The OCD Diaries

November 11, 2015November 11, 2015

A Tribute to “Silent Segal”

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my maternal grandfather, Louis Segal. This decorated veteran died 19 years ago, and I keep thinking of the things I wish we could talk about today.

Mood music:

Papa, as we called him, asked me to take him for a ride to the bank the evening before he died. He got into the car and declared that he felt like “the last rose of summer.” I think he knew he was about to go, and wanted to pull out some cash to buy the family breakfast one last time. In the car, he told me and Erin about life as a kid.

The next afternoon, he took one last deep inhale, and that was that. He died in his favorite living room recliner after a very pleasant morning with family. I wasn’t there, but was told about it. He gave one of my cousins a ten-dollar bill just for the hell of it. I don’t remember where I was, but I can tell you that wherever I was, I was thinking about no one but myself. That’s how I was back then.

Papa loved to chomp on a good cigar and eat things that were bad for him. It used to make me angry, but today I think he was just trying to live life to the fullest he could. He had parachuted into France ahead of the D-Day invasion in June of 1944. He was at the Battle of the Bulge that December. He took a bullet or two in the leg in Korea. He boxed in the Army and they called him “Silent Segal” because he would take it on the chin quietly. He also beat down his opponents quietly.

I often wonder what he’d have thought of the movie “Saving Private Ryan,” which came out two years after he died. The beginning of the film is bone-chilling and almost beautiful in its rawness. You see scenes of soldiers lying on the beach with their intestines hanging out and you try with all your mental might to grasp what it must have felt like to be in the middle of that chaos. My grandfather was there, and could have given me the appropriate description.

He liked watching M.A.S.H., as I do. If he were here today, we could laugh over some of the show’s funnier moments. He’d also tell me all the ways the show was bullshit when stacked against reality.

I definitely appreciated him when he was around. He was my Papa and I loved him, after all. But I wish I had engaged him more about the stories of his military service. I was a young punk back then, and like all young punks I was too busy thinking of myself to spend more time with him.

The lesson of this post if to appreciate the older people in your life. Hug them. Learn from them. Enjoy their stories.

And, if you’re into it, smoke a cigar with them.

Thanks, Papa, for your many years of service.

April 19, 2015April 19, 2015

Two Days, Three Shitty Anniversaries And One Bloody Month

Today — April 19, and tomorrow, April 20 — we have a trio of tragedies to remember.

Full disclosure: I’m about to steal liberally from Wikipedia.

April 19, 1993: Waco, Texas

The Waco siege began on February 28, 1993, and ended violently 50 days later on April 19. The siege began when the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), accompanied by several members of the media, attempted to execute a search warrant at the Branch Davidian ranch at Mount Carmel, a property located 9 miles (14 km) east-northeast of Waco, Texas. On February 28, shortly after the attempt to serve the warrant, an intense gun battle erupted, lasting nearly 2 hours. In this armed exchange, four agents and six Branch Davidians were killed. Upon the ATF’s failure to execute the search warrant, a siege was initiated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The siege ended 50 days later when a fire destroyed the compound when a second assault was launched. 76 people (24 of them British nationals) died in the fire, including more than 20 children, two pregnant women, and the sect leader David Koresh.

April 19, 1995: Oklahoma City

The Oklahoma City bombing was a terrorist bomb attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. It would remain the most destructive act of terrorism on American soil until the September 11, 2001 attacks. The Oklahoma blast claimed 168 lives, including 19 children under the age of 6, and injured more than 680 people. The blast destroyed or damaged 324 buildings within a sixteen-block radius, destroyed or burned 86 cars, and shattered glass in 258 nearby buildings. The bomb was estimated to have caused at least $652 million worth of damage. Extensive rescue efforts were undertaken by local, state, federal, and worldwide agencies in the wake of the bombing, and substantial donations were received from across the country. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) activated eleven of its Urban Search and Rescue Task Forces, consisting of 665 rescue workers who assisted in rescue and recovery operations.

