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Out of the Closet, Into the Light

My kid sister-in-law told me a friend of hers has admitted to some hefty demons. I won’t mention the person’s name (I don’t know her, actually), but I know where she’s been.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:5F6rwEF15hN1jnhNk2YQHn]

This is a little message for her friend, in the event she someday stumbles upon this blog:

Outing yourself is a hard thing to do. When I did it, I was terrified at first because I thought my mental struggles would be used to define who I was. It gave me an appreciation for what it must be like when a gay person comes out of the closet.

I felt weird around my family at first. Ill at ease might be the best way to describe the feeling. I’m sure they felt the same. That I had OCD and related addictive behavior didn’t surprise them much. As my sister-in-law will tell you, I’ve always had an abundance of strange behaviors.

The people I work with were most surprised. I guess I did a good job of fooling them back in the day. But they have never defined me or treated me differently over what I’ve opened up about. I get the same fair shake as everyone else.

Since people keep their demons hidden for fear of bad treatment at work, it was an eye opener for me when I got nothing but support for coming out with it.

After awhile, it’ll be like that with your friends. They’ll appreciate you more, and they’ll be grateful that you came clean. Some of them will learn from your example, even though they may not know they need it yet.

I understand one of your problems is compulsive lying. There’s no need to feel like a freak over this, because everyone with mental health struggles and addictions lies. I certainly have. Hell, I’ve never met a so-called normal person that hasn’t lied. It’s not something to be proud of or accept. Lies imprison us and make our troubles deeper. But when we can stop living the lie, there’s a new peace and freedom that’s very powerful and hard to describe.

When I decided to stop living lies, I felt 100 pounds lighter. Physical pains went away.

I understand you are looking at taking medication. I take Prozac and it works. But I’m convinced it works as well as it does because I went through years of hard therapy as well. That’s the most important thing you can do: Find the right therapist to talk to. Therapy will provide you with mental coping tools that will make you stronger. By that point, medication becomes the mop that wipes away the remaining baggage.

Things may get worse before they get better. When you start dealing with this stuff, you find yourself learning how to behave all over again. You will still go through periods of depression.

This is when any addictions you may have will tempt you. Fight it at all costs. I didn’t at first. I completely gave in to my addictive behavior and I paid dearly for it. Even if you don’t think you have an addiction, it might be worth considering a 12-Step Program. The tools you learn from that will help you cope with the mental struggles at the heart of your troubles.

Coming clean doesn’t mean you get to live happily ever after. But happily ever after has always been a bullshit myth. But you will have an easier time dealing with the tough times. That may not make sense right now. But it will.

Here’s the thing about one’s demons: When they hide in the dark, out of view, they own you. They’re too powerful to beat.

Opening the door and forcing the sunlight on them is hard as hell. But once you take that step — as you just did — the demons start to shrink. The light always kills demons. They turn to ash and you become a lot bigger than they ever were.

That’s what I’ve learned from my experiences, anyway.

Congratulations on taking that first step. I wish you the very best.

–Bill

 

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One More Thing About Being Depressed and Gay…

A lot of folks have left comments on my post about homosexuality and depression. All of them are excellent, thoughtful responses and I hope you’ll check them out. But there’s one response I’m puzzled over.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOx37_h0UH8&fs=1&hl=en_US]

It came from David Nedlin, operations manager at Beyond the 12 Steps. He left the following comment in the “Mental Health and Addiction Specialist” forum on LinkedIn, where I sometimes post my blog entries: “Ridiculous post – I thought this was a somewhat serious web site.”

Now, I’m familiar with Nedlin’s work with recovering addicts and I have enormous respect for him. I sent him a message asking what his issue is with the post, and for all I know it’s a good reason.

Whatever the reason, his reaction reminded me that I occasionally have to clarify what this blog is about. With that in mind:

–I tackle various issues around mental health and addictive behavior based on MY OWN PERSONAL EXPERIENCES. I am not a medical professional, nor have I ever claimed to be.

–Like anything that’s based on one’s personal impressions, you should never take what I write as Gospel. Everything I write is based on my perceptions, which can be as flawed today as they were a decade ago.

–I figured this would be of service to some people because I reached the point where I can open up about embarrassing things I’ve done, so others may see it and realize they are not freaks and, more importantly, that there is light to be found at the end of the hellhole if you’re willing to walk toward it.

