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The Voke

A few days ago my friend Kevin Littlefield coaxed me into a little field trip to our old high school, Northeast Metro Tech — the Voke, as we call it. It was my first time back in about 20 years, and it gave me more than a little hope about the future.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43WrkfnoISc&fs=1&hl=en_US]

I have good and bad memories of the place.

–It’s where I grew my hair long and cemented my love affair with metal music.

–It’s where I really started to understand, for the first time, what a punk I can be.

–It’s where I studied drafting and design. I didn’t become an architect, but I use the skills I learned there EVERY DAY in my writing.

–It’s where I once swallowed a worm in the court yard for a pack of cigarettes. You can’t smoke there any more, by the way.

–It’s where I tortured and later befriended a kid everyone called Stiffy. I still shudder when I think of how mean I was to that kid.

My time in this place included my last serious bout with Crohn’s Disease, sophomore year, 1986. I wasn’t hospitalized that time, but I pretty much lived on the living room couch. On that couch, I read “Helter Skelter” twice. I also got daily visits from childhood friend Mark Hedgecock, who went on to become a thrice-convicted child molester.

I remember the teachers putting down the kids all the time. The jocks and super nerds were embraced and nurtured. Everyone else was pretty much written off as damaged goods. This was especially the case in my shop. Visiting the shop this week, the current department head — himself a former student there — noted, quite accurately, that one of the shop teachers back in the day would do that. If you had a drug and-or behavioral problem, for example, you were as good as dead. The new department head points out, also quite accurately, that the focus should have been the other way around — on the kids who really needed guidance.

The kids in that shop today are polite and appear to work well together. The big drafting boards have long since been replaced by flat-screen computers.

It was a joy to see the progress made there.

We also met some kids we graduated with who now teach there. The current department head of drafting is one of them. One former classmate is a dean of students, and then there’s John Spagnola. Seeing him as a teacher was a real trip. The kids really seem to connect with him and his humor is as sharp as ever.

Visiting your old high school gives you an appreciation for how some things never change. Kids still cause trouble and the adults still worry if the next generation can keep civilization going. 

But you can also see how things change for the better.

Twenty-one years ago it would have been inconceivable to think that some of my contemporaries would come back to teach.

Yet there they are, nurturing the next generation and pushing them toward great things.

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Me and My Wall

When I get tired and angry, I have this wall I put up. Erin is usually the one who crashes into it.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpAbUvl3eTk&fs=1&hl=en_US]

She’s been building a freelance editing business for the past year, and the hours she puts in would kill a lesser person. I’ve taken on a lot of extra things around the house to help, and for the last week or so the fatigue and frustration has set in.

Not frustration with Erin. Frustration over the situation.

This is a much better situation than what we faced several months ago, when all the freelance work dried up and we couldn’t figure out how we were going to get all the bills paid. Now there’s a ton of work, and at the end of the day we’re both wiped out.

The problem is that I don’t immediately catch on that I’m frustrated. I figure it’s just me going into OCD mode. I’m just tired, I figure.

That’s when I become a prick.

Erin will try to engage me in conversation and I’ll shut down. I put the wall up. I don’t realize I’m doing it, and that’s a problem.

For all the sharing I do in this blog, sometimes it’s still ridiculously hard to open up to those closest to me. I’ve worked hard on fixing that in recent years, but I’m far from there.

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. That eventually blows up in my face.

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 the argument at all costs.

I’ve gotten better at this stuff, but I know I still put that wall up at times. 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. The relationship is totaled. 

I’ve come to realize this will always be a danger we have to watch for. It’s a danger in any marriage. Carol and Mike Brady never really existed. If they did, they could have used a few good fights. They wouldn’t have wasted so much time sitting up in bed reading boring books.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, it’s time to put the big-boy pants on and get back to work on that wall.

Maybe one of these days I’ll tear it down once and for all.

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Why Halloween Doesn’t Scare Me Anymore

I used to hate Halloween with a passion. It’s one of the worst days for someone with a compulsive binge eating addiction. Now that I’ve broken the binging cycle, I find myself in the odd position of looking forward to the holiday.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sohB922c2uQ&fs=1&hl=en_US]

I used to dread it because I knew there would be candy everywhere. I would stuff it in my pockets, in the car and every other hiding space. Then I’d spend the next week binging on sugar. That would trigger the urge to go deeper down the rabbit hole, so a vicious, almost crippling cycle of binging would take hold from Halloween straight through the rest of the holidays.

