Someone recently asked if I think about my disease 24-7 and, if so, whether doing so is perilous to those around me. In this case, the disease is OCD and the addictions that go with it.
Mood music:
Let me try to take a stab at addressing that:
I don’t think my disease should define me and keep me in a box. But it’s also a major part of who I am and how I tick. Writing a blog that focuses on that probably amplifies things. But I see some necessity in it all.
Like any person with an addictive personality, I have to have it on my mind around the clock because if I stop thinking about it I forget it’s there. That’s when I get sloppy and sink into the bad behavior.
The OCD part is a little more complicated and maybe even a little contradictory.
Since OCD is largely a disease that triggers destructive over thinking, you would think that the goal is to teach yourself not to think so hard. In some respects, that is the goal. But it’s about not engaging in thinking that snags your brain like the scratch in a CD does to the laser. It’s about never forgetting that the disorder, like addiction, is nearby doing push-ups, ready to kick your ass when you get too comfortable.
I’ll admit that I’m not even close to having this stuff in balance. But to those who think I focus on my disease at the expense of all else, I disagree. The me of today is a deeply flawed animal. But go back and meet the me of five or 10 years ago and you’ll meet a monster. A wounded monster. Everyone is probably better off with me as a flawed animal. I’m less harmful that way.
That doesn’t mean I should tell everyone to fuck off and carry on with no regard for the needs of others.
I need to keep working on being a better husband, a better father, a better friend and colleague. I’m never going to be perfect. But I can be better. If I have to think about my disease 24-7 to keep getting better, so be it.
I also think it’s necessary to remember my disease so I can be be more helpful and supportive of other people dealing with their own diseases — not necessarily cancer and the like, but everything from work stress to a loss of identity.
I’ve tried hard to demolish the wall I hide behind when my mind isn’t right. But whenever I think I’ve made progress, shit happens and I find it’s taller and thicker than ever.
Mood music:
My latest mood swing has me thinking hard about how I allow this to happen. Far as I can tell, I do make progress, but then I take my eye off the wrecking ball and the wall rebuilds itself when I’m busy internalizing everything.
For all the sharing I do in this blog, sometimes it’s still ridiculously hard to open up to those closest to me. One reason is that I’m still a selfish bastard sometimes. I get so wrapped up in my work and feelings that it becomes almost impossible to see someone else’s side of things.
I also don’t like to be in a situation where there’s yelling. There was plenty of that growing up, and I tend to avoid arguments with loved ones at all costs. Putting up a wall can be a bitch for any relationship, because sooner or later bad feelings will race at that wall like a drunk behind the wheel of a Porsche and slam right into it. Some bricks in the wall crack and come loose, but by then it can be too late. Relationships are totaled.
I’m starting to believe this is a chronic condition hardened by my early history. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to sit here and accept it.
When I stop talking, it hurts my wife, my kids and my larger family. But how do I calm the restlessness so that I’ll stay buckled into the bulldozer with my hands firmly on the controls, pounding the wrecking ball through the wall until only dust remains?
Therapy helps, and I have that regularly. But somewhere between the therapist’s office and the rest of my life, the action plan goes missing.
Maybe the problem is that I dance around it in therapy and I’m really not leaving with an action plan in hand.
Maybe the height and thickness of the wall increases and decreases on a set schedule and I just have to be more watchful. It definitely seems to grow more impenetrable at the start of winter, which is where we are now.
But maybe it’s always there, the same size and thickness, and I just happen to ignore it until someone forces me to remember its existence.
If all that sounds like bullshit, perhaps it is. I try to be as honest as possible in this blog, but let’s remember that I’m an addict and addicts are skilled at lying to themselves and others.
My mind is clear about one thing right now: I’ve slid backward and need to regain my footing. The best place to start is by making a real action plan, right here, right now:
–At my next therapy appointment, I need to make my communication troubles the focus of the appointment instead of letting the therapist run down the broader checklist.
–I need to be more disciplined about using the happy lamp I’m supposed to sit in front of during the winter. Truth be told, I’ve resisted it because in the end, I look at the florescent glow and grouse to myself that it’s just not the same as real sunlight.
–I need to reassess my diet. I’m pretty disciplined about following a strict, OA-approved food plan. But I’ve had trouble getting up the mood to eat the vegetables that are a staple of the program. So I fall back on my OA-approved breakfast at other meals. I tell myself the end goal is not to binge eat and that’s true. But messing with the food could also mean I’m messing with my mind.