–The subject of homosexuality will always be a charged issue. I dove in because I’ve seen up close the pain friends and relatives experienced before they chose to come out of the closet.

–I also had to address it because it’s something that comes up a lot in my Catholic community. In one of the comments in Saturday’s post, a fellow named Nick put the matter in words that I think come closest to nailing it on the head.

All I know is this: I’m not sorry for tackling the subject, and those who don’t like it don’t have to come here.

One more thing: You’ll notice a lot of people wearing purple ribbons or posting pics of them on Facebook and Twitter. That’s in memory of the six gay boys who committed suicide in recent weeks/months due to homophobic abuse in their homes and at their schools.

If you think harassing someone for their sexual orientation is an example of God’s love, you’re an idiot.

If you dismiss these kids as wasted souls because they committed suicide, I don’t agree. When pain and fear remove your sanity and sense of logic, a mental illness has taken hold and you are more likely to do things you know are wrong. It’s not as simple as going against God. I’ve seen suicide cases up close.

We’re all guilty of going against God at various points in our lives. But some are lucky enough not to get so far away that death is the result.

It’s a tragedy that these kids were pushed over that line.

My prayers are with them and their families, and with anyone who is going through the pain right now.

I’m sorry if this has been a preachy post. But I said what I felt I had to say.

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Broken Souls, Emotional Breakdowns

I’ve been in a strange place lately. I’m fine and all, but I’ve been around a lot of broken people, and that has an impact on you after awhile.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3px0m1Y9Tuc&fs=1&hl=en_US]

I can’t get into the stuff that has brought these friends to the brink, but I can say there’s been a lot of crying. Given my own trouble with tears, it’s rather funny that I’d be in this position. But I’ll do anything for my friends, so it’s all good.

The reason I bring this up is because it reminds me of the emotional breakdowns I’ve suffered over the years. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve hit bottom several times, but the emotional breakdown is a slightly different beast in my eyes. Hitting bottom meant reaching a point of stinging clarity that I couldn’t go on as I was. The emotional breakdown takes it a step further.

I experience powerful anxiety attacks to the point where breathing is a struggle. My chest takes on the feeling of burning rubber, and I’m ready to bawl my eyes out. But as I’ve mentioned before, the bawling doesn’t really happen. I feel it in every way except the tears running down my face.

One of the worst breakdowns was around 2005, the week of Erin’s birthday. I was about six months into some hard-core therapy for OCD (though I was still about a year away from the official diagnosis).

It got so bad I had to call my boss. I know Anne Saita is a special woman because here she was, supervising me at work, and despite all my efforts at being the golden boy with ice-cold blood in the eyes of my bosses, I fell apart on the phone while she was on the other end. I did it calmly. But I did something I had never done before: I had confided in a boss that maybe — just maybe — my issues were going to fuck with my work performance.

I exposed the weakest part of me, and I felt it for days. If you read this, Anne, I just want to thank you again. I will never, ever forget what you did for me.

Going back 20 years, there was another emotional breakdown, and this time I exposed my most raw emotions to Sean Marley. He helped bring me out of it. It’s a painful irony, because six years later I utterly failed to do the same for him.

Last December, when I started this blog, I kind of felt the same rawness. I was starting to spill my guts publicly. And I felt a bit unstable and wobbly.

But in all of these cases, the rawness, the wobbly knees and the shame passed, and each time I came back stronger than before. Not perfect. Not healed for life, but better. 

I just felt the need to mention that to my friends who are hurting. You might feel a little ashamed and embarrassed right now, but it’s good. This stuff happens because you were in need of a good humbling, as I was back then.

Whatever happens with your individual struggles, you will get past what you feel now. And you will be much stronger for whatever happens next.

That’s how it happened with me, at least.

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The Inconvenience of Death

It happens whenever someone dies. After the initial shock passes, you start thinking about when the wake and funeral will take place — and whether it will get in the way of your work-family-entertainment plans. It’s a sucky way to be, but it’s human nature.

Today’s mood music is very appropriate:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2FX4aYo3dE&fs=1&hl=en_US]

My great-grandmother died hours before my 25th birthday. Her daughter — my Nana — died on Columbus Day weekend in 2003. Papa died the day before a major relaunch of the newspaper I was working for at the time. So yes, I’m one of those jerks who got caught up in the inconvenience of death.

