My initial reaction to that was irritation. Too fucking bad, I thought. So sorry I allowed Mr. Sunshine to take a sabbatical. How inconvenient for everyone.
After a few minutes of that, I realized I was being a prick.
People simply care about me and they are worried.
Thank you for caring. Sorry for being a prick.
I guess it has been a long, rough road. I’ve been back and forth to the rehab center each week, and it’s an hour from my home and my office. Seeing Dad in the wheelchair, plainly depressed, has had a rub-off depressive effect. I know how hellish the inactivity is for him, because he passed that trait down to me.
Meantime, I’m keeping it full steam ahead with my own work. And it’s taking all I have to keep from sliding back into binging.
Naturally, trying not to binge means I’ve picked up another destructive crutch. I put that crutch down on Friday, and while it’s the right thing to do, I’m resentful as Hell about it. More on that tomorrow.
The bottom line is that I am not a sunny guy right now. But don’t worry. I’ll be fine. This is life, and despite all the toil and trauma, I am a lot better at this shit than I used to be.
In the meantime, thanks for being patient and caring. I do appreciate it.
Former Warrant singer Jani Lane was found dead last night in a Comfort Inn in L.A. at age 47. It’s unclear at this point what the cause is, but his death is making me re-think a few things about my attitude.
Mood music:
http://youtu.be/cSdvxocgbAg
I remember when Warrant came out in the late 1980s. I couldn’t stand them. Sure, they sounded good. Crunchy guitar sound. Good vocals. But it all sounded so fake. I thought “Cherry Pie” was the dumbest song I’d ever heard. Again, the sound was good. But the lyrics were stupid and the feel wasn’t real to me. Admittedly, though, I liked “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and hated the fact that I liked it.
The band also came out at a point in the late 80s when every band was starting to sound and look alike. I decided I was too cool for it all.
I did what a lot of other metal heads did in the early 90s when the metal scene imploded under the weight of all the copycats: I started listening to so-called grunge: Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains. My own band, Skeptic Slang, sounded a lot like the grunge we were listening to, with hints of old-school metal here and there.
I still listen to all those bands, but in recent years I’ve returned to my 80s hard rock roots. Warrant has not been part of my playlist.
I’ve seen interviews with Jani Lane over the years where he lamented writing “Cherry Pie” and took a crack at reality TV. He looked and sounded like a troubled man in those clips, and he did indeed wrestle some demons. He was recently sentenced to serve 120 days in jail after pleading no contest to a 2010 DUI charge — his second in two years.
As for his death, no one really knows what happened. We can speculate, but I won’t. I’ll just wait for the follow-up news reports.
Instead, I’m examining my own reaction to his death and what it says about me and human nature in general.
When I first saw the news an hour ago, I felt bad. I went on Youtube and started playing Warrant songs. I was thinking that they sounded much better with age, then I had a “what the fuck?” moment.
Here I am, thinking these songs sound pretty good. And I’m sneering at all the nasty comments people make about being glad he’s dead. Then I catch myself, because in my self-righteous anger I quickly remember that I used to say things about how bands like this sucked and needed to be destroyed. I’m pretty sure I’ve joked from time to time about how it would be nice for bands like this to go down in a flaming plane wreck.
That’s not nice. It’s certainly not a good fit with my Christian beliefs. But there it is.
It’s funny how we get when musicians and celebrities we don’t think much of die. I found it amusing that people were tearing Michael Jackson down in the last decade of his life because of his alleged pedophilia, yet, when he died, everyone magically forgot that stuff and acted as if Jesus Himself had been crucified again.
When Motley Crue bassist Nikki Sixx opined about Jackson being a “child rapist” and I wrote about it, the comments section of this blog descended into all kinds of name calling. Most of it came from people who love Michael Jackson’s music.
More then one person noted that Jackson was never found guilty of such things. When he was still alive, people were not defending him so ardently.
We do this stuff a lot when famous, tarnished figures die. We play up the good stuff they did and conveniently forget the bad stuff. Or, at least, we minimize the latter as some unfortunate little interlude between the acts of greatness. Richard Nixon comes to mind.
And now we’re remembering the good stuff Jani Lane contributed to the world in his 47 years.
You know what? That’s how it should be.
Everyone deserves a shot at redemption, and making music I personally didn’t care for doesn’t mean there was something wrong with Jani Lane. He wrote the music he wanted to write. It spoke to him, and it spoke to others, even if I wasn’t one of them.