That didn’t happen in 2008. It didn’t happen last year. It’s not going to happen this time, either. 

The chain is broken.

Hey, Halloween: You don’t scare me anymore.

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Out of the Closet, Into the Light

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

Mood music:

[spotify:track:5F6rwEF15hN1jnhNk2YQHn]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

–Bill

 

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Thank You, Joy

This post is about something I should have told someone 14 years ago — a long overdue nod of appreciation.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:13SlzLb33cggKzAeeLONts]

When someone commits suicide, the guilt-stricken survivors obsess about why they didn’t catch on to their loved one’s depression sooner so they could have helped.

That was me after my friend Sean Marley died. I spent the next decade-plus thinking about it. Really, I was just thinking about myself. That’s what addicts do. No matter who we think about, it’s all about us in the end. I had a very long self-pity party.

When we do this, we easily forget that there was someone spending day and night with the depressed soul, trying everything to save him. When the battle is lost, we smother that person and swear to be there for them always. Then we move on and forget that promise. Sometimes that’s a good thing, because nobody benefits from being smothered.

Sean’s wife, Joy, put everything she had into helping him.

And I never thanked her for it.

She was there with him day and night, holding him through every agonizing moment. She did everything to keep his spirits up. It didn’t work in the end, but she did her best.

I first met Joy 19 years ago. Sean had just severed what I thought was a poisonous relationship, and when he told me he was seeing this girl Joy, my eyes rolled into the back of my head. Here we go, I thought: Another fucked-up pairing.

Me and Sean, summer of 1989

It was nothing of the sort.

From the moment I met her, Joy was true to her name. She always made you feel good about yourself and treated you like an old friend even if she didn’t really know you.

She married Sean in 1994, knowing he had a sickness brewing inside. It didn’t matter. Love won out. I was best man, though they could have done far better with someone else in that role.

I was so self-absorbed that day, obsessing about the toast the best man is supposed to give, that I forgot the glass of champagne. The room stared back at me, puzzled. It was more of a speech than a toast, and a bad one at that. 

I didn’t trick out their car with the “Just Married” stuff, either.

I was an ass.

Fast-forward to the present. Thankfully, Joy found someone else to love and remarried. She has three kids and you can tell how much love she pours into them.

Her parents knew what they were doing when they picked that name.

This post is my way of saying what I should have said in November of 1996.

Thank you, Joy.

I’ll never forget the sacrifices you made to get Sean through his pain.

If you, readers, know of anyone who lost a significant other to the illness of depression, take a few moments and thank them, too.

They were there when you couldn’t be.

Instead of feeling bad about that, just feel grateful.

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Depression and Being Gay

One of the big debates that has always irked me is about whether homosexuals are born that way or if they just wake up one morning and decide to be that way.

Having a gay sister, aunt and cousin-in-law, I have something to say about that.

I’m sure there are a few people who decide to give it a try as a lifestyle choice. That’s their business. But every gay person I’ve ever met didn’t just wake up on day and decide they were going to be gay. They had some serious internal struggles that brought them to the brink.

There was drug abuse. In my sister’s case, severe depression.

When she was a kid she badly wanted the whole fairytale family existence. She wanted THE wedding, THE husband and kids. She might tell the story differently, but I think the worst of her depression hit upon realizing she wasn’t that kind of person.

My cousin dove into years of serious drug and alcohol use.

Whatever the motives, I can tell you this: Only when they came out of the closet were they able to move forward and start living full, productive lives. Only then did the worst of the depression start to lift.

I don’t think a person who goes through that kind of hell just wakes up one day and decides they are going to be gay.

It’s in them at an early age, they try to keep the feelings at bay and become “normal” people. Hiding from your true self always comes with a price. 

I think some of the priests who went on to sexually abuse parishioners entered the priesthood in the first place to escape who they were. A life of celibacy would surely do the trick, right?

Wrong.

This has always been a sensitive subject for me. I’m a devout Catholic and there are people in the church who like to go on about the sin of homosexuality. It always makes me think of the people I know who are gay.