Sometimes, I grin as I think of how the granparents were probably getting back at me for not visiting them often enough. They could be deliciously devious that way.

So here I am again thinking about the inconvenience of death. Poor stupid me.

This time the inconvenience is the death of my pastor, Father Nason. He didn’t have a devious bone in his body, so I know he didn’t pick his time of death to mess with my head. He was one of the greatest men I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing, and I’m down about his passing, as is EVERYONE in All Saints Parish.

My former employer, The Eagle-Tribune, has this very well-done report on Father Nason today. Thanks for the write-up, Mike LaBella.

So here’s the inconvenience: His funeral is this weekend, when I will be away on a Cursillo retreat, a leader on the team. Saturday morning I’m scheduled to give a talk. So the conflict in the brain goes something like this: Do I duck out of the Cursillo and pay my respects, or stay at St. Basil’s and put my full soul into the proceedings?

On the advice of Father Martin, leader of St. Basil’s, I’m doing the latter because, as he put it, that is where Father Nason would want me to be, doing God’s work.

Father Nason’s big question to everyone was always about how we get more people to come to church. Cursillo is one of the answers.

I hope the rest of the parish will understand.

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43 Years Through The Minefield

Today is my sister Wendi’s 43rd birthday. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate the day than to explain what she’s been through and how far she has come.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MceneYWgPc4&fs=1&hl=en_US]

A Sister’s Battle with Depression

This blog is chock full of my own experiences with depression and addiction. I even hint here and there about how the addictive behavior runs in the family. But I’ve avoided the story of depression among siblings until now. This post is about my older sister, who had it much harder than me.

I haven’t mentioned it up to this point because it’s her story and her business. I didn’t want to violate her privacy. But recently I’ve realized her story is an important part of my own. So I sought and received her permission to tackle it head on. Hopefully, this post validates the trust she’s putting in me.

Since this blog focuses on my own experiences, I’m not always effective at pointing out other people’s success stories. But Wendi is a success story, whether she realizes it or not.

Growing up, me, Wendi and Michael had our individual problems. I had the Crohn’s Disease, Michael had the asthma that eventually killed him, and Wendi had the misfortune of catching abuse from a mother flustered by all the chaos.

I remember the routine at 22 Lynnway well. Early in the morning, before school, Wendi was required to do a lot of chores. I particularly remember the sound of the vacuum. To this day, I get rattled by the sound of a vacuum because of the memories it brings up. If she missed a spot on the rug, she caught my mother’s physical and verbal wrath. Because me and my brother were sick so much, we also got a lot of the love and attention while Wendi was off on the side trying not to piss my mother off.

When my parents divorced in 1980, things seemed to get worse. When my brother died, things got worse still. In my mother’s defense, there was a lot of hell and heartbreak she had to live through, and to be honest I’m not sure I would have handled it much better if I were in her shoes. Mental anguish makes you do stupid things.

When my stepmother came along, my mother’s jealousy grew worse, and so did the abuse. Wendi caught the brunt of it.

Like me, Wendi had a lot of ups and downs with weight. Like me, she tried to control it through reckless means.

Sometime around 1991, things started coming to a head for my sister. She started plunging into deep depressions. Between 1991 and 1998, I can remember three occasions where this led to her hospitalization. She talked openly about wanting to kill herself. One such occasion, in 1998, was a couple months before my wedding. Since it was only two years after Sean Marley’s suicide, this made me more angry than anything. My anger was a selfish one. How dare she get suicidal and hospitalized and put me through this all over again. And how dare she do this while I was getting ready for my wedding.

I realize something now that I didn’t realize back then: Depression and the collateral damage it causes to others is never really in the sufferer’s control to stop. And it can care less about timetables. Mental illness doesn’t take breaks for holidays and weddings, for the convenience of others. Given my own battle with depression in subsequent years, I get it now.

I’m sorry for getting angry with her back then.

There’s something else I feel sorry about: Because of my own mental turmoil, I chose to avoid situations that made me uncomfortable. Wendi’s depression made me very uncomfortable. The result is that I wasn’t the helpful younger brother I should have been.