Within 90 minutes of the explosion, Timothy McVeigh was stopped by Oklahoma State Trooper Charlie Hanger for driving without a license plate and arrested for unlawfully carrying a weapon. Forensic evidence quickly linked McVeigh and Terry Nichols to the attack; Nichols was arrested and within days both were charged. Michael and Lori Fortier were later identified as accomplices. McVeigh, an American militia movement sympathizer, had detonated an explosive-filled Ryder truck parked in front of the building. McVeigh’s co-conspirator, Terry Nichols, had assisted in the bomb preparation. Motivated by his hatred of the federal government and angered by what he perceived as its mishandling of the Waco Siege (1993) and the Ruby Ridge incident (1992), McVeigh timed his attack to coincide with the second anniversary of the deadly fire that ended the siege at Waco.

April 20, 1999: Columbine High School

The Columbine High School massacre (often known simply as Columbine) occurred on Tuesday, April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, an unincorporated area of Jefferson County, Colorado, United States, near Denver and Littleton. Two senior students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, embarked on a massacre, killing 12 students and 1 teacher. They also injured 21 other students directly, and three people were injured while attempting to escape. The pair then committed suicide. It is the fourth-deadliest school massacre in United States history, after the 1927 Bath School disaster, 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, and the 1966 University of Texas massacre, and the deadliest for an American high school.

April is also a bloody month for other days, like the Virginia Tech massacre on April 16, 2007 and the start of such bloody conflicts as the American Revolution and the Civil War. I could mention dozens of other bloody events that happened in April, but I think this is quite enough for now. If you want a fuller accounting of the bloodshed, check out this article by Chaotic Ramblings

I pray for everyone who died in those tragedies. As I write this, the sun is shining through my window, warming my hands as I pound away on the keyboard. I’m going to make this a good day, despite those bad memories.

I suggest you do the same.

September 22, 2014

When Anger Was All The Rage

I had a vicious temper when I was younger.

To call it a byproduct of OCD, depression and addiction would be pushing it, because I think the temper would have been there even without the mental illness.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/A-nULlfJDvk

Examples of my temper include:

Hurling a fork or steak knife at my brother in a restaurant on New Years Eve 1979 because he made a joke I didn’t like. The more dramatic among my family members say it was a steak knife, though I’m pretty sure it was a fork. That the utensil could have embedded in my brother’s head and caused serious injury didn’t occur to me.
Lighting things on fire out of anger, including a collection of Star Wars action figures that would probably be worth a fortune today. I would pretend they were kids in school who were bullying me. I was a bully, too, but that didn’t matter.
Road rage. Tons of it. I was an angry driver. I would tailgate. I would speed. In the winters I would intentionally spin out my putrid-green 1983 Ford LTD station wagon in parking lots during snowstorms. While in college, I nearly hit another car and flipped off the other driver while my future in-laws sat in the back. Traffic jams would infuriate me. Getting lost would fill me with fear and, in turn, more anger.

I could go on, but you get the picture.

There were a lot of legitimate causes of rage for me. The drug I took for Chron’s Disease had a lot of nasty side effects, including violent mood swings. A brother and two close friends dying — one by suicide — gave me a lot of anger. Being stuck in the middle of turf wars and working late nights while at The Eagle-Tribune certainly made me a walking ball of fire.

I’m sure the fear and anxiety that came with my OCD contributed to more anger.

I’m even convinced the anger was useful in a way. Finding things to fixate my rage on had a perverse way of making me feel better, like I was somehow above the insanity because I could point my finger at it and call it names.

But somewhere along the way, it stopped working and started to suck the life from me.

That’s what anger does when you let it rule for too long. The burning feeling starts off as an energy that lifts you. But left unchecked, it becomes a parasite that takes everything and gives nothing.

Once that happened, I had to do something.

I kept going to church and a real faith took root. I found it could sustain me far better than rage could.

I went to therapy and started to face the demons that made me angry so much.

In time, the anger left. It comes back for a visit sometimes, but it no longer rules my life. It’s better that way.

Below: “Unleashed,” by EddieTheYeti

Unleashed Ink by EddieTheYeti

May 20, 2014

6 Things Every Graduate Should Know

Graduation season means a rush of news articles about famous commencement speakers and their words of wisdom. US Secretary of State John Kerry just gave one, as did recently fired New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson.

David McCullough Jr., longtime Wellesley High School English teacher and son of one of my favorite authors, gave one of my favorite commencement speeches of all time last year when he told graduates they’re not special.

Much is made of these words of wisdom, but wisdom can come from the everyday, the hard knocks and the failures.

