The OCD Diaries

May 17, 2010

The Brenners Invade The White House

The author on returning from a journey that would have been impossible a few years ago.

It’s 5:30 a.m. and I’m running on less than four hours of sleep, so excuse any typos that follow…

I’m back in my “sunrise chair” the morning after returning from one hell of a road trip that included a private tour of the White House West Wing, a stay at buddy Alex Howard’s place and a stay with our wonderful Maryland relatives, Charron, Steve, Stevie and Maggie.

There’s a lot about the trip I’m still stunned about. I’m still in awe of the fact that I got to poke my head in the Oval Office and Cabinet Room and that I got a quick peek inside the Situation Room when a staffer was leaving the main room (the Situation Room is actually made up of several rooms).

I’m very thankful for Howard Schmidt for giving us the tour and for Alex for letting the whole family stay in his cramped but very cool townhouse on Capitol Hill.

I’m also thankful for the level of recovery I’ve achieved, because without it I never could have done the trip, especially with the whole family on an 8-hour drive down and a longer, 12-hour drive home Sunday (lots of traffic).

I’ll be honest and tell you I wasn’t perfect this trip. Friday morning we got a late start to the day and I found myself in an OCD-enhanced mood dive. It was a classic control freak out: I wanted to show Erin and the boys EVERYTHING. But with two small kids with shorter legs than their Dad, you can’t do that. And for a few hours Friday afternoon, as we walked from the Lincoln monument to the Museum of Natural History, I was in that brain-clouding mood I used to live with 24 hours a day.

But it was still a good day, and an even better night. Being in the West Wing of The White House, where every president of the last century has toiled away (some for the good, others for the not-so-good), was just magical for a history nerd like me. And I’m grateful my wife and children got to see it all.

It was a joy the next day to spend time with our Corthell cousins on the Maryland coast: Charron, Maggie, Steve and Stevie. Such a wonderful family. Charron took us to a maritime habitat that included time out on the water and inside a really cool lighthouse.

I especially enjoyed watching Maggie and Duncan bond during the boat ride.

So why wouldn’t this trip have been possible a few years ago? For starters, driving ANYWHERE outside the comfortable confines of the north-of-Boston area used to send me into panic. My fear and anxiety extended to a terror over getting lost. Even getting lost in Boston was cause for fear.

This trip, I did the whole drive down and back with none of that. I even enjoyed the journey.

I also wouldn’t have had the guts a few years ago to inquire about a White House tour. Too much work and I’d have to actually talk to someone with a big title. That would have been too intimidating.

I also would have been afraid to take the time off from work, since being a people pleaser was more important than living back then.

My 12-Step recovery program helped a lot. It kept me from wasting time and energy on binge eating and so I got to experience more from the journey. My Faith also helped, because I know now that the key to everything is to Let Go and Let God. I worked my tools, and everything was fine.

Not perfect. I feel like an idiot for taking that mood swing Friday afternoon. I also realize now more than ever that I’m addicted to computer screens. Erin decreed that we leave the laptops behind and I’m glad we did. But man was it hard to not run to a computer and upload those White House pics right after taking them. That’s something I still have to work on.

But then I knew I was still a work in progress. I always will be.

But I’m a grateful, lucky work in progress.

May 12, 2010

Road Kill (a Family Adventure)

The author on why he’s taking the family on a 10-hour car ride.

Mood music for this post: “Heading Out to the Highway” by Judas Priest:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoDbAd4fYBA&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

A few years ago, this would have been impossible.

I never would have put the whole family in the car and driven 10 hours south to Washington D.C. Too scary. Too much planning. Someone might break into the house while we’re gone.

Well, the house part is a valid concern. So before anyone gets any bright ideas, I should note that I have someone staying here to look over the place while we’re gone. My neighbors are keeping an eye on things as well, and you don’t want to piss them off. Trust me. I write about security for a living, so I always plan these things out.