In 2003, Wendi caught a bizarre infection the doctors couldn’t make sense of. She spent a couple weeks in ICU and pumping her full of antibiotics didn’t seem to help her much. A couple times we were certain she wouldn’t make it. But since then, things have gotten better for Wendi. Not easier. Maybe not even happier. But better.

A couple years earlier, she had announced to the family that she was gay. It took some family members by shock, but not me. When I thought about a couple of the more “normal” relationships she had tried to nurture in past years and the depression she went into when things didn’t work out, it all made perfect sense to me. She was trying to live a life that didn’t gibe with her true nature.

When she came clean about that, her life didn’t get easier. But I suspect, because she found a way to be truthful with herself, that some things got easier to deal with. She’s been through her ups and downs since then. A marriage didn’t work out. She suffered some nasty complications from gastric bypass surgery. But she has moved on from those difficulties much more quickly than in past difficulties.

Like I said, dealing with one’s issues doesn’t mean you live happily ever after. Putting up with difficult people doesn’t get any easier. Peace is never an absence of conflict.

But when we get better at facing those challenges, life in general becomes a little sweeter.

That’s what I’ve learned from my own struggles. And I think that’s what Wendi has learned as well.

I know a lot of people who have fought the demons and gotten bloodied and grown a hell of a lot stronger in the process.

Wendi is one of them.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

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Say Hello to My New Limit

Another mood swing this afternoon. The dark, brooding sky appears to be rubbing off on me. The happy lamp helps, but if I sit in front of it too long I get the sweats. And it’s not the same as sunshine.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMWhk4u2c4g&fs=1&hl=en_US]

I’ve been having a lot of these episodes lately, and it worries me. It’s most likely the result of my sleep pattern being out of whack. I alternate between too much sleep one day, not enough the next.

The clouds don’t help. It seems like we’ve had a lot of gloomy weather lately, and too much of that will fuck with my head every time.

My biggest concern is that something’s off with the medication, though probably not. One thing I’ve learned is that if you don’t take care of yourself in other ways, like having a consistent sleep pattern, it will blunt the effectiveness of the drug.

The other problem is that I’ve overextended myself, being on team for a Catholic retreat, doing a lot of extra service in my 12-Step program and keeping busy on the work side, along with all the activity that comes with having a first and fourth grader.

Since shaking off the fear and anxiety and cleaning up my act a couple years ago, I’ve had a limitless appetite for new experiences. And so I’ve gone on the road a lot and taken on many projects in and outside of work.

It’s been a blessing. It still is. But it’s possible I’m starting to find my new limit. Perhaps I’m a victim of my own success. There are far worse problems to have.

This is actually a good thing. It’s healthy.

The trick now is in figuring out how to stop over-reaching and achieve the right balance.

It’s too bad I suck at balance.

But it’s never too late to learn how to do it right.

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The Amityville Obsession

Part of my obsessive-compulsive behavior includes a study of the more morbid pieces of history. The Manson murders is one example. The Amityville murders is another. Lately, I’ve been obsessed with the latter.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72rWAe0pUdQ&fs=1&hl=en_US]

The match for the fire is a book I just read called “The Night The DeFeos Died” by Ric Osuna. The book goes a long way in crushing the bullshit hoax about the house being haunted. I watched “The Amityville Horror” as a kid and it scared the hell out of me. I’ve had an interest ever since. This book gets into the train wreck that was the DeFeo family. They were outwardly religious and close-knit. But the father was a rage-a-holic who apparently yelled a lot and beat his wife and kids, especially his oldest son Butch, who is now rotting in jail for the murders.

The book also reveals that the DeFeo family had mob connections. The toxic mix of dysfunction reached its climax Nov. 13, 1974. After a night of chaos in the house, Butch and his sister Dawn plotted to kill the abusive father and a mother they felt was an enabler.

Somewhere in the chaos, the story goes, Dawn killed their younger siblings. This apparently outraged Butch, who then blew her head off in anger. Investigators later found powder burns on Dawn’s nightgown, suggesting that she had indeed fired a rifle.

The only one who knows the real truth is Butch. But he has proven himself to be a serial liar, so the truth will remain in his head. My impression is that he got an unfair trial and that investigators covered up a lot of things in order to have a slam-dunk case. That’s certainly an argument Osuna makes in the book.

