’t wake up one morning and decide it would be a laugh riot to slowly destroy myself and hurt everyone around me in the process.

To you, looking at this loved one who is in relapse, you might feel that way. How the fuck could HE/SHE do this to YOU?

But here’s the ugly truth: Alcoholism — addictive behavior, period — is a disease. Nobody chooses it. They are chosen instead. It controls you like a puppet. You know as you’re doing that addictive action that it’s wrong and you hate every second of it. But your motor skills have taken over and you CAN’T stop.

Sure, we can shake it in time and find recovery, but relapse is a natural part of the disease. In fact, relapse is something I probably worry about the most, because I’ve been relatively lucky up to this point in my 12-Step program.

I know it can creep up on me and regain control at any moment, before I know what hit me.

In one of my favorite TV shows, “The West Wing,” Leo McGarry describes where the mind goes:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma3d-YdLjCs&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

“My brain works differently,” he says, followed by,” I don’t get drunk in front of people. I get drunk alone.”

It’s the same way for a food addict. You can’t have just one slice of pizza. It has to be the whole box. I once joked to a friends that I can’t eat just five. And when I really wanted to numb my frustrations in a bag of junk, I always went peddle to the metal out of sight from others; typically when I was alone in my car.

Yeah, the addicted brain works differently.

I guess the point I’m trying to make is this: Don’t hate the person who has fallen into relapse and disappointed you so badly. The person didn’t choose to be this way. He developed a disease a long, long time ago. And diseases have a habit of reasserting themselves from time to time. Sometimes the victim is not able to shake the relapse this time and it becomes the person’s demise.

It sucks. But it’s how it is.

Be mad. Be frustrated and hurt. But try and remember this person didn’t set out to hurt anyone.

Go easy on him/her, and yourself.

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Home Sweet Home

The author on returning home.

Mood music for this post: “Home Sweet Home” by the Motley Crue:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrYmsU0ZknA&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

There have been a lot of times in my life where I looked forward to coming home only to be sorry I was back minutes after getting there.

When I used to spend six-week stints in Children’s Hospital for the Crohn’s Disease, I would always think about home. I would think of the day I’d be released with great anticipation. It kept me going.

Then I’d come home and quickly be reminded that my parents’ marriage was burning at both ends and destined to fail. I’d be back to all the yelling, and I’d be back at school wondering how I would ever catch up to all the things I’d missed.

Before getting treated for OCD, I used to dream of home when I was on the road for business trips. Then I’d return and get overwhelmed with all the normal things that come with having a busy family.

Since I’d freak out over the trips themselves, I’d come home exhausted and the pressures of home would finish me off.

Today it’s much better.

I don’t freak out over the travel. When it’s time to do it, I just go, get the job done, enjoy the whole process and I come home. Once there, I’m tired but grateful to see Erin and the kids.

It’s no longer something I have to over-think. It’s nice to be able to enjoy the precious present.

Last night I got home from New York City and got the following greeting from Duncan:

“I missed you, Dad. But I didn’t miss you making my lunches for school!”

I love that kid.

Duncan and Sean gave me a good snuggle before bed, and when Erin came home we got to catch up before I passed out.

Since this was the second bit of travel in as many weeks (last week the whole family did the drive to DC and back) I expect to be fried for the weekend. And that’s OK. I’m grateful for the journeys I get to take for my job, and the return home is always worth it.

Don’t expect me to pass the time on the couch, though.

That’s not how I recover anymore. [More on that in Rest Re-defined]

Seize the day (even when exhausted)!