So we’re going to the nation’s capital because a friend works in the White House and we’re getting the tour. It’s also high time we took the kids to the Smithsonian museums. Meanwhile, Duncan thinks the Lincoln Monument is part of the White House and doesn’t believe me when I tell him that’s not the case. So I have to show him the evidence.

Living on a tight budget, we’re driving down and staying at a friend’s house and then a cousin’s house. We’re packing lunches to take along instead of buying restaurant food.

I’m grateful to the folks who are making this trip possible, because this will be something that the kids remember forever. Pictures will follow.

I should also point out that I won’t be posting anything new here until after the trip. My laptop is staying behind.

So here’s another reason this trip will be so special:

Back when I was tight in the grip of fear, anxiety and depression, the mere thought of embarking on something like this would have been too frightening. The work involved. The planning. Leaving the house. All notions that were too terrible to contemplate.

Now I realize how Blessed I am that I can do something like this for my family.

And I’m looking forward to the ride down almost as much as being at our destination. I used to hate long drives. Today I love a good road trip. The planning is a lot of work, but it doesn’t take the wind out of my sails like it used to.

I’ve done this run a couple times now on the RV to the ShmooCon security conference, though I wasn’t driving.

This is what you can do in Recovery.

Seize it.

May 9, 2010

Granny

The author introduces his Granny, a funny gal with an edge.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/9mcloY9BlOU

During my storage dive yesterday, I found a bunch of photos of me and my late great-grandmother, Jesse Wiener. She was Granny to me.

My first memories of Granny are from the basement in the old house in Revere. I’ve written about that basement as my hiding place, but a decade before I took the space over Granny lived there.

We would sneak down there in search of doughnuts and cereal in the little boxes. I’d bring my friends downstairs and ask her to do the teeth trick, where she’d push her dentures out and back in again.

She had a couple different dogs during that period. One was a vicious little scamp named Gigi, who met an untimely death after swallowing a pill Granny had dropped on the floor. I forget the second dog’s name, but I do remember he was docile and ugly. In fact, the day he arrived Granny laughed so hard over his appearance that she went into a crying fit.

One night my mother had Laurie Cabot, the witch of Salem, over to read palms. She refused to read Granny’s palm because Granny wouldn’t stop laughing at her. That’s how the story has been told over the years, anyway. I believe it.

I do know Cabot was in my house, because I snooped a bit that night. I was supposed to be in bed but there was too much commotion and noise that evening.

That was the 1970s for ya.

Granny eventually moved to an elderly apartment building at the other end of Revere Beach. She was always sick with one ailment or another but her wit was still like a double-edged knife.

One Christmas, as she struggled up the stairs to my mother’s place, my mother yelled down “Merry Christmas!” Granny yelled back, “Oh, fuck you.”

Granny used to delight me with stories of her younger years. She ran a nightclub in Boston that a lot of drag queens and mobsters hung out in. There was the story of a large snake found in a bathroom toilet, and when the movie “Johnny Dangerously” came out she laughed herself to tears. The mobsters in the film were just like the characters she used to deal with. This part especially hit home for her:

Yes, she told me, the mobsters did do a lot of nodding.

I especially appreciated Granny’s humor because she had a hard life.

Her husband had a fatal heart attack in the 1930s and she never remarried. She brought up my Nana and two great-uncles on her own. In the 1950s, she was hit by a car on Revere Beach Boulevard and lost most of her money in the ensuing hospital stays.

She lost a lot of people in her life, including my brother. I’ll never forget, as long as I live, the night my brother died. Granny was driven to my mother’s house late at night and when she came in the house and demanded to know what was the matter, my mother told her. I’ll never forget how she collapsed into a pile of rubble right there.

But she was made of leather, and she bounced back. She always bounced back.

Though there was a lot of love from her to my grandmother and my mother, the relationships were also pretty volatile. A lot of abuse was passed down the family line. Saying so will piss off some of the people in my family. But it’s the truth, and those who might take offense are already pissed at me, anyway.