Here are six bits of advice from my own school of mediocrity.

Mood music:

Your first three jobs will pay little. The really good jobs and pay must be earned for years after graduation. Employers will rarely give you a plum assignment right out of school. They want to see what you’re made of first. You’ll get the shittiest tasks and, as entry-level employees, you won’t make enough money to live independently. The key to the good stuff is to pay your dues with grace and good humor.
Nobody likes whiners. Because of that first point, you’ll probably find yourself working more than 40 hours a week and seeing people who don’t work as hard as you getting ahead. Life’s unfair for most of us, and you have to make the best of what you have at the time. Life is a series of tests and the winners usually smile and bear the tough stuff. Also, fairness is hard to measure. For all you know, that colleague who doesn’t work as many hours simply learned through experience how to work more efficiently.
Kindness beats ruthlessness every time. Some will disagree with me on this, especially those who find ruthlessness necessary to get ahead. But it’s been a simple fact that when I’ve been a cut-throat asshole, my work life has been miserable and innocents have been hurt. When I’ve been helpful and kind, I’ve always felt better for it. Too, the bosses I’ve learned the most from have been the compassionate ones. When you’re kind, colleagues want to work with you — and help you through the inevitable rough patches.
If work becomes everything, you lose. I once put work so high above everything else in life that it nearly ate me alive. Remember that a job should be something you do to live, not the other way around. Jobs come and go. Sometimes it ends before you expect it to and it’s not on your terms. If you have a balanced life with other interests and friends outside office life, you’ll survive and probably thrive more than you had before. If not, it’ll feel like your life has ended with the job you just lost.
Neglecting children for work is the biggest mistake you can make. Some of you will marry. Some of you will become parents. If so, don’t put work ahead of them. I know what it’s like and it sucks. I’ve also been guilty of doing it to my kids in the past. Your neglect will fill them with bitterness that causes them more pain in adulthood. Today, I rearrange my work schedule around my children’s needs. It’s not always easy and I don’t always do it well. But it’s the least I could do, since I helped bring them into this world.
It’s never too late to renegotiate your life. Hate your career? Feel trapped by the choices you made? Start over. You may think you can’t. But people do it all the time, with spectacular results.

All of this isn’t meant to depress young adults heading out into the world. It’s meant to assure them that it’s within their power to learn, grow and thrive. It’s just not as easy as some are led to believe.

Good luck!

skull graduation cap and scrolls

November 26, 2013

The Ego OCD Built

The author has an ego that sometimes swells beyond acceptable levels. OCD fuels the fire. Written in December, 2009 and just as real now as it was then.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/Mw0vrH9SPzU

Last night I got on here to explain that sometimes OCD is good for me, in the sense that it provides fuel for my professional ambitions. Some might look at the post and think I was letting vanity take over.

Truth is, I was. And I do it often.

I’m the first to admit that humility isn’t one of my strong suits. I’m working on it, because as a Christian that’s what I need to do. I’ve always been a better talker than listener. I’m going to work on that or die trying.

Before I get too serious about it, it’s worth noting that a lot of OCD types have big egos. Achieving big things is one of the ways we try to fill in that hole that’s always dogging us. In my profession, getting access to the major power players of information security is a rush. I feel like I am somebody as a result. When I don’t make it to a big security conference, the wheels in my head start spinning. I start to worry that by not being there, I become irrelevant.

When I make it someplace and score, like the time I was able to corner Bob Woodward of Washington Post/Watergate fame at a conference in Florida four years ago, I can be insufferable for months. In that encounter, Woodward was there to deliver a keynote on the state of security. His forte was the larger war on terror and how the Bush White House was waging it. He needed to bone up on the IT aspect and started asking me about antivirus and firewalls, and whether those things really work. Later, during the Q&A part of his keynote, when someone asked him a cybersecurity question, he mentioned that he had talked to a fellow earlier (me) who mentioned that the emerging trend was toward a quiet, sneaky brand of attack. My ego boiled and rose. I was sure to tell EVERYBODY about it.

Today, when I write what I think is a good article, I promote it nonstop. That’s part of my job, of course. If you don’t promote it no one will read it. But I do it with an uber-sized dose of zeal.