The band’s success in the late 80s and early 90s happened because the music made a lot of kids happy, just as Motley Crue’s “Shout At The Devil” and Def Leppard’s “Pyromania” gave me moments of happiness during a troubled youth.
We all have our tastes and opinions. We all tend to think our opinions are better than everyone else’s.
That’s part of the human condition. We don’t just do it to celebrities. We do it to everyone. We are judgmental savages sometimes.
Rest in Peace, Jani Lane. I apologize for any of the bad stuff I said about you over the years.
I’m in my therapist’s office, going over the things he routinely asks about to make sure I’m playing with a full deck. He asks if I’ve talked to mom recently. No, I tell him. But, I expect to see her this weekend — the first time in two years.
Mood music:
He asks if I’m nervous about it. To my surprise as well as his, I tell him I’m not — and I actually mean it.
I won’t repeat all the background of what happened between my mother and me. You can get the back story by reading an earlier post called “The Mommy Problem.”
Let’s just focus on the present…
The last time I saw her was the summer of 2009. I met with her for lunch and told her all about my treatment for OCD and how I was in a 12-Step Program for the binge eating disorder. She seemed to get where I was coming from. I was certain this was the start of the healing.
Then she sent an e-mail a week later asking when she was going to see her grandchildren. I told her Erin needed more time but I was ready to sit down with Bob on my own. I expected he’d sit there and call me every name in the book and tell me how much I had hurt the family, and I was ready to just sit there and take it. He was entitled to that.
But they were having none of that.
My mother sent another e-mail suggesting I was whipped and controlled by my wife, and that I was the laughingstock of the family as a result. Back to square one.
That was in August 2009. We haven’t spoken since.
So why am I calm about the expected Saturday encounter? I guess it’s because I feel comfortable in my own skin and I feel like I’ve done a lot of hard soul searching in the five years since our combined mental illnesses imploded the relationship and took a few people with it.
I’ve taken it to the confession booth at church too many times to count. I tell the priests I wrestle with the whole “Honor thy mother and father” commandment. I’m always told that honor thy mother and father doesn’t mean sit there as you’re repeatedly run over by a tank.
I did make a big effort at reconciliation two years ago. I even connected with her on Facebook, for heaven’s sake. When I realized my efforts were going to fail, I de-friended and then blocked her from my profile.
Looking at the whole sorry affair, I still think she did the best she could with the tools she had. The problem is that she’s really lacking in the tool department, mainly because in her mind she has no problem. She’s a victim. Pure and simple.
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. My brother and I 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 hold nothing against her. There’s a lot I can get into about this, but the reality 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.
For the sake of my immediate family, recovery has to come first.
Without it, I fail EVERYONE.
Right now, I don’t see how saying much to her will be helpful in that regard.
I’ll be nice. I certainly won’t be mean.
And despite what has happened in recent years, I expect her to behave the same way.
After all, the day will not be about us. It’ll be about my cousin and the awesome gal he’s marrying.
I’ve always been fiercely protective of my children. Part of it is that fear of loss. I’m like Marlin the clown fish in “Finding Nemo.” Like Marlin, I’m starting to realize I need to let the kids have some adventures.
Mood music:
http://youtu.be/E5H8DwJI0uA
Any good parent is going to be over-protective to a point, and that’s how it should be. God gave us these kids to nurture, and we have to make sure they make it to adulthood and beyond.
But we’re also supposed to teach them how to survive adversity. For all my talk in this blog, I haven’t always done that part very well.
Some of it is my own background. Having watched my parents divorce, a brother die and a best friend commit suicide, I’ve had an overwhelming urge to shield Sean and Duncan from danger at all costs. That kind of compulsion is tailor-made for someone with OCD, because we drive ourselves mad trying to control all the things we are absolutely powerless to control.
I’ve gone crazy over all the usual things. I see a mosquito bite or two on their legs and I go into a fit of lunacy because mosquitoes can carry dangerous diseases. Letting them out of my sight would fill me with dread.
But I also remember something else from childhood: After my brother died, my mother, who was already overbearing, became absolutely suffocating. I think she wanted me to stay in whatever room she was in straight on through adulthood.
Naturally, I rebelled.
Thank God I did, because without taking some chances in life and breaking free of your protective sphere, you amount to nothing.
I can’t put my kids through the same thing, no matter how much I worry about them.
Learning to better control my OCD had been helpful. When I learned to break free of the fear and anxiety, I stopped going crazy over the little things.