I’m pretty sure I inherited some of my addictive and obsessive-compulsive impulses from Granny.

But that’s not her fault. I’ve learned that in many ways, a person can’t avoid the addictions their genetic code comes embedded with. Nobody becomes an addict because they woke up one day and decided it would be a shitload of fun. We evolve into addicts because we’re trying to smother deep emotional pain.

I inherited something much more important from Granny: That biting sense of humor. It has gotten me through the roughest moments of my life. I can never thank her enough for that.

Granny spent most of the last year of her life in a rehab center after going through surgery. I can’t remember which limb was being rehabbed. While there, she discovered her long-lost brother was also a patient there. That reconnection was a gift of the wildest sort. It’s a drag that they would only have weeks to enjoy it.

I was very wrapped up in my own sordid world that year — 1994 — and I never got around to visiting her. I was a self-absorbed idiot knee deep in other, less important things that seemed pretty important at the time.

You might say it was revenge that she died a couple hours before my 24th birthday, on Aug. 25, 1994.

I don’t consider it revenge, though. Some would lament having their birthday ruined, but to me it wasn’t ruined at all.

In a strange sort of way, I’m honored that she picked the hours before my birthday to leave this world. She had suffered enough. It was time for her eternal reward.

Spending that day remembering her and all the wonderful stories was a pretty good way to spend a birthday. I wouldn’t change it for the world.

Thanks, Granny.

May 4, 2010

The Healers (Adventures in Step 9)

Tripped on Step 9 many times. But I got back up. Here’s what happened next.

Mood music for this post:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrUdulMG4Qg&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

Of the 12 Steps of Recovery, three are the thorns of my existence:

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

Step 9 has been especially vexing. There are some folks I can’t make amends with yet, though Lord knows I’ve tried.

I feel especially pained about my inability to heal the rift with my mother and various people on that side of the family. But it’s complicated. Very complicated. I’ve forgiven her for many things, but our relationship is like a jigsaw puzzle with a lot of missing pieces. Those pieces have a lot to do with boundaries and OCD triggers. It’s as much my fault as it is hers. But right now this is how it must be.

I wish I could make amends with the Marley family, but I can’t until they’re willing to accept that from me. I stabbed them in the gut pretty hard, so I don’t blame them one bit.

Thanks to Facebook, I’ve been able to reconnect with people deep in my past and, while the need to make amends doesn’t always apply and the relationships can never be what they were, all have helped me heal.

I recently got back in touch with two of my brother’s friends — John Edwards and Scott Epler. They were my friends as well, but they were always the older kids. Scott and I both lost a brother in 1984, and he had a hard road to travel like I did. But I found him alive and well, doing great things with his life. Last time I saw Edwards was at Sean Marley’s funeral. I always assumed he was angry with me, too. He had good reason to be. When he went into the military and Sean and I were being anti-military (in my case because I was a chicken shit, afraid of service and the danger attached), I was a real asshole to him. He’s a minister now, and I’ve gotten a lot of wisdom from him already. I’m loving the reconnection.

Getting back in touch with Shannon Ross Lazzaro has been a gift as well. She’s one of those people who was always part of the Point of Pines circle I existed in. She was close to my brother and was still part of the family after he died. She’s now in Atlanta and has two precious kids of her own.

Mary Anastasio I met through Sean, and she never really went away. But in the past year we’ve had a lot more to talk about. She often reads this blog and tells me I’m too hard on myself, though I don’t try to be. I used to have a Thanksgiving Eve tradition where I’d go to her house and shoot the breeze with her mom. Her mom had a heavy Irish accent and all the word color you would expect with that. One of my favorite lines from her was that Mary “could use a good blow” — Irish-speak for a slap in the face. I can’t remember what Mary did to get that response, but we laughed hard, and I still do. Now Mary lives in Revere with a great husband and son. Her husband, Vinny, is a biker type, exactly the kind of guy I expected her to marry. I say that as a compliment.