Work has always been an OCD trigger for me. The good news is that a lot of my hyperactivity today is driven by joy than fear. A decade ago it was all about fear of not being the golden boy. With the fear gone, I find that sometimes it’s impossible to slow down. Ego is always a presence. The more prolific I am, the more attention I get.

I’m not particularly proud of it, but I do think it’s fair game to laugh at me over it. It’s dangerous for anyone to take themselves too seriously. I don’t in a lot of ways, but I always have to keep an eye out for moments when I do. When others see me taking myself to seriously, I want them to take me down a few pegs.

Fortunately, I have people in my life who do just that. My wife, for example.

My faith is making me more humble, as is my recovery program for the binge eating. But it’s a slow process.

My kids are helping me. They don’t care about the big career milestones. They just want my attention. They want me to read to them and give them a snuggle before bed. They want me to listen to their own milestones. Nothing beats parenthood in forcing me to understand that it’s not all about me.

I’m trying to improve in other ways. I go to Confession regularly because I feel the need to put my ego before the priest and seek forgiveness, which I always receive.

I try more and more to put my ego-driven energy into serving others, whether it’s through my recovery program or other acts of basic decency. It helps. A lot.

This is a journey and I always try to remember that.

All that said, I’ll still admit that getting that story last night felt pretty damn good. Try not to hate me for it. I’ll try not to hate myself.

Do feel free to laugh at me, though. Ego-laden people are amusing to watch.

September 7, 2013

9-11-01 Jumpers: A Suicidal Mystery

I remember the photo well. It was a man falling to his death in a zen-like pose that haunted me for a long, long time. It haunted us all.

Mood music:

Yesterday, I came across an entire documentary based on that one photo. The program, like the photo, is called “The Falling Man.” Associated Press photographer Richard Drew snapped a series of pictures of a man falling from the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 9:41:15 a.m. during 9-11-01. He was one of about 200 people who jumped from the upper floors, presumably choosing to die this way because it was better than a slower death by smoke and fire.

The program includes all the haunting footage you would expect. But there was something more, something that shook me to the core:

The family of Norberto Hernandez, the man initially identified as the man in the photo, couldn’t accept that it was him, because as Christians, they believe suicide in any circumstance is a mortal sin — a ticket straight to hell.

Though the identity is still not 100 percent certain, it is now widely accepted that the falling man was Jonathan Briley, a 43-year-old employee of the Windows on the World restaurant.

The stigma around suicide is something I’ve wrestled with for nearly 15 years, since my best friend took his life. As a devout Catholic, I’m well aware of what the church says about suicide.

But I’m also a firm believer that when you’re in the grip of an out-of-control mental illness, you lose all sense of right and wrong. I think you enter a sort of dementia. Not in every case, but a lot of cases.

Then there’s the matter of people who know they are going to die and decide to go out there own way, as many 9-11 victims apparently chose to do.

Were they suicides, fitting the criteria of that mortal sin?

I would say no. I’m sure most of them didn’t wake up that morning with plans to die, especially by their own hand.

Terrorists sealed their fate, and, knowing they were going to die, made a choice on how to end it.

The episode:

We’ve heard a lot about courage that day, and there was plenty of it all around the world. Obviously, there were the firefighters, police officers and civilians who kept climbing the towers knowing they would probably die. They got other people out before thinking of themselves.

But there’s another kind of courage people often don’t think about. It’s the courage of accepting your fate and and dying with your dignity intact.

In the program, one survivor recalled looking up at the people hanging out the windows of the upper floors. She looked up, made the sign of The Cross, then lifted her arms and let go.

That’s not someone giving up and choosing suicide.

That’s someone with enough Faith to decide it’s ok to let go and let God.

April 22, 2013

Dzhokar Tsarnaev’s Age Can’t Shield Him From Justice

After the elation everyone felt Friday night when the second suspected Boston Marathon bomber was captured after a bloody manhunt, the mood dropped again.

Some fellow parents lamented the fact that a 19-year-old kid could do what Dzhokar Tsarnaev is accused of doing. They pictured him curled up in a ball in that backyard boat in Watertown, scared beyond all comprehension. Tsarnaev
is someone’s child, someone pointed out.

Here’s why I’m less sympathetic.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:22f0HfO1PUGJ3bjVozEewR]

I was a real punk at 19. I had little to no respect for my elders. I had a violent temper and broke things on an almost daily basis. I drank, I smoked, I lied. I drove recklessly. I held people in contempt if they didn’t share my so-called values. You could say I was a time bomb. Sooner or later, I could have done something that would have landed me in jail. As it turned out, I chose to turn that destructive energy on myself instead.