–I need to get better at letting people yell at me sometimes. Yelling from anyone inevitably sends me back under my mother’s roof. Maybe Ma doesn’t yell anymore but she did back then, and a raised voice goes in my ears and hits the brain like gunshots. But avoiding arguments doesn’t make problems go away. They just sit patiently in the corner waiting for the next opportunity, which is always there.
–I need to get better at talking back. This might seem strange to those who think I’m pretty good at speaking up. But that’s just in writing form. Verbally I still suck at it. I don’t want to say things that might be hurtful and, at the least, uncomfortable. But sometimes others need a talking to for their own good. I need to be more helpful in that regard.
–I need to start walking again. I used to walk compulsively, then a few years ago I stopped. Perhaps I need to work 20 or 30 minutes two or three times a week back into the mix, so I can use the time to process my thoughts. I used to use walking time to do that and I was still a mental mess. But I’ve made a lot of progress since then and maybe the walks will be more useful for organizing thoughts now that it’s not a game of spinning worries and anxieties around in my skull.
Is any of this realistic? I don’t know. But it’s time to try more radical wall-demolishing activities.
A bump on the path to reconciliation after five years of estrangement from my mother: Angered over posts about my childhood, she has unfriended me from Facebook.
Mood music:
http://youtu.be/ZQlM59sDJVo
I wasn’t too surprised. I knew that recalling childhood as I remembered it wouldn’t sit well with her. But I was hoping — really hoping — that she would see the bigger picture I’ve been trying to present: One where I’ve turned out fine despite earlier struggles. I also hoped she would recognize my efforts to point out where I’ve been wrong and hurtful along the way.
Ah, well.
She did call to wish me a Merry Christmas, and told me she dropped me because she didn’t want certain friends and relatives to see the blog through her connection. Fair enough.
“I wish you thought about the consequences beforehand,” she said. “Or maybe you did and this is what you wanted.”
“Consequences” is one of those words that almost always means something bad — the putrid result of an ill-advised action. In this case, people seeing my mother as an abusive “Mommy Dearest” type is the consequence of writing my back story.
But in my opinion, it was necessary. Everyone struggles in life. Our history always shapes us. I had to show you all where I’ve been so you can understand where I’m going.
Part of the holiday tradition around here is a viewing of “It’s A Wonderful Life.” The ending used to make me sad, because it seemed to sum up what was missing in my life.
For a long time, I didn’t feel like I had any friends. It was nobody’s fault. I had crawled so far inside myself that I chose dozing off on the couch with the TV remote in my hand over going outside and dealing with people.
I was terrified of my own shadow and too absorbed in OCD-driven thoughts to reach out to real people outside the closest family.
But that’s what insanity does to you. You think all the shit that’s untrue is real and, in the process, you miss the very real beauty that’s right in front of your face.
But I’ve done a lot of mental healing in the last few years. I’ve written about it at length here — more than some folks think I should. But the facts are ironclad:
–I’m much better at living in the moment than I used to be.
–Once I learned to get out of my own way, I realized that I do have a lot of friends; way more than I can count. That’s a big deal, because in my late teens I used to be so insecure about how many friends I had that I would try to count them all. They never went away. I did.
That last scene from “It’s A Wonderful Life” — where George Bailey finds a copy of “Tom Sawyer” from his guardian angel, Clarence, with a message inside the cover that says “No man is a failure who has friends” — is so true.
Based on some of the reader feedback I’ve received lately, it’s a safe bet that some people miss the point of this blog.
Mood music:
When they read about the tougher things I’ve been through, they walk away with the notion that this is about stewing over childhood pain and obsessing over the challenges of everyday life.
But that’s not the point at all. This is about finding the beauty in life and celebrating the victories regardless of what life throws at you.
A year or so ago I led a meeting of Overeater’s Anonymous (OA), which is a 12-Step program for compulsive binge eaters, much like AA is such for alcoholics. During these meetings, the leader tells his or her story for about 15 minutes. The first five cover the speaker’s ugly path to addiction, the second five focuses on the point we hit bottom and entered the program, and the final five are about how our lives are today in recovery.
At the end of the meeting, someone expressed shock over all the troubles I’ve been through. “It’s just been one tragedy after another,” the person said. “You’ve had a horrible life.”
A horrible life? I don’t think so.
Consider the following:
I may struggle with addictive behavior, but I’m not shoving junk down my throat until my insides are ready to explode like I used to.
I may have struggled during points in my career where the demons were winning. But I’ve survived all that and made close friends in every work environment I’ve ever inhabited.
While I have been through the meat grinder, there have been many years of peace, joy and happiness in between the bad stuff. All these events are stretched out over the 41-plus years I’ve been around. If you were to sit and watch even a three-hour replay of events, you’d find it a lot more boring.