Then there’s Joy, Sean’s widow. She’s remarried with kids and has done a remarkable job of pushing on with her life. She dropped out of my world for nearly 14 years — right after Sean’s death — until recently. The contents of our exchange are private, but this much I can tell you: I was wrong all these years when I assumed she hated my guts and wanted nothing more to do with me.

I have to be careful with this last reconnection. I still have a lot of questions about Sean’s final years and the OCD in me wants to know everything now. If I’m lucky, some answers will come in time. But I’m not going to push. I have no right to.

Besides, simply being reconnected is, as Joe Biden might say, “A big fucking deal.”

It is to me, anyway. And as remote as that connection may remain, it’s still gone far in helping me heal.

May 3, 2010

Birthdays of the Dead

The author observes another birthday for someone who isn’t around to celebrate.

Mood music for this post: “On With The Show” by Motley Crue:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyapJ9iCWxA&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

I’m a lot better at remembering the day someone died than the day they were born. I guess that’s understandable. Birthdays come and go. Death dates for those who are close burn a scar into your brain that makes the moment feel like it only happened seconds ago. Even if its 14 years later or 26.

Today would have been my brother Michael’s 44th birthday. He died at 17. Sean Marley’s birthday is around Oct. 7 and I almost always forget until a week later. He died at 30.

It creeps me out to think that I’m almost 40, much older than two people who were always the older brothers I looked up to.

But for whatever reason, I woke up remembering that it’s Michael’s birthday.

The night he died — Jan. 7, 1984 — I remember clearly. He had had another bad asthma attack and we were used to them. When someone is having a major asthma attack in your presence, it’s a scary fucking thing. One of his attacks happened a year before his death while we were in a movie theater watching the James Bond “Octopussy” film. We never saw the end of it because we had to rush him to the hospital.

To this day, I have no interest in rewatching that film.

But on this night I wasn’t there. An ambulance was called in and I’m told he walked onto the back of the ambulance on his own. A couple hours later he was dead in Lynn Hospital, currently the site of a Super Stop & Shop. It shouldn’t piss me off to think he died in what is now the cereal aisle or the deli counter. But I guess it does a little bit.

Strangely enough, the memory of the day Sean Marley died is much more painful to think about, probably because I was grown up by then.

On Friday, Nov. 15, 1996 I was having a good day in the newsroom where I was writing for the Stoneham Sun. Sean had been spiraling downhill and I had last spoken with him around the previous Tuesday. He was pretty depressed during that call, and still I was too stupid and self absorbed to realize I should be taking the short walk down the street to his house to just be there for him. But I had a busy work day the following morning, and I just hung up the phone and shook my head.

So that Friday I get back to the office after attending a co-worker’s birthday lunch. The day was brilliantly sunny. Then my mother called. She was driving past Sean’s house and saw police, firefighters and an ambulance, all kinds of commotion and someone lying on the ground with EMTs standing over him. I knew at that moment it was the end. I called the Marley’s number and Sean’s wife, Joy, got on and told me he was dead.

Blog rewind: Lost Brothers

It’s been so long since Michael was with us that it’s sometimes hard to remember the exact features of his face. But here’s what I do remember:

We fought a lot. One New Year’s Eve about 30 years ago, when the family was out at a restaurant, he said something to piss me off and I picked up the fork beside me and chucked it at him. Various family members have insisted over the years that it was a steak knife, but I’m pretty sure it was a fork. Another time we were in the back of my father’s van and he said something to raise my hackles. I flipped him the middle finger. He reached for the finger and promptly snapped the bone.

We were also both sick much of the time. He had his asthma attacks, which frequently got so bad he would be hospitalized. I had my Chron’s Disease and was often hospitalized myself. It must have been terrible for our parents. I know it was, but had to become a parent myself before I could truly appreciate what they went through.