I’m not sure what else to say about the matter, except that I choose to love people based on WHO they are, not WHAT they are.

Having experienced depression myself, I don’t wish it on anyone.

My faith tells me we have to accept people for who they are, even if we don’t get it. I can like the individual even if I don’t like their sins. Hell, I’m the last one on this planet who is in a position to judge someone else’s sins.

I have enough of my own to contend with.

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Never Forgotten

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

Mood music:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But things will get better. They always do.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Welcome to the Outcast Club

An old friend is reminding me of the outcast I used to be and how like-minded people tend to stick together — even when they shouldn’t.

I was actually quite a prick to Stevie Hemeon. I used to punch him in the Theodore Roosevelt School yard because he was one of the few kids I was strong enough to hit. He never deserved it. Yet he still hung with me, kind of how high school chum Aaron Lewis did later on.

In fifth grade, we were on the side of my house messing around with an air purification vent my parents had installed because of my brother’s severe asthma. Somewhere in there, one of us — probably me — stuck a garden hose in the vent and turned it on. We left the hose in there, assuming one of us had shut it off. It flooded the finished basement bedrooms and that’s probably the most pissed off my father ever was at me.

I told him Stevie stuck the hose in the vent. That was an early lesson that lies never help. They just land you in deeper trouble. My father is no dummy, after all.

Stevie moved to the Beachmont section of Revere and I didn’t see him again until high school. Before transferring to the Voke I spent the first two months of freshman year at Revere High, and Stevie was there. I was an asshole to him the entire time. And still he hung around with me.

Why? I think because we were both outcasts, and outcasts tend to stick together.

After 25-plus years, Stevie and I reconnected on Facebook. I immediately apologized for being a jerk back then and, it turns out, he never carried bitterness about it. From his perspective, it was just young, stupid kids doing the stupid things kids do. He never held a grudge.

Stevie has been through the medical wringer in his adult life, almost the reverse of my situation, where my biggest medical difficulty happened in childhood. His Facebook page describes his adult life pretty well: “A hemodialysis patient, who is getting a fourth shot at life. With my past, medical demons, hodgekins and guillian barret’ syndrome. A walking medical mystery.”

He talks a lot about his ailments on Facebook, but never in a bitter way. There’s always a positive spin to it, which is nothing short of amazing to me. He’s the only dialysis patient I know of who describes going for a treatment as “having a blast” with the staff and fellow patients he befriended along the way.

I remember a similar situation when I spent all those weeks in the hospital in the 1970s and early 1980s. A special bond forms among the patients on a given floor. You laugh together, watch the same TV shows and play pranks on each other. It makes me wish I could reconnect with some of my fellow patients from those days. Unfortunately that’s not going to happen, because at least two of them didn’t make it to adulthood.

In any event, that bond creates something of an outcast club. Because of our illnesses we couldn’t really play sports or do other things that made you “normal.” So we bonded over being misfits.

I’m glad I reconnected with Stevie. I admire his positive attitude in the face of illness. I’m pretty sure a lot of other former classmates feel the same way.

It’s just another example of the people God puts in your path to teach you the lessons of life.

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Zane from the Point of Pines, Revere

I keep thinking of a kid from the Point of Pines who isn’t with us anymore. I’m not sure why this ghost is in my head, because we weren’t exactly friends.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:1GnCH2KszUkpUjXuDP2G3N]

The kid’s name was Zane. I believe the last name was Mead, though I’m not sure if there’s an E at the end. He was what you would picture as a classic stoner kid. I think he was on something every time I ran into him. He hung out with some of the tougher kids in the neighborhood. But he was never mean. Not to me, anyway.

In fact, I always detected a heart of gold inside him. Unfortunately, that heart of gold had a huge hole at its center and he tried to fill it with all kinds of substances. That’s what I remember, anyway.

I distinctly remember how, right after my brother died in 1984, he came by our house to pay his respects.

He lived in a very small house on Delano Ave., near my friend John Edwards. The neighborhood crazy lady lived at the other end of that street. Her name was Zelda. I always felt sorry for her, because she took a lot of ridicule and the fact of the matter was that the poor lady suffered from severe mental illness. Yesterday I wrote about how I was putting that term to rest and using “struggle” instead, but mental illness is the appropriate language in Zelda’s case.