To understand this, just think about your own life. You’ve no doubt experienced sickness and death, family dysfunction and career ups and downs.
If you haven’t, you will.
In between the rough patches, I fell in love with and married the best gal on Earth, had two precious children who keep me laughing and loving, I’ve enjoyed a lot of success in my career, traveled to a lot of cool places and found God.
That stuff doesn’t suck.
Then there’s the joy I feel every day in recovery. All the great friends I have, doing a job I love and having the OCD under control.
Would I want to go through the bad stuff again? Of course not. But the weird truth is that I’m not sure I’d change the past, either. It’s easy for someone to wish they had a lost loved one back in their life and that they were less touched by illness.
But without having gone through these things, would I be where I’m at today?
I really don’t see how.
So when you read about some of the tougher things in this blog, don’t worry about me and don’t feel bad. I’m no different from most people in what I’ve been through, and it’s all good.
A point my mother made regarding some of what I’ve written about the past: “I remember differently than you on most entries. Not because I am blind but because children are little and see things big.”
Mood music:
I don’t disagree with that. When you’re little you do see things big.
In this case, my mother was referring to the stuff I’ve written about my childhood and whether things really happened as I remember it. “I love you but cannot understand how you can go online and write these awful Mommy Dearest entries,” she wrote to me (full comment — and my response — at the bottom of this post).
For those who aren’t aware, “Mommie Dearest” is a memoir written by Christina Crawford, the adopted daughter of actress Joan Crawford. The book, which depicts Christina’s childhood and her relationship with her mother, was published in 1978 and released as a movie in the early 1980s.
Christina’s version of her childhood is brutal. By her account, her mother beat her with a wire hanger, made her scrub the bathroom floor in the middle of the night and cut her son and daughter from her will.
As kids we joked about the movie and often suggested our mom was “Mommie Dearest.” To this day, truth be told, the scene in the movie where Joan freaks out about the wire hanger sends me into a fit of laughter.
My mother always hated when we made the comparisons, which is understandable. The thing is, I don’t really remember her as a “Mommie Dearest.” Not even close. Ugly things did happen back then, but we suffered as a family. My mother reacted back then in ways that didn’t make sense to me, but I don’t see her as the symbol of a bad childhood. Not for one second. Her love for us kids was unmistakable, even when she struggled to cling to sanity in our presence.
Why do I write about it here, for all to see? There are several reasons.
To understand my adulthood with OCD and addictive behavior, it’s important to see how I got that way. History plays an important role in how our adult demons manifest themselves. If I don’t share this stuff, the reader won’t connect with all the points I make about how I was able to overcome a lot of demons. To that statement some will cry bullshit. That’s fine by me. The memories must be shared because that’s how the reader is able to relate what I tell them to their own experiences.
Those who have written me about how this blog has helped them gain perspective about their own lives and allowed them to start dealing with their problems always point to the back story. They relate to it first, and then they are able to put my end points into perspective. Without the raw recollections to chew on, you can’t start building a foundation of strong recovery.
Also, since this blog is part memoir, the author’s recollections will inevitably leave some people stung and pissed off.
This exchange with my mom has been useful in that it makes me look at my own behavior as a parent.
I’d love to tell you that I learned from my parents’ mistakes and have been a better dad as a result, but is that really how my kids see it?
After all, as my mother noted, when you’re little you see things big.
When they’re in their 40s, will they remember my smaller quirks as explosive outbursts that cut them to the core?
I guess I’ll find out in a few years.
But for now, it gives me extra incentive to conduct myself in a way that they will look back on with respect and happiness.
If I succeed, everything I went through will have been worth it.
In my slow effort to reconcile with my mother, I made it easier for her to find this blog. Given the raw emotion to be found here, I was pretty sure it would be rough.
Mood music:
I suspect it hasn’t been easy for her to read through this thing. Not at all. But her initial comments suggest she’s really trying to get it and put it in the proper perspective.
Some of my memories are not as she remembered the sequence of events, but I knew that would be the case. As I try to point out regularly, this blog is based on my recollection of things. But my recollection is never going to be the same as how others saw it.
One of my favorite rock autobiographies is “The Dirt” from all four members of Motley Crue. What I love about it is that each member writes about the same events, and while they remember many details the same way, there are other events each band member remembers differently, especially when it comes to what they think was going on in their bandmates’ heads. By seeing the four different perspectives, events become a lot more real and ironclad.
That’s why I always encourage family members to chime in via the comments section. If they remember an event differently, the reader should know about it. Then we get closer to the truth.
