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I Pity The Fool — Especially When The Fool Is Me

“I don’t know how much more I can take.”

I’ve told myself that a million times, as I’m sure you have. We say it in times of desperation, pain and blueness.

But here’s an uncomfortable truth — Sometimes we like feeling this way.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/JRlkTNlLy3w

There’s something about feeling bad for oneself that’s so satisfying. Maybe it’s that on some level you’ve made peace with your seemingly miserable existence.

It helps us get through a bad fight with a loved one, because instead of thinking of what we did to cause the strife it feels better to stew over how unfairly you’re always treated.

If we despise our job it feels so much better to focus the hate on whichever bosses keep criticizing us than it does to take an honest look at where we keep slipping up.

If you hate the results of an election, it’s so much easier to trash the “stupid” voters who picked the other guy than it is to think about how the candidate and supporters like you failed to make a convincing case.

If you don’t like the drivel that comes from the mouth of a misguided minister, it feels so much better to steam over the entire religion than it does to think of better ways to practice your own faith.

I could go on, but you get the picture.

Sometimes, we love to feel bad. Pure and simple.

I’m trying to enjoy it less as I get older, because I find that self-pity and misplaced blame is like any other narcotic: You feel good for a few minutes, but then an awful hangover takes hold.

You start to wake up every morning with a cold rock in your belly and an ax swinging inside your skull, chopping brain.

Then you go looking for other shallow comforts to hold it together: A few cigarettes, a few glasses of something intoxicating and as much grease-drenched food as you can swallow.

The hole gets bigger, no matter how hard we try to fill it.

Nothing gets better. it all just gets worse.

That’s my experience, anyway.

I’d rather go the other way.

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In Marriage, Communication Gets Tougher As You Get Older

I’ve never been good at the Valentine’s Day thing. Maybe I’m fulfilling the male stereotype, or maybe it’s because I feel more pressure to express myself. I do fine with written words. In person is another thing. When the holiday passed I Iet out a big exhale.

Mood music:

The fact of the matter is that I have a lot of love in my heart right now. I don’t need a holiday to feel it, though Valentine’s Day is as good a day as any to express it. And as my cousin Faith put it, there’s nothing wrong with setting aside a holiday for the good things in life, like love.

I’m in love with Erin more than ever. She gives her family everything she has and props everyone up when they’re having trouble standing on their own. She makes the kids’ Halloween costumes from scratch every year. She started a successful freelance business from nothing. The person she is makes me want to be better still.

But that doesn’t mean I’ve gotten much better at communication. In fact, I’ve gotten worse. So has Erin. This shouldn’t surprise any couple that’s been together for a lot of years. When you have kids everything becomes about them and it’s easy to forget that the family started with husband and wife.

Some married couples stop talking about these things and drift apart. Erin and I have decided it’s time to face the issue head on. Not because we’re mad at each other, because we’re not. Ours is not a marriage in trouble. But we know that when a couple stops communicating long enough, the relationship can deteriorate. Since we love each other, we’re not going to let that happen. Pure and simple.

We’re accepting that as we get older, we need more maintenance. That goes for how we talk to each other and how we connect on a spiritual level.

We’ve both changed a lot. That has contributed to the communication challenge.

Recovery over addiction, fear and anxiety has been a miraculous, beautiful thing. I thank God every day. But when a man changes, a whole new set of problems arise.

It’s a confusing, frustrating thing when your spouse acts one way for a bunch of years and then, suddenly or not so suddenly, ceases to be the person you married.

I’d like to think I’m still the guy she married in the most fundamental ways. My heart and most of my passions haven’t really changed. But as the priest who married us said: “You marry the person you think you know, then spend the rest of your life getting to know each other.”

As far as that goes, I’ve been a moving target, tough to nail down.

Erin used to get anxious in big crowds. Now she’s a lot more at ease. She used to struggle to show patience toward my often dysfunctional family. She’s better at that now than I am. The prospect of public speaking used to rattle her. Now she’s got a couple talks behind her and many more ahead. While all that internal growth goes on, she gets more beautiful by the day. She’s always been beautiful. But lately it distracts me. Call me sappy, but there it is.