This summer I’ve suddenly realized how far I’ve come.
Sean and Duncan have a couple new friends from the neighborhood. One boy’s family runs the farmland all around us and is accustomed to exploring all the woodland trails. Sean and Duncan now run off with their new friends, hanging out in a secret fort they built in the woods and digging holes in the mud by the culverts.
A funny thing has happened here. I find myself kicking the kids out of the house on sunny days, telling them to go explore and enjoy the outdoors.
A couple years ago, the prospect would have terrified me. Now it feels natural.
This doesn’t mean I no longer worry about my kids being in danger. I worry about it all the time. I don’t think that’s the OCD. I think it’s the normal reaction from a parent who adores his children.
But now, when I get uncomfortable about it all, I remember a scene from the movie I mentioned at the beginning of this post: Marlin and Dory are inside a whale, and Marlin laments that he failed to keep a promise to his son. The exchange went something like this:
Marlin: “I promised I’d never let anything bad happen to him.”
Dory: “That’s a funny thing to promise. If nothing ever happens to him, then nothing will ever happen to him. Not much fun for little Harpo.”
Kids need adventure. They even need to experience adversity. That’s how they learn to be good, strong adults.
Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over (insert addiction) — that our lives had become unmanageable.
Mood music:
I am powerless. Or, you could say, my addictions have absolute power over me. Even when sober and abstinent, they are right behind me, doing push-ups, waiting for my one reckless moment of weakness.
Now that I know this, life is a lot better. I can do what I must to be well and I’m a lot happier and healthier for it.
The problem with addicts is that we’re experts in the art of denial. It takes many years of damage before we are ready to even consider that we have absolutely no control over our lives.
When we really hit bottom and spend some time there, things become so desperate that we become willing to admit how weak we are. How pathetically powerless we are. When that happens, we arrive at the first of the 12 Steps of Recovery. Simply put, admitting there’s a problem is the first step in dealing with the problem.
My most destructive addiction involves binge eating. That is followed by other addictions: to alcohol, tobacco, caffeine and, to a lesser extent, pills.
I’ve often lamented that mine is the most uncool of addictions. We need food to survive, after all. This is certainly not what most of society would accept as a “normal” addiction.
Still, it makes perfect sense that food would be my problem.
As a kid sick with Chron’s Disease, I was often in the hospital for weeks at a time with a feeding tube that was inserted through the left side of my chest. That’s how I got nourishment. I wasn’t allowed to eat or drink anything. At a very early age, my relationship with food was doomed to dysfunction.
It didn’t help that I was from a family of over-eaters who would stuff themselves for comfort in times of stress and fatigue.
In our society it’s considered perfectly OK to indulge in the food. Time and again, I’ve heard it said that overeating is a lot better than drinking or drugging. But for me, back when I was at my worst, binge eating was a secret, sinister and shameful activity.
Here’s how it works:
You get up in the morning and swear to God that you’re going to eat like a normal person. You pack some healthy food for the office. Then you get in the car and the trouble starts before the car’s out of the driveway. Another personality emerges from the back of the brain, urging you to indulge. It starts as a whisper but builds until it vibrates through the skull like a power saw.
The food calls out to you. And you’ll do whatever it takes to get it, then spend a lot of time trying to cover your tracks.
Before you know it, you’re in the DD drive-thru ordering two boxes of everything. It all gets eaten by the time you reach the office. You get to the desk disgusted, vowing to never do that again. But by mid-morning, the food is calling again. You sneak out before lunchtime and gorge on whatever else you can find, then you do it again on the way home from work.
You pull into McDonald’s and order about $30 of food, enough to feed four people. From the privacy of the car, the bags are emptied. By the time you get home, you wish you were dead.
The cycle repeats for days at a time, sometimes weeks and months.
For many years I hid it well, especially in my early 20s. I would binge for a week, then starve and work out for another week. That mostly kept the weight at a normal-looking level.
Call it athletic Bulimia.
In one inspired episode, I downed $30 of fast food a day for two weeks, then went a week eating nothing but Raisin Bran in the morning, then nothing but black coffee for the rest of the day. After the cereal, I’d work out for two hours straight.
In my mid-20s, once I started working for a living, I kept up the eating but couldn’t do the other things anymore. So my weight rose to 280. In the late 1990s I managed to drop 100 pounds and keep it off through periodic fasting.
Then I started to face down what would eventually be diagnosed as OCD, and I once again gave in to the food. The gloves were off.