Rumor has it she died of suicide, though I was never able to confirm that.

I used to see Zane walking the streets alone, looking lost. I guess he was. I remember how he’d stumble onto the school bus in the morning, cigarette hanging from his lips, and collapse into one of the very back seats.

I seem to remember him getting worse around 1988. That year, he went to the top of an apartment building off Shirley Avenue and dived off.

I keep thinking about what a waste that was, and it makes me sad.

I remember a lot of kids being torn up over his death. Understandable, especially given how his life ended. To this day, I’m convinced his death wasn’t one of simply giving up. I think he was just so sick at that point that he was no longer in control of his actions. I’m pretty certain that as he jumped from that roof, his real mind and soul wasn’t in there.

My friend Dan took the death hard. He and Zane used to be neighbors, and they were close.

What really sucks is that less than a decade later, Dan would have to experience another close friend taking his life. I never appreciated until recently what a nightmare that must have been for him. That latter suicide hit me like a knife, and I’ve written about it often in this blog. But Dan had to feel what I felt TWICE in his life. That he bounced back from that is a real testament to his inner strength.

Dan and I have been lucky. We’ve led different lives since Sean Marley’s death and fell out of touch until recently, thanks to Facebook. But we’ve led productive, rich lives full of music and children.

I like to think those experiences of loss helped us grow in ways that made us better people today.

I wish I had made the effort to know Zane back then. I doubt I would have been able to help him, especially with that shallow, 18-year-old brain I had at the time. But he seems like someone who would have been a good friend.

The heart was there.

His life ended early, but his days on this Earth were not a waste. I remember that his tight circle of friends really cared for him.

He did something to make them feel that way.

I hope that by writing about him here, I’m honoring his memory.

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Old Friends

Just when I thought I was done writing about the Point of Pines, Revere, another old friend re-enters the picture.

Mood music:

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

He tried to call me the other night and left this message: “Mr. Brenner, I just want to say sorry for being such a punk when we were kids, and for taking so long to call you.”

And there it was. For the first time in more than 20 years, a message from Kevin Flanagan. One of the kids who was always around. He was among the friends who tried to offer me sympathy when my brother died in 1984.

We fought a lot as kids, mostly because we were both the awkward types who would sometimes pick on someone else to make ourselves feel better. At one point when we were around 16, I boasted to my under-the-bridge friends that I could take Kevin down in a fight.

They held me to it. They brought the two of us down onto the beach, carved a boxing ring into the damp sand, and we went at it for however many rounds. We didn’t really fight, mind you. We just circled each other, waiting for someone to throw the first punch.

We worked out those kinks as we got older. We settled into a pattern of smoking cigarettes on the boulders behind the sea wall at Carey Circle and occasionally drinking together. One summer he worked in my father’s store. We both went to the Voke in Wakefield for high school. He was a regular in my basement, which sometimes resembled a neighborhood bar for minors.

Then he went his way and I went mine.

He was lucky enough to miss my most self-destructive years, particularly those immediately following Sean Marley’s death. I doubt I would have been much of a friend to him at that point, anyway. I was too busy isolating myself, binging and spending what was left of my brain in the fearful pursuit of career advancement. He didn’t miss much.

Turns out he’s been living in Atkinson, N.H. — the next town over from me — for years.

Go figure.

He’s not on Facebook, so it was particularly cool that he sought me out. He seems to be doing well for himself.

We hung out at the bar at the Haverhill 99. He had a beer and I had a diet coke, because that’s all I can drink at a bar. Someday, I’ll find a place where Red Bull is offered on tap. We ended up sitting next to a woman who got more talkative with each sip of wine.

I’m still trying to decide if she made me feel proud of the fact that I’m sober now or if she made me long for a real drink. I think I would have understood her better had I been drunk.

Ah, well. I was home by 8:30, which was for the best. I had been tired and depressed for much of the day and really didn’t need a late night out. I was supposed to go to Lynn for a Paul Revere School reunion, but that was postponed.

Why does Revere keep following me?

I guess it’s a ghost I’m supposed to keep trying to make peace with.

Whatever the case, I’m glad Kevin Flanagan is back in my life. You can never have too many good friends, and he was and is a good friend.