Still, those changes, while awesome, require me to rethink how I communicate as an older spouse.

And so goes this adventure called marriage. Truth is, I wouldn’t change it for the world. Besides, as my friend Linda said the other day, love endures.

love

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Gisele Bundchen Ain’t My Cup ‘O Joe, But I Give Her A Pass On This One

My interest in football is minimal. I love a good story of athletes overcoming the odds and showing us that anything’s possible. In that regard, Tom Brady is a hell of a role model.

I’m also not a fan of the Patriots quarterback’s wife, Gisele Bundchen.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/ekr_3T-7cU0

It’s nothing personal. The world of professional modeling and fashion bores me, except for the occasional episode of Project Runway. And that’s just to see the train wrecks.

As for all the money they have, I don’t hold it against them. I know rich people who are miserable and poor people who are happy. And vice versa. I know rich people who are giving, beautiful souls and poor people who are self-absorbed assholes. And vice versa. The good and not-so-good exist in both worlds.

Now that I’ve clarified things, let’s turn to the public outrage of the week.

A lot of people are furious with Gisele for some sore-loser verbiage following the loss of her husband’s team in the Super Bowl.

On the way out of the stadium, someone heckled Gisele with this:

“Eli owns your husband.”

She responded, within earshot of the TV mics: “My husband cannot (expletive) throw the ball and catch the ball at the same time.”

What outrages people most is that her comment essentially blames the rest of the team for coming up short. Teams are supposed to succeed and fail together, right?

It’s unfortunate that she said that. She should apologize to Tom’s teammates.

But in all the angry comments everyone is making on Facebook, Twitter and the news media, an important truth has been kicked to the curb: Gisele is human. All us humans say stupid things on a daily basis, especially when we’re getting defensive about someone trash-talking about a loved one. But we don’t have a camera on us to capture the moment.

It doesn’t matter if we’re swimming in money and mansions or living on the streets: We have our good moments and pathetic moments. Since Gisele is human like the rest of us, I’ll give her a pass on this one.

This morning I read a column from Boston Herald columnist Margery Eagan on the whole affair. She writes:

Super Bowl Sunday offered a telling glimpse into the Brady/Bundchen household. Our suspicions may be true. 

It was never Tom’s idea to dress like a girl in headbands with hair down his back.

Or buy a $1,000 Toto toilet with water jets and blow dryers.

Or ride a bike through town with Gisele’s 5-pound ratty dog in his front basket like a teeny, tiny, nasty ET.

At least Tom put his foot down when Super Gi had the Super Idea to name Super Baby Benjamin … River. “Something always flowing, immortal,” blogged Super Gi after her Super Pregnancy and Super Childbirth in the tub, where she meditated for 8 hours. And don’t forget: She wanted a law requiring all mothers to breast-feed and claimed she’d potty-trained Benjamin by six months.

I mean, beyond nauseating.

None of that stuff is my cup ‘o joe, either. I prefer the simpler life of old jeans, broken-in leather and old-fashioned toilets you can sit on without being fondled by mechanical doo-dads.

But Tom did ask for all that. That’s the woman he chose to marry. In marriage husband and wife merge their lives in a blender, and the end result sometimes looks strange.

That’s beside the point, though.

We all do and say things that are nauseating. I’ve read and liked Eagan’s columns for years.

But she can be nauseating at times, too.

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Do I Think About My Disease 24-7?

Someone recently asked if I think about my disease 24-7 and, if so, whether doing so is perilous to those around me. In this case, the disease is OCD and the addictions that go with it.

Mood music:

Let me try to take a stab at addressing that:

I don’t think my disease should define me and keep me in a box. But it’s also a major part of who I am and how I tick. Writing a blog that focuses on that probably amplifies things. But I see some necessity in it all.

Like any person with an addictive personality, I have to have it on my mind around the clock because if I stop thinking about it I forget it’s there. That’s when I get sloppy and sink into the bad behavior.