The binging continued unabated for three years. The weight went back up to 260. I also started to run out of clever ways to mask over all the money I was spending on my habit. I was slick. I’d take $60 from the checking account and tell my wife it was for an office expense or some other seemingly legitimate thing. But she’s too smart to fall for that for long.
One I admitted I was without power over all this insanity, I was ready to do something about it.
That’s when I discovered Over-eaters Anonymous (OA), a 12-step program just like AA, where the focus is on food instead of booze. I didn’t grasp it immediately. In fact, I thought everyone at these meetings were nuts. They were, of course, but so was I.
Thing is, I had reached a point in my learning to manage OCD where I was ready to face down the addiction. If it had to be through something crazy, so be it.
Through the program, I gave up flour and sugar. The plan is to be done with those ingredients for life. Put them together and they are essentially my cocaine. I dropped 65 pounds on the spot. But more importantly, many of the ailments I had went away. I stopped waking up in the middle of the night choking on stomach acid. The migraines lessened substantially. And I found a mental clarity I never knew before.
I can’t say I’ve slaughtered the demon. Addicts relapse all the time. But I have a program I didn’t have before; a road map unlike any other.
My odds of success are better than ever.
But before I could get there, I had to unravel the wiring in my head, learn to live with a mental disorder and then make a bold change in my way of eating.
It’s not cool at all. If you’re laughing because I let the food drag me to such a state, I don’t blame you. In a way, it is funny. Crazy people do stupid things. And stupid is often funny.
I’ve written at length about my brother Michael, who died of an asthma attack when I was 13. That experience will test any average kid, and I was no exception. The loss infused a deep reservoir of fear and anxiety in me that would bubble over many times over the years.
But something else happened that would make me feel strange and alone for a long time.
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.
As I descended into my confusing and angry teen years, I would be sent on deliveries for the family business. I’d get flustered and lose my sense of direction. One time my father sent me to Chelsea for a package. It was 4:30 and the place I was going to was closing at 5. I got there at 5:10 and had to drive back to Saugus without a package. I felt humiliated and ashamed.
As I reached my 20s all that immaturity and feeling of inadequacy hardened into an angry rebellious streak. I started getting drunk and stoned a lot and would hide behind boxes in my father’s warehouse, chain-smoking cigarettes and binge eating while everyone else did the dirty work.
I spent three years hiding in a community college so I wouldn’t have to work. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, though I saw myself a poet and musician.
I try hard to remember the point where I started to finally act like the oldest son and accept responsibility for my life. There’s no single moment I can think of, though I trace the turning point to when Erin and I started dating in 1993.
I stayed selfish for many years after that, but I had at least found my career choice and work ethic. My work ethic would become excessive like a lot of other things in my life, but the feelings of inadequacy would linger.
Every time I got a raise or promotion, I’d call my father, eager to show him how I was moving up in the world and becoming the oldest son he always wanted.
He would ask how much the raise was and I’d tell him.
“That’s it?” he would ask.
Never, ever good enough, I thought bitterly.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come around to see and respect his point of view. Becoming a parent probably pushed me hard in that direction. I realized along the way that Dad was doing his best to teach me how to be a man and fly on my own.
He wanted me to understand the value of a dollar and a hard day’s work. He wanted me to understand what it was like to care about things other than myself.
Slowly but surely, I figured it out. Thanks, Dad.
Still, to this day, I still need to work at it.
All the confusion and anger over going from the baby to the oldest son has settled into gratitude. I have an amazing life and the inner piece that has always escaped me. I wish my brother was still here to corrupt his nephews, but in a sick sort of way, maybe his exit from the stage was required in order for me to have a chance.
That too might be delusional thinking, and make no mistake: I’d still give up a large percentage of my personal growth to have him around today.
But as this whole experience demonstrates, it’s not about me. Today I’m the oldest son and I think I’ve finally gotten the hang of it.
When you hear about people with conflicting personalities, the image of an insane asylum patient comes to mind. If that were indeed the accurate picture, we would all be committed.
Mood music:
The truth is that we all have more than one personality. We can be one person in one group setting, then go to another group setting and become somebody else.
I don’t think that’s such a bad thing, either.
This all came up a couple weeks ago as I had coffee with my friend Audrey Clark, a Marblehead, Mass. native and singer-guitarist for The 360s. We were talking about how we can be at ease and talkative in a one-on-one setting or in a small group, then go off to another group setting — in this case, a crowded rock club where the lighting is dim or nonexistent and people don’t look like they do on Facebook.