He lifted weights at a gym down the street from our house that was torn down years ago to make way for new developments. If not for the asthma, he would have been in perfect shape. He certainly had the muscles.

He was going to be a plumber. That’s what he went to school for, anyway. During one of his hospital stays, he got pissed at one of the nurses. He somehow got a hold of some of his plumbing tools and switched the pipes in the bathroom sink so hot water would come out when you selected the cold.

He was always there for a family member in trouble. If I was being bullied, he often came to the rescue.

I miss him, and find it strange that he was just a kid himself when he died. He seemed so much older to me at the time. To a 13-year-old, he was older and wiser.

He was close to a kid who lived two doors down from us named Sean Marley. After he died, I quickly latched on to Sean. We became best friends. In a way, he became a new older brother. Sean died in 1996 and the depression he suffered has been one of the cattle prods — next to my own fight with mental illness — for this blog.

A year after Sean died, I found another, much older brother named Peter Sugarman. He died in 2004 after choking on food. His death sent me over the cliff with the OCD firing in every direction. That was the year I realized I needed help and started to get it.

Blog rewind: Marley and Me

Sean Marley, who introduced me to metal music, taught me to love life, and whose death has been one of the cattle prods for my writing this blog.

I had known Sean for as long as I could remember. He lived two doors down from me on the Lynnway in Revere, Mass. He was always hanging around with my older brother, which is one of the reasons we didn’t hit it off at first.

Friends of older siblings often pick on the younger siblings. I’ve done it. It happens.

Sean always seemed quiet and scholarly to me. By the early 1980s he was starting to grow his hair long and he wore those skinny black leather ties when he had to suit up.

On Jan. 7, 1984 — the day my older brother died — my relationship with Sean began to change. Quickly. I’d like to believe we were both leaning on each other to get through the grief. But the truth of it is that it was just me leaning on him.

He tolerated it. He started introducing me to Motley Crue, Ozzy Osbourne, Van Halen and other hard-boiled music. I think he enjoyed having someone younger around to influence.

As the 1980s progressed, a deep, genuine friendship blossomed. He had indeed become another older brother. I grew my hair long. I started listening to all the heavy metal I could get my hands on. Good thing, too. That music was an outlet for all my teenage rage, keeping me from acting on that rage in ways that almost certainly would have led to trouble.

We did everything together: Drank, got high, went on road trips, including one to California in 1991 where we flew into San Francisco, rented a car and drove around the entire state for 10 days, sleeping and eating in the car.

This was before I became self aware that I had a problem with obsessive-compulsive behavior, fear and anxiety. But the fear was evident on that trip. I was afraid to go to clubs at night for fear we might get mugged. When we drove over the Bay Bridge I was terrified that an earthquake MIGHT strike and the bridge would collapse from beneath us.

I occupied the entire basement apartment of my father’s house, and we had a lot of wild parties there. Sean was a constant presence. His friends became my friends. His cousin became my cousin. I still feel that way about these people today. They are back in my life through Facebook, and I’m grateful for it.

He was a deadly serious student at Salem State College, and his dedication to his studies inspired me to choose Salem State as well. Good thing, too. That’s where I met my wife.

In 1994, things started to go wrong for Sean. He became paranoid and depressed. He tried to hurt himself more than once. I didn’t know how to react to it.

That fall, he got married and I was best man. I absolutely sucked at it because I was so self-absorbed at the time that there was no way I could effectively be there for someone else, even him.

Over the next two years, his depression came and went. He was hospitalized with it a couple times. By the summer of 1996, he was darker and more paranoid than I’d ever seen him. But I was so busy binge eating and worrying about my career that I didn’t pay enough attention.

Those two deaths pushed me along the road to a very dark place.

A lot of my own depression would follow, as would a lot of self-destructive behavior.