The OCD part is a little more complicated and maybe even a little contradictory.

Since OCD is largely a disease that triggers destructive over thinking, you would think that the goal is to teach yourself not to think so hard. In some respects, that is the goal. But it’s about not engaging in thinking that snags your brain like the scratch in a CD does to the laser. It’s about never forgetting that the disorder, like addiction, is nearby doing push-ups, ready to kick your ass when you get too comfortable.

I’ll admit that I’m not even close to having this stuff in balance. But to those who think I focus on my disease at the expense of all else, I disagree. The me of today is a deeply flawed animal. But go back and meet the me of five or 10 years ago and you’ll meet a monster. A wounded monster. Everyone is probably better off with me as a flawed animal. I’m less harmful that way.

That doesn’t mean I should tell everyone to fuck off and carry on with no regard for the needs of others.

I need to keep working on being a better husband, a better father, a better friend and colleague. I’m never going to be perfect. But I can be better. If I have to think about my disease 24-7 to keep getting better, so be it.

I also think it’s necessary to remember my disease so I can be be more helpful and supportive of other people dealing with their own diseases — not necessarily cancer and the like, but everything from work stress to a loss of identity.

Am I pulling that off?

I guess that’s a question only others can answer.

"Obsession" by Bill Fennell
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Another Brick In The Wall

I’ve tried hard to demolish the wall I hide behind when my mind isn’t right. But whenever I think I’ve made progress, shit happens and I find it’s taller and thicker than ever.

Mood music:

My latest mood swing has me thinking hard about how I allow this to happen. Far as I can tell, I do make progress, but then I take my eye off the wrecking ball and the wall rebuilds itself when I’m busy internalizing everything.

For all the sharing I do in this blog, sometimes it’s still ridiculously hard to open up to those closest to me.  One reason is that I’m still a selfish bastard sometimes. I get so wrapped up in my work and feelings that it becomes almost impossible to see someone else’s side of things.

I also don’t like to be in a situation where there’s yelling. There was plenty of that growing up, and I tend to avoid arguments with loved ones at all costs. Putting up a wall can be a bitch for any relationship, because sooner or later bad feelings will race at that wall like a drunk behind the wheel of a Porsche and slam right into it. Some bricks in the wall crack and come loose, but by then it can be too late. Relationships are totaled.

I’m starting to believe this is a chronic condition hardened by my early history. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to sit here and accept it.

When I stop talking, it hurts my wife, my kids and my larger family. But how do I calm the restlessness so that I’ll stay buckled into the bulldozer with my hands firmly on the controls, pounding the wrecking ball through the wall until only dust remains?

Therapy helps, and I have that regularly. But somewhere between the therapist’s office and the rest of my life, the action plan goes missing.

Maybe the problem is that I dance around it in therapy and I’m really not leaving with an action plan in hand.

Maybe the height and thickness of the wall increases and decreases on a set schedule and I just have to be more watchful. It definitely seems to grow more impenetrable at the start of winter, which is where we are now.

But maybe it’s always there, the same size and thickness, and I just happen to ignore it until someone forces me to remember its existence.

If all that sounds like bullshit, perhaps it is. I try to be as honest as possible in this blog, but let’s remember that I’m an addict and addicts are skilled at lying to themselves and others.

My mind is clear about one thing right now: I’ve slid backward and need to regain my footing. The best place to start is by making a real action plan, right here, right now:

–At my next therapy appointment, I need to make my communication troubles the focus of the appointment instead of letting the therapist run down the broader checklist.

–I need to be more disciplined about using the happy lamp I’m supposed to sit in front of during the winter. Truth be told, I’ve resisted it because in the end, I look at the florescent glow and grouse to myself that it’s just not the same as real sunlight.

–I need to reassess my diet. I’m pretty disciplined about following a strict, OA-approved food plan. But I’ve had trouble getting up the mood to eat the vegetables that are a staple of the program. So I fall back on my OA-approved breakfast at other meals. I tell myself the end goal is not to binge eat and that’s true. But messing with the food could also mean I’m messing with my mind.