For me the multiple personalities are something I treasure.
I consider my multiple personalities a strength, with a bunch of recovery tools rolled up into one happy mess.
There’s the history nerd who has his work stations at work and home festooned with busts of historic figures, old news clippings and framed copies of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and Gettysburg Address and a variety of nautical artifacts. The guy who put his family in the station wagon last year and drove to Washington D.C.for a private tour of the White House West Wing (a friend works there).
There’s the security scribe who writes about the world of hackers, security vendors and government cybersecurity officials for CSOonline and CSO Magazine. On this one I actually have multiple personalities within multiple personalities.
Many of my friends in the security industry are a colorful mix of characters. Some are the hacking types who dress like rock stars and share my musical tastes. Others wear a suit and tie every day and work for multi-billion-dollar corporations and government agencies, and they often share my love for history. I float easily between both camps.
Faith is connected to everything I do. I live for God — or try to — and in all my other pursuits that’s what drives me. I’m active in my church community, getting up and doing readings at Mass and helping out with programs like RCIA. My personality is much different from that of my fellow parishioners, but we get on well, bound by a love for our families, children and God.
Finally and most importantly — I actually consider this central to my Faith journey — there’s the family man, the one who adores his wife and children and tries hard to make decisions that put them before work. I don’t always pull it off, but in the end, they are THE MOST IMPORTANT forces in my life. Well, God is, but my Faith does compel me to put family first. It’s complicated, I know, but I’m sure most of you understand.
All these things make for a challenging life. But I wouldn’t change it for the world.
Ever since I lifted the chains of depression, OCD, fear-anxiety and addiction off of me, I’ve loved all the jagged pieces of my life all the more.
So if you have multiple personalities, don’t hide them. Don’t run from them. Embrace them.
As long as those personalities aren’t dominated by the darker forces of human nature.
For me and my OCD, it used to be that way all the time. The recent financial crises, including the latest news about the U.S. losing its AAA credit rating, would have sent me into a sharp tailspin a few years ago. I would have been too numb to see straight or function. It sounds ridiculous, but that’s what the disease does to you.
When you have an out-of-control case of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), you latch onto all the things you can’t control and worry about them nonstop. Nothing feeds that devil like the cable news networks, especially when a story as grave as the debt is on the screen nonstop.
(From The Washington Post) Standard & Poor’s announced Friday night that it has downgraded the U.S. credit rating for the first time, dealing a symbolic blow to the world’s economic superpower in what was a sharply worded critique of the American political system. Lowering the nation’s rating to one notch below AAA, the credit rating company said “political brinkmanship” in the debate over the debt had made the U.S. government’s ability to manage its finances “less stable, less effective and less predictable.” It said the bipartisan agreement reached this week to find at least $2.1 trillion in budget savings “fell short” of what was necessary to tame the nation’s debt over time and predicted that leaders would not be likely to achieve more savings in the future.
I’m shaking my head and I think I’ve lost all faith in the political establishment.
But I’m not depressed. Not even close.
I have my family, my ability to write and, most importantly, my faith. Jesus has my back, and that makes this economic stuff look a lot smaller.
But that’s where I am at. A lot of people still in the grip of mental illness will be hit hard by this latest piece of bad news. They will watch the news in fear and walk around in a stupor, just like I used to do.
I feel for them. But I also know they can get better, because I did.
Who knows, maybe something good will come of all this.
I reached a point where the fear and anxiety got so bad that I knew I had to confront it or go into a mental institution. There were catalysts: In 2005-06, fears of a bird flu pandemic and other potential calamities brought me so low that I finally started to contemplate the need for medication.
I went for it, and it helped dramatically.
If the loss of a AAA credit rating brings a few people to that point and they start getting the help they need, then in a very strange way, this latest blow to the U.S. economy will be a blessing in disguise.
That may sound ridiculous. But I guess you can only understand after being down the road I’ve traveled.
I had coffee with a friend from the security industry yesterday. I thought I was coming to offer feedback on something having to do with the profession. Then he told me about a mental-emotional problem.
Mood music:
[spotify:track:4DA95pyBe6QORPGvTEuMWQ]
He told me he had a bunch of medical tests and they discovered that a small corner of his brain doesn’t work as well as it should. The result is that his short-term memory frequently takes a dive.
There are far worse problems to have. But his main concern is that it’s keeping his career from going where he wants it to.
We went back and forth about whether he should make his condition public or whether he should pursue other medical options.