Fortunately, I got therapy, medication and a 12-Step recovery program for compulsive binge eating. I also let God into my life.

All I want to do now is thank God for that and say Happy Birthday to my brother.

And get on with the show.

April 21, 2010

Happy Birthday, My Sweet Boy

Mood music for this post: “Beautiful Boy” by John Lennon:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uldu_1-JCJE&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

You entered the world on Earth Day, nine years ago. Nine years. Wow.

You were graced with a beautiful Mom and a Dad with just a few kinks in him. I would always try to hide my OCD, depression and addictive behavior from you, but I wasn’t always good at that. You didn’t seem to mind. In fact, you helped me get well.

We named you Sean Michael Brenner.

The first name is for Sean Marley and the middle name is for Michael Brenner, the uncle who left this world nearly 20 years before you were born. Sean Marley took his place as an older brother, but he died in 1996. You were destined to inherit both names.

You were a shock to my system at first. Your very presence messed with all my OCD triggers, particularly those involving neatness and controlling the clock, though I only had the illusion that I could do the latter.

But you grew on me quick.

We watched a lot of Sesame Street together. When I worked the night shift at The Eagle-Tribune, I put you in the stroller most mornings and took you on a 3-mile walk.

You gave me a fresh appreciation for all things Dr. Seuss. You introduced me to Thomas the Tank Engine, who would soon become an obsession for you. You still have most of the engines ever made, along with miles of wooden track. The living room used to be so covered with Thomas toys that one could hardly walk in there.

A couple years after you were born Duncan entered the world. You have been the perfect big brother for him since day one.

Sure, you guys fight. But all brothers do. It always passes after a few minutes, and sometimes the dialogue makes me laugh.

Like when Duncan exploded at you for calling him cupcake.

Or the many times you two fought over who would get to use the computer first.

It always passes, and then you do things like read him chapters from “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” every night.

That’s quite a big brother. Duncan’s lucky, and he knows it.

In the last couple years, you’ve shown a mind-blowing ability for reading, art and writing.

You also have an amazing talent for drawing sea creatures and cutting them out. The proof is all over my office.

You have your obsessions, just like me. Right now it’s Legos. I promise to keep an eye on you and teach you the things I’ve learned to keep the obsessions from getting the better of us.

Tonight, for your birthday, we’re going to the N.E. Aquarium, one of your favorite places on Earth. Tomorrow we’ll have the birthday party with your school chums, then the family party is Sunday.

A week of celebrations? You are worth it.

Happy Birthday, my sweet boy.

Your Dad loves you.

April 20, 2010

Happy and Productive in the Debris Field

The author used to come unglued around chaos. Now it floats past him.

Mood music for this post: “Sons and Daughters” by The Decemberists:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5H8DwJI0uA&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

Looking at the week ahead, it’s amazing I’m not hiding in a foxhole right now.

I’m working from home the first part of the week while the kids are on vacation. Call it half a vacation, though I’m tackling a full plate of work each day.

Sean’s birthday is this week, so the house needs a scrubbing before party guests arrive Thursday.

I have a conference in Boston to cover the latter half of the week into the weekend.

And oh yeah — with two vacationing kids comes a lot of clutter.

I’ve always hated clutter. It’s one of the biggest OCD triggers I have. And you can’t have kids around without accepting a certain degree of clutter. There’s no eating without dumping stuff on the floor. There’s no Lego activities without getting Legos everywhere.

But something strange has happened in more recent years. I’ve found that these things don’t rattle me the way they used to.

I chalk it up to all the progress I’ve made managing my OCD and putting down the worst of my addictions.

Now I can peacefully co-exist among the chaos and clutter. If I have work, I can do it and do it well sitting among the debris, like I did yesterday when Duncan decided to make a blanket/pillow fort right where I was writing a couple CSO articles:

Hell, I even helped him build the thing.

Then I sat in my half-covered chair and got working. And guess what? I got plenty done.