I’m not a special case. I know a lot of people who were like that at 19. Some of them are no longer among us. Those who are have built beautiful families, careers and lives.

I never seriously plotted to hurt anyone. I sure as hell would never have dropped a bomb at someone’s feet and have run. Most of the young punks I knew wouldn’t have done so, either.

If the charges are proven true, Dzhokar Tsarnaev and his older brother Tamerlan had something in them that most of us lack: the will and desire to take innocent lives.

I do feel badly for Dzhokar on one point: He was probably under the influence of and led astray by his older brother. It wouldn’t be the first time in history that a kid did things he wouldn’t have done unless pushed by an older sibling he revered and wanted to please at all costs. I wanted to please my older brother, too. But he was a better role model and, had he lived to adulthood, I’d have been better for it.

Dzhokar killed and maimed people. It’s harder to feel sympathy for him than for your typical 19 year old.

Maybe he’ll turn his life around and do some serious soul-scouring. He may earn forgiveness along the way and find ways to help people. If convicted, he’ll have to tend to those things from prison. When you hurt people the way he is accused of doing, you lose all rights to freedom.

That may be cold, but it’s how I feel.

suspect 4

March 29, 2013

Human Tourniquets And Freaks Who Love Them

I originally wrote this three years ago. Looking at it again, it’s an important post describing a time when not even best friends were safe from my insanity. I’ve updated it for the present.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:2YGwSRjcY4Hjz6fktW9619]

You know the type. They hang out with people who act more like abusive spouses than friends. They are human tourniquets. They absorb the pain of their tormentor daily and without complaint.

This is the story of the man who used to be my tourniquet.

I met Aaron Lewis in 1985, my freshman year of high school. He was the kid with really bad acne. But nothing ever seemed to bother him. I’m sure a lot of things bothered him, but he was very good at hiding his feelings.

That made him the perfect target for a creep like me.

Don’t get me wrong. He was a true friend. One of my best friends. We shared a love of heavy metal. We both got picked on, though unlike me, he didn’t take it out on other, weaker classmates.

We hung out constantly. He practically lived in my Revere basement at times. I let him borrow my car regularly. And if I drank, that was OK, because he almost never drank. He could be the driver.

Except for the time I encouraged him to drink a bottle of vodka. He had just eaten a bag of McDonald’s and I told him I was sick of him trying to get buzzed off of wine coolers. This night, I told him, he was going to do it right. He got smashed, and proceeded to puke all over my basement — on the bed, the carpets, the couch, the dresser. That was some strange vomit. It looked like brown confetti.

I sat on the floor, drunk myself, writing in my journal. I wrote about how drunk Aaron was and prayed to God that he wouldn’t die. Man, would I love to find that journal.

We saw a lot of movies together. We watched a lot of MTV.

He was the perfect counterweight to Sean Marley. Marley was essentially my older brother and I spent a lot of time trying to earn his approval. I didn’t have to do that with Aaron. He didn’t criticize. He didn’t judge. He just took all my mood swings on the chin.

I would sling verbal bombs at him and he’d take it.

I would slap him on the back of the neck and he’d take it.

I was evil. And he took it.

That’s a true friend.

Aaron got married, moved to California and has a growing family. He’s doing some wonderful things with his life. I cleaned up from my compulsive binge eating, found my Faith and untangled the coarse, jagged wiring in my brain that eventually became an OCD diagnosis.

If he’s reading this, I apologize for all the times I was an asshole. I hope somewhere in there, I was a good friend, too.

Buddies — Left: Aaron Lewis. Right: His asshole friend

January 15, 2013May 31, 2015

I Was Wrong About Lance Armstrong

A few months ago I wrote a post called “Lance Armstrong Was Robbed,” in which I opined that he didn’t deserve to be stripped of his seven Tour de France titles. I’m back to tell you I was wrong.

Like most Americans, I’m a sucker for stories about people who overcome serious adversity to achieve great things. Those stories have given me the extra push I needed over the years to bring my own demons to heel. That Armstrong won seven titles didn’t matter to me as much as the fact that he did it after beating testicular cancer. I also argued that the use of performance-enhancing drugs was beside the point; that without the raw talent and drive, all the drugs on Earth wouldn’t have pushed him to seven victories. Rightly or wrongly, I still believe that.