As I sipped my iced Starbucks it became clear that something else was going on.
His biggest problem, I discovered and told him, is that he’s held back by fear — fear of what might happen if his short-term memory acted up in the midst of a job he really wanted to be doing.
He admitted that his recent career moves have involved a lot of playing it safe, doing things where there’s the least opportunity for failure at the hands of his mental tick.
I’ve been down this road before. And you know what? Playing it safe never helps. In fact, it just makes things worse.
Several years ago, when it became clear to me that my brain didn’t work normally, fear engulfed me until my self esteem was reduced to an ash pile. I held back in my work as night editor of The Eagle-Tribune. I tried playing it safe, never going toe to toe during disagreements with other editors.
Then I decided that the solution was to get out of there and find something less stressful to do. I opted to go back to straight reporting and went to TechTarget. Fortunately, the job turned out to be far more challenging than I expected. I realized this right at the time I decided to tackle my mental illness head on.
Luckily, my boss was a nurturing soul who was willing to let me go for the throat and get better. Miraculously, my work didn’t suffer. In the years to come, in fact, my workmanship would get better.
Now I do a lot of stuff in my job that’s out of my comfort zone. I give talks in front of groups of people. I get on airplanes. I venture an opinion on topics that I know will draw heavy disagreement. I give my boss a hard time when I don’t agree about something.
A few years ago, the very idea of doing those things would have scared me into an emotional breakdown.
I’ve screwed up along the way. But I’m still here.
I do my job well enough, often enough. And the more I succeed, the more confident I get.
Had I played it safe because of the things that might have gone wrong because of my OCD and anxiety, I wouldn’t be doing what I love today.
It’s not worth worrying about the mistakes you might make. You WILL make mistakes. And most of the time, you’ll be the only one to notice.
When my kids worry about making mistakes, I play them some Def Leppard and remind them that a one-armed drummer makes mistakes, but that all you can hear is him driving the heartbeat of the song despite a missing limb.
He could have retired from music and that would have made his life worse.
But he took a chance and designed a drum kit that helped him get past his problem.
Call me overly idealistic. Tell me I’m blowing sunshine up your collective asses.
It’s what I believe. Because I’ve been down this road.
My life today is far from perfect. It can get messy at times.
I’m watching the political brinkmanship over the debt with much interest. But this time I’m more detached. A few years ago, I would have been sick over it.
Mood music:
http://youtu.be/t43VgJ4U9_Q
That’s not to say I’m not more than a little concerned. If the U.S. goes into default the depth of economic chaos for us all will be severe. The world won’t end, but a lot of jobs could, which is a bad combination when you consider how the cost of living would skyrocket.
I just don’t see the value in putting life on hold as this thing plays out. The world is going to keep turning, with or without me. I prefer to keep up with the rotation.
When you have an out-of-control case of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), you latch onto all the things you can’t control and worry about them nonstop. Nothing feeds that devil like the cable news networks, especially when a story as grave as the debt is on the screen nonstop.
Right after 9-11 I realized the obsession had taken a much darker, deeper tone. This time, I had the Internet as well as the TV networks to fill me with horror. Everyone was filled with horror on 9-11, obviously, but while others were able to go about their business in a depressed haze, I froze. Two weeks after the event, I refused to get on a plane to go to a wedding in Arizona. Everyone was afraid to fly at that point, but I let my fear own me. It’s one of my big regrets.
Part of the problem was my inability to take my eyes off the news. To do so for a five-hour plane ride was unthinkable. To not know what was going on for five hours? Holy shit. If I don’t know about it, I can’t control it!
The fear meant a lot of things. Working myself into a stupor over the safety of my wife and children. An obsession with cleanliness, which was interesting since depression always meant my personal hygiene took a dive.
It also meant a fear of world events. When that Nostradamus movie “The Man Who Saw Tomorrow” came out on HBO in the early 1980s, I was terrified by the “future” scenes.
I look at the debt crisis and think back to all the economic tales of doom I’ve heard over the years.
Why am I reacting differently now? I guess it’s because of all the therapy I’ve had over the years. I’ve gotten a lot better at detachment over current events. Through raw experience, I’ve found that the only meaningful change is the kind that starts in your own mind and inner circle.
I hope the debt crisis ends without a default. I suspect it will. If you feel strongly about the proper solution, you should absolutely contact your elected officials.
Just don’t forget that your life can’t stop in the meantime.
I wasted a lot of precious life before I learned that lesson.