So why the obsession with this story? There are a few things worth noting:

–I don’t romanticize this stuff. The interest isn’t because of the brutal nature of the murders. I’ve seen the crime scene forensic photos for the DeFeo and Manson murders, and they made me sick to my stomach.

–It’s really part of my fascination with history.

Like it or not, this stuff is part of American history. The Manson story is a snapshot of everything that went wrong in the 1960s, where a counterculture born of good intentions — a craving for peace in Vietnam and at home — lost it’s way because there were no rules, no discipline and there was no sobriety. I agree with those who believe the promise of the 1960s died abruptly in the summer of 1969. I’m also fascinated because it shows how easily seemingly stable people can be brainwashed and controlled to the point where they would willingly heed orders to commit the worst of sins.

–The Amityville story is a case study of what happens when the head of a household abuses the rest of the family. Slap a kid around often enough and you just might turn him into the type of man who shoots heroin and plots the murder of some or all of his family.

It’s the whole cause-and-effect thing that keeps my obsession going.

My own experiences have given me an obsession with the key moments in a person’s life that determine if that person will turn to evil or come out of the adversity stronger and better.

I’m lucky because I’m a case study in the latter category. But I can’t help but feel bad for those who go the wrong way.

Some of the twists and turns are so random.

In the case of the Amityville murders, I don’t believe for a second that the house is haunted. Several families have lived there happily over the last 30 years. Sure, a couple of the future residents had bad things happen to them. But bad things happen to everyone.

You don’t need a haunted house to give your life ups and downs.

Sometimes, all it takes are the ghosts in your head.

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Never Forgotten

That post about Zane resonated with a lot of people. It’s comforting to know he hasn’t been forgotten. Being forgotten. It’s everyone’s fear. I often worry that people who end their own lives will end up that way.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE7rkSELM3I&fs=1&hl=en_US]

Though I’ve had many an episode with depression, I’ve never once considered suicide. That makes me no better than those who have. In my case, Faith has always prevented that line of thinking. Suicide is a mortal sin, and as bad as life could get, who wants an eternity of suffering in the afterlife, right?

My brand of depression is also different from the suicidal stripe. Mine just makes me withdrawn and tired.

But I have no reason to be high-minded about it. When I was giving in to my addictions, I was slowly killing myself. I’m not sure that’s much better than killing yourself quickly. People around you still suffer.

Whatever the case may be, I feel the need to write about old friends who committed suicide because I don’t want them to be forgotten. Suicide cases are often swept under the rug. They end up being remembered more for how they died than how they lived.

A few months ago a friend of some friends died of suicide. I wrote something at the time that’s worth repeating now. It’s sort of like an instruction manual for someone who has just lost someone to suicide:

You’re probably feeling kicked in the guts by this. You may have known your friend was depressed, even suicidal, but it never really clicked in your brain that this friend would actually DO IT.

Now you’re beating yourself over it because you’re certain that you saw the signs in hindsight and should have done something to help this person. You feel you weren’t the friend you should have been. Or brother. Or sister. Or parent.

Your brain is spinning like an old record, skipping as you replay the last few months in your head, over and over again. “How could you have missed the signs?” you ask yourself.

As everyone in your circle second guesses themselves, tensions and hard feelings bubble to the surface.

It can be too much to absorb. And the hurt will be there for a long time.

But things will get better. They always do.

Here are some of the things I’ve learned in the nearly 14 years since my friend’s death:

–Blaming yourself is pointless. No matter how many times you replay events in your mind, the fact is that it’s not your fault. For one thing, it’s impossible to get into the head of someone who is contemplating suicide. Sure, there are signs, but since we all get the blues sometimes, it’s very easy to dismiss the signs as something close to normal. When someone is loud in contemplating suicide, it’s usually a cry for help. When the depressed says nothing and even appears OK, it’s usually because they’ve made their decision and are in the quiet, planning stages.

–Blaming each other is even more pointless. Take it from me: Nerves in your circle of family and friends are so raw right now that it won’t take much for relationships to snap into pieces. A week after my friend’s death I wrote a column about it, revealing what in hindsight was too much detail. His family was furious and most of them haven’t talked to me since. They feel I was exploiting his death to advance my writing career and get attention. I was pretty screwed up back then, so they’re probably right. In any event, I don’t blame them for hating me. What I’ve learned, and this is tough to admit, is that you’re going to have to let it go when the finger pointing starts. It’s better not to engage the other side. Nobody is in their right mind at this point, so go easy on each other. Give people space to make their errors in judgment and learn from it.