–I need to get better at letting people yell at me sometimes. Yelling from anyone inevitably sends me back under my mother’s roof. Maybe Ma doesn’t yell anymore but she did back then, and a raised voice goes in my ears and hits the brain like gunshots. But avoiding arguments doesn’t make problems go away. They just sit patiently in the corner waiting for the next opportunity, which is always there.

–I need to get better at talking back. This might seem strange to those who think I’m pretty good at speaking up. But that’s just in writing form. Verbally I still suck at it. I don’t want to say things that might be hurtful and, at the least, uncomfortable. But sometimes others need a talking to for their own good. I need to be more helpful in that regard.

–I need to start walking again. I used to walk compulsively, then a few years ago I stopped. Perhaps I need to work 20 or 30 minutes two or three times a week back into the mix, so I can use the time to process my thoughts. I used to use walking time to do that and I was still a mental mess. But I’ve made a lot of progress since then and maybe the walks will be more useful for organizing thoughts now that it’s not a game of spinning worries and anxieties around in my skull.

Is any of this realistic? I don’t know. But it’s time to try more radical wall-demolishing activities.

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‘No Man Is A Failure Who Has Friends’

Part of the holiday tradition around here is a viewing of “It’s A Wonderful Life.” The ending used to make me sad, because it seemed to sum up what was missing in my life.

For a long time, I didn’t feel like I had any friends. It was nobody’s fault. I had crawled so far inside myself that I chose dozing off on the couch with the TV remote in my hand over going outside and dealing with people.

I was terrified of my own shadow and too absorbed in OCD-driven thoughts to reach out to real people outside the closest family.

The Christmas season always seemed to amplify the feeling that I was pretty much alone. I never was alone. But some days I felt like a ghost nobody noticed. Funny how even when you’re down on yourself, the freight-train ego takes over, making you wonder why nobody notices you.

But that’s what insanity does to you. You think all the shit that’s untrue is real and, in the process, you miss the very real beauty that’s right in front of your face.

But I’ve done a lot of mental healing in the last few years. I’ve written about it at length here — more than some folks think I should. But the facts are ironclad:

–I’m much better at living in the moment than I used to be.

–I’m not afraid of much these days. My still-new fearlessness gets me into trouble sometimes, but it beats hiding from life.

–Once I learned to get out of my own way, I realized that I do have a lot of friends; way more than I can count. That’s a big deal, because in my late teens I used to be so insecure about how many friends I had that I would try to count them all. They never went away. I did.

That last scene from “It’s A Wonderful Life” — where George Bailey finds a copy of “Tom Sawyer” from his guardian angel, Clarence, with a message inside the cover that says “No man is a failure who has friends” — is so true.

I have armies of friends from the different facets of my life — the hacker-security crowd, the metalhead crowd, the church community crowd — and they prop me up every day.

If my mood goes black and I fail to keep it to myself, friends come out of the woodwork and try to make me feel better. They always do.

Friends have stuck by me even when I’ve been the biggest of assholes.

Some friends have gotten angry as hell at me for various reasons. But they haven’t deserted me.

I thank them for that. And I thank everyone in my complicated but wonderful life.

Clarence was right. When friends are there to save you from your darker instincts, you simply cannot fail. Even if you deserve to.

Much love and thanks to all of you. I hope you had a Merry Christmas. We did.

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THE OCD DIARIES, Two Years Later

Two years ago today, in a moment of Christmas-induced depression, I started this blog. I meant for it to be a place where I could go and spill out the insanity in my head so I could carry on with life.

In short order, it snowballed into much more than that.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/IKpEoRlcHfA

About a year into my recovery from serious mental illness and addiction — the most uncool, unglamorous addiction at that — I started thinking about sharing where I’ve been. My reasoning was simple: I’d listened to a lot of people toss around the OCD acronym to describe everything from being a type A personality to just being stressed. I also saw a lot of people who were traveling the road I’d been down and were hiding their true nature from the world for fear of a backlash at work and in social circles.

At some point, that bullshit became unacceptable to me.