I suspect my mother will focus more on the bad stuff in here than the good. It would be hard not to when you’re essentially reliving family history as remembered by the youngest child.
That has to be a mind-bender.
She commented this morning that while she doesn’t remember everything the same way, she understands (or at least accepts) my need to write it all down and share. She suggested that she just wants me to be well and focus on my family.
She also noted that the post I wrote about my brother’s death had a couple facts wrong. He didn’t walk to the ambulance as I remembered, and he died earlier than I thought. She said it as an FYI, not in an accusatory, bitter tone.
I don’t think she would have been able to see things this way even a couple years ago.
I’m still not sure how far I want to go with this. I’m still somewhat gun shy about getting too close again. That’s not her fault. It’s just that I have my OCD triggers, and I have to be mindful of them. I have to set clear boundaries. I’m still going to keep my distance. But I’m at least ready to talk.
I started to feel this way at my Cousin Andrew’s wedding in August. I saw a lot of family members I hadn’t seen for a very long time, and I was admittedly feeling somewhat lost.
I give my mother a lot of credit. Despite all the trouble between us, she gave me and Erin hugs and was very friendly. That couldn’t have been easy. My stepfather kept his distance, but given the tension in the air, who could really blame him?
My Aunt Robin didn’t say more than three words to me, but that’s ok. She hadn’t seen us in a very long time and that has to create some awkwardness. I watched her being a good, nurturing and loving aunt to several cousins, and that made me happy. It was really good talking to my Aunt Dee. The two of them look great. Aunt Robin has such a close resemblance to my late grandmother that I was taken aback at first. It goes to show that the dead live on in others. Also very comforting to see.
One of my cousins was there and it was the first time I had seen her in over 20 years. She’s not on speaking terms with much of the family. She didn’t remember me on sight, but last time we saw each other I was a skinny, long-haired metal head. Now I’m a husky, bald-headed metal head.
Since she’s a black sheep too, it’s rather ironic and funny that she didn’t recognize me. Or maybe it made perfect sense.
This family has been through the meat grinder. There has been a lot of mistrust and misunderstanding along the way. There’s been way too much sickness and death. We’re not special in that regard. Every family has a deep reservoir of drama.
I don’t think the wedding did much to change the family dynamics. The people who are not on speaking terms need a lot more than a family wedding to resolve the overwhelming tangle of misfiring wires.
But everyone getting along in the same space showed that despite everything, despite the divisions, everyone still fundamentally loves each other. That’s important, because as one of the refrains in the second reading of the wedding ceremony made plain, you can have everything in the world. But if you don’t have love, you have nothing.
I’ve had a lot of love and blessings in my life in the last few years. I’ve come far in overcoming addictions and mental illness. Even the family discord has served a purpose.
My Uncle Bobby, the last of the siblings that included my grandmother, took me aside at one point and said life is too short to hate.
He is absolutely right.
But hate has nothing to do with it.
Mistrust, hurt feelings and deep disagreements over right and wrong? Absolutely. But not hate.
I still love everyone, and I forgave my mother a long time ago.
So why, you’re probably wondering, can’t we just let the past lie in its grave and move on? Because relationships are deeply complex things, and it is never that simple or easy.
But I let Ma find this blog, and believe me: That was a big fucking step.
I hope it leads to something better.
Michael, left, me and Wendi, sometime in the early 1970s. The family has been through the wringer over the years.
Two years ago today, in a moment of Christmas-induced depression, I started this blog. I meant for it to be a place where I could go and spill out the insanity in my head so I could carry on with life.
In short order, it snowballed into much more than that.
Mood music:
http://youtu.be/IKpEoRlcHfA
About a year into my recovery from serious mental illness and addiction — the most uncool, unglamorous addiction at that — I started thinking about sharing where I’ve been. My reasoning was simple: I’d listened to a lot of people toss around the OCD acronym to describe everything from being a type A personality to just being stressed. I also saw a lot of people who were traveling the road I’d been down and were hiding their true nature from the world for fear of a backlash at work and in social circles.
At some point, that bullshit became unacceptable to me.
I started getting sick of hiding. I decided the only way to beat my demons at their sick little game was to push them out into the light, so everyone could see how ugly they were and how bad they smelled. That would make them weaker, and me stronger. And so that’s how this started out, as a stigma-busting exercise.
Then, something happened. A lot of you started writing to me about your own struggles and asking questions about how I deal with specific challenges life hurls at me. The readership has steadily increased.