–Don’t demonize the dead. When a friend takes their life, one of the things that gnaws at the survivors is the notion that — if there is a Heaven and Hell — those who kill themselves are doomed to the latter. I’m a devout Catholic, so you can bet your ass this one has gone through my mind. What I’ve learned though, through my own experiences in the years since, is that depression is a clinical disease. When you are mentally ill, your brain isn’t firing on all thrusters. You engage in self-destructive behavior even though you understand the consequences. A person thinking about suicide is not operating on a sane, normally-functioning mind. So to demonize someone for taking their own life is pointless. To demonize the person, you have to assume they were in their right mind at the time of the act. And you know they weren’t. My practice today is to simply pray for those people, that their souls will still be redeemed and they will know peace. It’s really the best you can do.

– Break the stigma. One of the friends left behind in this latest tragedy has already done something that honors her friend’s life: She went on Facebook and directed people toward the American Association of Suicidology website, specifically the page on knowing the warning signs. That’s a great example of doing something to honor your friend’s memory instead of sitting around second guessing yourself. The best thing to do now is educate people on the disease so that sufferers can help themselves and friends and family can really be of service.

–On with your own life. Nobody will blame you for not being yourself for awhile. You have, after all, just experienced one of the worst tragedies there is. But try not to let it paralyze you. Life must go on. You have to get on with your work and be there for those around you.

Don’t take what I’ve just said as Gospel. It’s based on my own experience and no two experiences are the same. But if there was something in there that’s helpful, then I’m grateful.

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Happily Ever After Is Bullshit & That’s OK

Often, when depression slaps me upside the head, it’s on the heels of a prolonged period of good feelings and positive energy. Especially this time of year, when the daylight recedes early and returns late. These setbacks can be discouraging, but you can survive them with the right perspective.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/NqTuN-35580

It’s easy for people who fight mental illness and addictive behavior to go on an endless, futile search for the happily ever after, where you somehow find the magic bullet to murder your demons, thus beginning years of bliss and carefree existence.

I’m sorry to tell you this, folks: That line of thinking is bullshit.

There’s no such thing as happily ever after. If you want it that badly, go watch a Disney film.

I used to grope around for eternal happiness in religious conversion. But some of my hardest days came AFTER I was Baptized a Catholic. I eventually found my way to abstinence and sobriety and got a pretty good handle on the OCD. But there have been plenty of sucky days since then.

The slide back into depression this past weekend was an example.

I like to think of these setbacks as growing pains. We’re supposed to have bad days to test the better angels of our nature. We’re supposed to learn how to move forward despite the obstacles that used to make us hide and get junked up. When you can stay sober and keep your mental disorders in check despite a bad day, that’s REAL recovery.

This is where I consider myself lucky for having had Crohn’s Disease. That’s a chronic condition. It comes and goes. But you can reach a point where the flare ups are minimal.

It’s the same with mental illness and addiction. You can’t rid yourself of it completely. But you can reach a point — through a lot of hard work and leaps of Faith — where the episodes are minimal.

The depression flared up this weekend, just like the Crohn’s Disease used to. But I’m better now. And I didn’t have to take a drug like Prednisone to get there. I just needed a little extra sleep.

Prozac, therapy and the 12 Steps have helped me immensely. But they don’t take the deeper pain at your core away. These things just help you deal with the rough days without getting sucked back into the abyss.

The depression I experienced this weekend felt more like a flare up of arthritis than that desperate, mournful feeling I used to get. It was a nag, but it didn’t break me. It used to break me all the time.

That’s progress.

Maybe I’m not happy forever after, but that’s OK. My ability to separate the blessings from the bullshit has improved considerably in the last five years.

That’s good enough for me.

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The Positive Man’s Mask

My boss and good friend John Gallant once told me I’m one of the most positive people he knows. I was keeping a sunny disposition despite the Internet being down or something like that. I’m definitely a sunnier person than I used to be. To be truthful, though, sometimes it’s just an act.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukHqzqZOe7g&fs=1&hl=en_US]

What brings me to that line of thinking is the crime wave of depression that hit me this weekend. It was pretty bad this time; possibly the worst I’ve felt all year.