I started getting sick of hiding. I decided the only way to beat my demons at their sick little game was to push them out into the light, so everyone could see how ugly they were and how bad they smelled. That would make them weaker, and me stronger. And so that’s how this started out, as a stigma-busting exercise.

Then, something happened. A lot of you started writing to me about your own struggles and asking questions about how I deal with specific challenges life hurls at me. The readership has steadily increased.

Truth be told, life with THE OCD DIARIES hasn’t been what I’d call pure bliss. There are many mornings where I’d rather be doing other things, but the blog calls to me. A new thought pops into my head and has to come out. It can also be tough on my wife, because sometimes she only learns about what’s going on in my head from what’s in the blog. I don’t mean to do that. It’s just that I often can’t form my thoughts clearly in discussion. I come here to do it, and when I’m done the whole world sees it.

More than once I’ve asked Erin if I should kill this blog. Despite the discomfort it can cause her at times, she always argues against shutting it down. It’s too important to my own recovery process, and others stand to learn from it or at least relate to it.

And so I push forward.

One difference: I run almost ever post I write by her before posting it. I’ve shelved several posts at her recommendation, and it’s probably for the best. Restraint has never been one of my strengths.

This blog has helped me repair relationships that were strained or broken. It has also damaged some friendships. When you write all your feelings down without a filter, you’re inevitably going to make someone angry.

One dear friend suggested I push buttons for a good story and don’t know how to let sleeping dogs lie. She’s right about the sleeping dogs part, but I don’t agree with the first suggestion. I am certainly a button pusher. But I don’t push to generate a good story. I don’t set out to do that, at least.

Life happens and I write about how I feel about it, and how I try to apply the lessons I’ve learned. It’s never my way or the highway. If you read this blog as an instruction manual for life, you’re doing it wrong. What works for me isn’t necessarily going to fit your own needs.

Over time, the subject matter of this blog has broadened. It started out primarily as a blog about OCD and addiction. Then it expanded to include my love of music and my commentary on current events as they relate to our mental state.

I recently rewrote the “about” section of the blog to better explain the whole package. Reiterating it is a pretty good way to end this entry. You can see it here.

Thanks for reading.

"Obsession," by Bill Fennell

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A Word About Christmas Gifts

Every year, when family members ask me what I want for Christmas, I’m always at a loss for words. I don’t really care about getting presents, though I love to give them.

Mood music:

But there are some non-material things I wish for:

–That this Christmas season I’ll be free of the blues that almost always plague me this time of year.

–That some old friends who have lost someone special this year find peace and solace in those around them.

–That a friend who is killing himself with food can see the light and change his ways.

–That I’ll have the wisdom to keep being the husband and father I want to be.

–That my current Prozac dosage will continue to be enough.

–That my father continues to make progress in his recovery from 2 strokes.

–That some relationships continue to mend, and that those involved be patient about the slow pace of recovery.

–That friends who are going through a divorce find love again.

–That my coffee cup will never run dry.

–That my program of recovery from addictive behavior continues unbroken and gets stronger.

–That everyone else gets what they want for Christmas, and that those wants are something deeper than anything sold at Target and Best Buy.

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When Being Smart Becomes A Burden

Our oldest has an intellect well beyond his 10 years. He absorbs details with little effort and I can’t remember the last time he DIDN’T achieve high honors. But sometimes I forget that he’s still a kid.

Mood music:

He likes to tell us he’s a tween. To that, I tell him he’s more like a half tween.

But he is mighty mature for his age, nothing like the immature, messed up kid I was at 10. I’m proud as hell of him for that, but I think I sometimes put to much pressure on him as a result.

We spend a lot of time working with Duncan to manage his ADHD. Making matters more complicated, Duncan recently broke his arm, which means even more attention for the younger brother.

I sometimes wonder if, in that craving for order I sometimes get when my OCD is running hot, I put the greater burden on Sean because getting a mess cleaned up quickly is more important to me than making sure they each do their fair share. Since it can be hard sometimes to get Duncan to do what I want when I want, I immediately turn to Sean.