Truth be told, life with THE OCD DIARIES hasn’t been what I’d call pure bliss. There are many mornings where I’d rather be doing other things, but the blog calls to me. A new thought pops into my head and has to come out. It can also be tough on my wife, because sometimes she only learns about what’s going on in my head from what’s in the blog. I don’t mean to do that. It’s just that I often can’t form my thoughts clearly in discussion. I come here to do it, and when I’m done the whole world sees it.
More than once I’ve asked Erin if I should kill this blog. Despite the discomfort it can cause her at times, she always argues against shutting it down. It’s too important to my own recovery process, and others stand to learn from it or at least relate to it.
And so I push forward.
One difference: I run almost ever post I write by her before posting it. I’ve shelved several posts at her recommendation, and it’s probably for the best. Restraint has never been one of my strengths.
This blog has helped me repair relationships that were strained or broken. It has also damaged some friendships. When you write all your feelings down without a filter, you’re inevitably going to make someone angry.
One dear friend suggested I push buttons for a good story and don’t know how to let sleeping dogs lie. She’s right about the sleeping dogs part, but I don’t agree with the first suggestion. I am certainly a button pusher. But I don’t push to generate a good story. I don’t set out to do that, at least.
Life happens and I write about how I feel about it, and how I try to apply the lessons I’ve learned. It’s never my way or the highway. If you read this blog as an instruction manual for life, you’re doing it wrong. What works for me isn’t necessarily going to fit your own needs.
Over time, the subject matter of this blog has broadened. It started out primarily as a blog about OCD and addiction. Then it expanded to include my love of music and my commentary on current events as they relate to our mental state.
I recently rewrote the “about” section of the blog to better explain the whole package. Reiterating it is a pretty good way to end this entry. You can see it here.
Every year, when family members ask me what I want for Christmas, I’m always at a loss for words. I don’t really care about getting presents, though I love to give them.
Mood music:
But there are some non-material things I wish for:
Our oldest has an intellect well beyond his 10 years. He absorbs details with little effort and I can’t remember the last time he DIDN’T achieve high honors. But sometimes I forget that he’s still a kid.
Mood music:
He likes to tell us he’s a tween. To that, I tell him he’s more like a half tween.
But he is mighty mature for his age, nothing like the immature, messed up kid I was at 10. I’m proud as hell of him for that, but I think I sometimes put to much pressure on him as a result.
I sometimes wonder if, in that craving for order I sometimes get when my OCD is running hot, I put the greater burden on Sean because getting a mess cleaned up quickly is more important to me than making sure they each do their fair share. Since it can be hard sometimes to get Duncan to do what I want when I want, I immediately turn to Sean.
I’m starting to see it for the unfairness that it is.
Ironically, though I had nowhere near the intellect Sean has, I can still relate to the very pressure he might be feeling.
I started my life as the youngest of three kids, the proverbial baby of the family. Michael was the oldest, and in the Brenner family much has always been expected of the oldest son.
My father was the middle child of his generation, but he was the only son. My grandfather, who came off a boat from the former Soviet Union with all the typical old-school values, expected the world of my father. As my grandfather descended deep into old age and illness in the mid-1960s, my father became increasingly responsible for the family business.
Growing up, my older brother became the one my father leaned on the most. Michael was encouraged to chart his own course and was studying to be a plumber. But he was expected to help out with the family business and do a lot of the grunt work at home.
I was the baby, and a sick and spoiled one at that. I came along almost three years after my sister Wendi, and by age eight I was in and out of the hospital with dangerous flare ups of Crohn’s Disease. I got a lot of attention but nothing hard was expected of me. I was coddled and I got any toy I wanted.
The result was a lower-than-average maturity level for my age. At age 10 I acted like I was 5 sometimes. I would crawl into bed with my father for snuggles, just like a toddler might do.
During Christmas 1980 — the first after my parents’ divorce — I wanted it to look like Santa had come, even though I knew by that point that he didn’t really exist. I clung hard to the delusion, because my parents played Santa all the way up to their last Christmas as a couple, when I was nine. So on Christmas Eve 1980, I took all the gifts I had already opened and arranged them as if Santa had dropped them in my living room. I even wrote a “To Billy from Santa” note. Christmas morning I got up, went in the living room and expressed all the excitement of a kid who discovers that the jolly fat guy had come overnight.
My maturity level hadn’t changed much by the time I hit 13. I probably regressed even further right after my brother died. But as 1984 dragged on, I was slowly pulled into the role of oldest son.
All the stuff that was expected of my brother became expected of me, and I wasn’t mentally equipped to deal with it. My brother had a lot of street smarts that I lacked.
So I have to shake my head and wonder if I’m causing history to repeat itself.
I hope not.
I am indeed proud of Sean for all he is. But I don’t want to force him to grow up too fast.