I feel better about zigzagging from the conference to Haverhill for birthday activities because I’ve already written and posted four stories and two podcasts about things that will be going on at the event.

It’s all good.

One more thing about the clutter, though: If you know someone with OCD that’s not under control, keep them as far away from chaos as possible.

For the chaotic mind, clutter is the worst.

It amplifies the crazy in your head.

That I can now exist in the clutter is pretty wild when I stop to think about it.

Oddly enough, I’ve probably swung a bit too far to the other side of the spectrum.

My wife pointed out to be recently that I’m more of a slob since cleaning up my act.

Sounds weird, doesn’t it?

April 17, 2010

Random Madness

It’s Saturday morning, and me and the kids are engaging in our weekly ritual.

In a few hours, we go to Salem, Mass., home of former Skeptic Slang guitarist Chris Casey, his wife, Nancy and their kids, Mark and Melissa. I’m going to help them get some old photos online and start a blog for Nancy’s writing.

I’m going to look his kids in the eye and tell them that I’m a little bit responsible for their existence. I did introduce their parents to each other, after all. 😉

I’ll make them listen to the new Slash album, which is quickly becoming my favorite album of the year so far.

Then I’ll put the boys in the car and we’ll head to Saugus so we can make their grandpa buy some school raffles.

All in all, a good day in the making.

The only bummer is that Erin has a work conference to go to. Saturday morning business events. Ah, the life of a freelancer.

Nancy has a stack of old Skeptic Slang photos, which should be hilarious. Expect to see those images in this space soon.

Have a great day.

April 4, 2010

Easter Morning

No real message about overcoming OCD, depression and addiction. I’ll get back to that tomorrow. Today, just a quick Happy Easter to you all.

All is well here. We experienced a brilliant Easter Vigil Mass last night.

Not even my starting in on the wrong reading could have spoiled it. I helped out with this year’s RCIA group, so seeing them Baptized was particularly special for me.

The kids got up at 5:30 a.m. all excited for their Easter baskets. We sent them back to bed for another hour.

Above: drawings Sean made for us for Easter.

Later we take the kids to Mass, then hang out before going to the in-laws for dinner. Somewhere in there, I’ll have a cigar (my Lenten sacrifice).

Tomorrow I head to California for another security event.

No anxiety. No fear. Just Blessings all around.

April 2, 2010

The OCD Diaries 4-2-10: Long-haired Freaks

Mood music for this post: “Hurt,” by Johnny Cash (cover of the Nine Inch Nails song):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o22eIJDtKho&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

Going through an old stack of books this afternoon, I found this photo:

I’m on the left holding the bass. On the right is Sean Marley. I told you about him in the post “Marley and Me.”

The photo is one of those stupid mock rock magazine covers, shot in the summer of 1989 at a carnival on the grounds of the Suffolk Downs racetrack near Revere Beach.

It was a simpler time. I had seen my share of illness and death by then, but that summer was a more innocent era. As close to normal as things got back then.

My addictive behavior had already taken root but wasn’t yet at the self-destructive point. The OCD was there at that point, but I hadn’t yet become aware of the patterns. All I knew at that point was that I hated authority and I had a mighty temper.

Sean was a unique character with a dark side at that point, but he was not yet showing signs of a depression that would eventually kill him. That wouldn’t show its wretched face for another five years.

That summer was about parties in my basement, music and getting ready for college.

I had absolutely no clue what was ahead of me.

The kid in that picture wouldn’t like who I am today. He would despise the Catholicism and make fun of the 12-Step program. But we’d still have a love of heavy metal in common.

Come to think of it, if today I had to spend time in the same space as the kids in that picture, I probably wouldn’t like either of them all that much. I’d tolerate them though.

I’m Blessed beyond comprehension with the life I have today. But, admittedly, looking at that picture hurts a little. A lot of good people have come and gone since then.

It’s a little overwhelming to think about, so instead I’ll go to bed.