I’m starting to see it for the unfairness that it is.

Ironically, though I had nowhere near the intellect Sean has, I can still relate to the very pressure he might be feeling.

I started my life as the youngest of three kids, the proverbial baby of the family. Michael was the oldest, and in the Brenner family much has always been expected of the oldest son.

My father was the middle child of his generation, but he was the only son. My grandfather, who came off a boat from the former Soviet Union with all the typical old-school values, expected the world of my father. As my grandfather descended deep into old age and illness in the mid-1960s, my father became increasingly responsible for the family business.

Growing up, my older brother became the one my father leaned on the most. Michael was encouraged to chart his own course and was studying to be a plumber. But he was expected to help out with the family business and do a lot of the grunt work at home.

I was the baby, and a sick and spoiled one at that. I came along almost three years after my sister Wendi, and by age eight I was in and out of the hospital with dangerous flare ups of Crohn’s Disease. I got a lot of attention but nothing hard was expected of me. I was coddled and I got any toy I wanted.

The result was a lower-than-average maturity level for my age. At age 10 I acted like I was 5 sometimes. I would crawl into bed with my father for snuggles, just like a toddler might do.

During Christmas 1980 — the first after my parents’ divorce — I wanted it to look like Santa had come, even though I knew by that point that he didn’t really exist. I clung hard to the delusion, because my parents played Santa all the way up to their last Christmas as a couple, when I was nine. So on Christmas Eve 1980, I took all the gifts I had already opened and arranged them as if Santa had dropped them in my living room. I even wrote a “To Billy from Santa” note. Christmas morning I got up, went in the living room and expressed all the excitement of a kid who discovers that the jolly fat guy had come overnight.

My maturity level hadn’t changed much by the time I hit 13. I probably regressed even further right after my brother died. But as 1984 dragged on, I was slowly pulled into the role of oldest son.

All the stuff that was expected of my brother became expected of me, and I wasn’t mentally equipped to deal with it. My brother had a lot of street smarts that I lacked.

So I have to shake my head and wonder if I’m causing history to repeat itself.

I hope not.

I am indeed proud of Sean for all he is. But I don’t want to force him to grow up too fast.

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Keeping Up With The Joneses

It’s not how big your house is. It’s the souls inside that make it a home.

Erin and I have had frequent discussions about what it might be like to own a larger home. Our 1300-square-foot townhouse has served us well for more than a decade. But there’s always that desire to have what others have.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:1gmPJL4u6Jv1oTZEQyDlfw]

The discussion usually starts with everything that needs fixing around here: A hole in the kitchen wall that gets bigger every time the front door is slammed against it. Chipped and mismatched paint. Toilets that constantly need plunging.

For all our work success, we never seem to make enough money to do things we might want to do, like fixing the items above, gutting the kitchen or buying a bigger house.

To me, there’s a mental health issue at play: Your surroundings have a big affect on your sanity. When my OCD was at its worst, I was delirious over how clean the floors were or how the curtains were arranged. I became a nutcase when the kids made a mess.

Now, admittedly, I’ve become something of a slob in my recovery. I can walk right by a mess and not notice a thing.

Erin, on the other hand, finds it harder to have clarity and peace of mind when the house is a mess and falling apart.

As a kid, I grew up in excessive cleanliness and some filth. My mother was always obsessive about keeping a squeaky clean house. But I can’t say I was particularly happy in those years. After my parents divorced and my father got the house, he was so focused on the family business much of the time that the house became a mess — even with housekeepers. Erin grew up in a house that was always in disrepair. But her parents had — and have — a strong marriage and raised four daughters. It was a warm and happy home.

To me a house with holes in the walls is a pain in the ass. But it beats an immaculate house where the mood is always tense.

I know a lot of people who try to keep up with the proverbial Joneses. They bury themselves in debt they can never get out of and they never seem to be happy. They have to have a TV as big as their neighbors. They have to have a nicer car, a bigger yard.

It doesn’t seem worth it to me anymore.

Though I will admit there are days where I wouldn’t mind a bigger house and someone to clean it for us.