But I’ve had a change of heart about him being robbed after reading about his interview with Oprah Winfrey, in which he admitted to the doping. In fact, he reportedly told her that he started using performance-enhancing drugs to gain an edge in cycling in the mid-1990s — before he was diagnosed with cancer. USA Today reveals that Armstrong engaged in a cover-up that involved “attacking anyone who implicated him.”

According to the article, Armstrong’s admission that he started doping in the mid-1990s is consistent with the evidence revealed in October by the US Anti-Doping Agency.

Nobody likes to be wrong. But admitting you were wrong is better than attacking those who question you, especially when it becomes painfully clear to everyone that you’re covering something up.

I’d rather be a rational human being who can have a change of heart in the face of facts than a stubborn person whose pride won’t allow him to see the truth.

Lance Armstrong, 2005 Tour de France — Photo Credit: Joel Saget, AFP/Getty Images

December 17, 2012January 6, 2016

Sandy Hook Lesson: Be the Change, One Soul at a Time

Like most of you, I’ve spent a good part of the weekend thinking about the lives lost at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. We all want specific solutions that will prevent more of these tragedies, but what we’re dealing with is too big and too gray for that.

A lot of people are debating gun control. Some people think the world would be safer if every law-abiding citizen had a firearm. Others say they support the Second Amendment but that there’s no reason for anyone other than police and soldiers to have access to weapons that can fill a body with scores of bullets in the blink of an eye.

A lot of people are also debating what this tragedy says about how we should treat the mentally ill. Some people think the mentally ill should be locked away. Others cry out for better services and educational tactics to drive disturbed individuals away from the the path Adam Lanza took when he grabbed his mother’s guns, killed her and headed to Sandy Hook Elementary School, where he stole the lives of 20 precious children and six heroic adults who died saving the children who made it out alive.

Would stricter gun control prevent future massacres like this? I doubt it. Would giving every school principal a gun prevent it? I doubt that, too. I believe in the right of citizens to bear arms, but I don’t see how that makes it OK for people who aren’t soldiers or cops to carry handheld weapons of mass destruction. A hunting rifle for hunting and a handgun for self-defense when a home is invaded is one thing. High-powered rifles are something else entirely.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that on the subject of mental illness, I agreed with those who said we need better treatment and counseling to reach troubled youths before they become murderers.

Maybe I’m biased because I was one of those troubled kids. People made fun of me in school and I could never seem to get the hang of sports and other things that might have made me more socially acceptable. There were times in my youth when I’d occasionally think of how sweet it would be to grab a rifle or a knife and tear into the bodies of those I felt were oppressing me. Luckily for me, there were enough positive influences in my life to make the difference.

I know one kid who has a lot of emotional issues and has been through every kind of therapy and drug treatment known to man. He’s doing well, but a paper-thin line separates the sweet side of his soul from the side that could send him on a rampage. The more positive influences he has now, the better.

As for those who suggest we simply lock up the mentally disturbed: who do you think qualifies for the cage? You’ll likely point to the troubled guy who walks down the street shouting obscenities at everyone he crosses paths with, but that doesn’t mesh well with the profiles of those who went on to shoot up schools and movie theaters. This latest gunman had no criminal record and was described as a fairly docile person by family and neighbors. Charles Manson’s most blood-thirsty followers were model students and athletes in high school.

At some point their minds became twisted and sick, but outward appearances wouldn’t have indicated that they should be locked up. That’s something else I have firsthand experience with. During some of the worst periods of mental illness in my life, I was able to put on a smile and calm exterior. I could function in society, but inside I was a time bomb.

You want an easy fix for this problem? You can’t have one. It doesn’t exist.

The answer is much more difficult but worth the effort: If you know a young man or woman who goes through periods of depression, rage or self-imposed isolation, someone who struggles to fit in, try to spend time with them. Show them love and kindness. Mentor them.

Doing so has a better chance of preventing the next school massacre than more or fewer guns. We can’t catch every troubled soul and turn them around. The task is simply too big for any of us to handle.

But if we can guide one or two of them, that’s huge.

Sandy