I can’t quite put my finger on what caused it. I wasn’t angry with anyone or about anything in particular. It didn’t help that the days were mixed with teases of sunshine that were snatched away by some thick clouds. When the weather does that, it’s like someone reneged on a promise to bring me light. My eating was fine, typically in keeping with my 12-Step program. So what gives?

Far as I can tell, the problem was a serious sleep deficit. Last week was a busy one, with travel, a lot of writing and editing, and appointments. The writing usually energizes me. The appointments, not so much. I was averaging five hours of sleep per night, which has usually served me well. But as I get older, I’m having more trouble getting rest right.

Could it be that rising at 4 a.m. is becoming harmful to my mental polarity, knocking the brain chemistry too far out of whack for the medication to keep up with? I hope not, because that’s my favorite time of day for writing.

Fortunately, my brand of depression isn’t the suicidal kind. I don’t crawl into a dark corner and lament the day I was born. I do get withdrawn. I get very serious, and I do tire more easily. There’s this weird thing that happens with my vision. StarWarsEpisodeIII_1.jpg

I can see everything, but there’s a haze. It’s like I’m staring at someone but staring into space at the same time. The eyes themselves itch and buzz a bit. It makes me think of the Star Wars art where someone under the influence of the dark side of the force develops a strange light around the eyes. It sounds melodramatic, but it’s the best way I can describe it.

This was not a good weekend to be this way. Yesterday was Duncan’s birthday party, and the day before there was a lot of cleaning to do. Erin wasn’t happy with me for getting home late from my OA meeting because she had stuff to do. I think that might have set off my mood, though it’s hard to tell for sure. I don’t blame her for being pissed at me. Sometimes the commitment to my program of abstinence and sobriety can cast a big shadow. In my mind, I’m putting my family first and balancing all these other things around that. In reality, I have work to do.

I think the big trigger this weekend was the realization that I might be doing too many things. There’s the book project, a wonderful BUT demanding job and all that service: Being an OA sponsor, being on team for a Catholic retreat next month, which involves lots of meetings and homework, and the occasional Saturday morning working the church food pantry. Saturday afternoon was spent writing a talk I’ll be giving at that retreat.

It’s an odd sort of conflict to have. On the one hand, I’m able to do all these things — I crave it, actually — because I cleaned up from my addiction and learned to manage my mental disorder most of the time. A lot of space in my brain that was taken up with crazy thinking, fear and paranoia was suddenly freed up, and I found I could do all these other things.

And I can.

But I’m not Superman, and I’m starting to see where my limitations are. I know I have to make adjustments as a result. That pisses me off. I lost a lot during those years of mental illness and addiction. It robbed me blind. I don’t want to give up anything that I’ve gained.

What’s all this have to do with acting positive?

I’ve made it a point, no matter how crummy I feel, to put on the positive man’s mask. It’s important for a variety of reasons.

On Facebook, for example, so many people bitch and moan about the little inconveniences in their lives that you simply need positive people on there to balance things out. I prefer to be one of the latter people. Maybe I can’t always make myself feel good. But if I can make others feel better by saying something positive, it’s better than nothing.

One of my political heroes, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was a master at this. He was known for his “ebullience” and he was rarely photographed without that huge, toothy smile. fdr franklin roosevelt car cigarette holderIn private, however, he had a lot of pain. Polio had taken away his freedom of movement. He put on a good act in public, using a cane, leg braces and the arm of one of his sons to make it look like he was standing and walking without effort. The truth is that those were moments of blinding physical pain. But he kept the sunny disposition and it was just what people needed at the height of the Great Depression.

As WW II slogged on, his photos were a lot less ebullient and you could clearly see the strain. He had met his match, and it cracked his positive mask.

My issues are nothing compared to what he went through. But in my own little world, I’ve run up against that wall that cracked my own mask.

It’s time to go find the glue and put it back on.

This morning I do feel a little better. At Erin’s insistence I went to bed at 7:30 last night and I’ll do it again tonight.

We’ll see how that works. I’m just grateful to have a wife who knows what signs to look for and how to help me through it. The kids help, too, keeping me laughing with their verbal zingers.

God certainly helps. Writing that talk Saturday allowed me to work through some of what I was feeling.

I have all the tools I need to get through these rough spots.

I just have to remember that one of those tools needs to be the ability to slow down.