Better

I’m starting to come out of my funk of recent days, though I’m still not quite on my feet yet. My posts have been a lot darker than usual. I suppose that’s life.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OlYSgCUIys&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

Coffee is starting to taste like coffee again, and that’s progress.

I stayed awake yesterday afternoon. That’s progress, too.

I don’t have much to write about today. I need to continue to take a step back and get my health in order.

I’ll be back to my old prolific self tomorrow or Wednesday.

Seize the day.

I Surrendered, But I’ll Never Quit

Last night I spent some time in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, diving intently into Step 3 of the 12 Steps of recovery. This is the part where you come face-to-face with the reality that without your Higher Power, there’s no hope.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7kx5Y42Hqo&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

To quote the step: “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”

That’s a hard one for some addicts to swallow. Especially those who don’t believe in God. Also hard to accept is the idea that to recover we have to surrender our will over to the care of God. To the person who doesn’t understand what this is really about, all this means quitting the fight and diving into the comfortable world of a false god. To surrender is to roll over, let your spirit break and play dead.

In fact, nothing is further from the truth. At least not according to where I’ve been. Here’s my attempt to explain how all this comes into play in my life.

I’m not here to tell you what to believe. I can only explain my own thoughts, beliefs and actions. You, reader, can take it or leave it. We all have a road to follow, and your road can’t be exactly like mine.  Besides, having been down that road, I can tell you it’s better to go a different route if you can help it.

I’ve always been what some people would call stubborn.

In a lunch meeting with my mother in the summer of 2009, as I sat there slurping my soup and hearing her out in an attempt at reconciliation, my mother said I should have been a taurus instead of a virgo, because I’m “as stubborn as a bull.”

Whatever. I always thought astrology was a bunch of bullshit, anyway. And for my mother, surrendering means everyone does whatever she wants.

If you look up the word surrender in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, you see all the wrong descriptions:

1. a : to yield to the power, control, or possession of another upon compulsion or demand (surrendered the fort)

b : to give up completely or agree to forgo especially in favor of another

2. a: to give (oneself) up into the power of another especially as a prisoner

b:to give (oneself) over to something (as an influence)

2 b comes closest, but it’s not enough.
They are accurate descriptions, mind you. They just don’t do justice to what the word means in faith and recovery.
Here’s what I’ve learned about the word so far: It DOES NOT mean to quit life and stop trying to be better and stronger. In the context of Faith and the 12 Steps of Recovery, it DOES NOT mean  that you stop thinking for yourself.
It IS about admitting you can’t control everything and that you need the aid of a higher power. For many of us (for me, anyway), that higher power is God. It IS also about putting your trust in others.
As addicts in the grip of the demon, we trust nobody. We picture everyone with a knife in their hand, ready to stab us in the back. We see someone trying to tell us to clean up our act even though they could not possibly understand what it’s like to be truly out of control. We also watch over our shoulders because we expect someone to swoop in and steal our junk at any moment.
When we start to realize we have a problem, we labor unsuccessfully under the delusion that we can clean up on our own, without any help. In that regard, we refuse to surrender. We think our will is enough to get the job done, even though the art of will power has eluded us repeatedly. That’s the insanity of being a control freak.
I tried all kinds of things to clean up from a binge eating addiction. I thought I could tame the beast by chain smoking and drinking 14 cups of black coffee per morning. I thought I could do it by fasting twice a week. I even thought I could do it by drinking wine instead of eating.
Since I grew up with a chip on my shoulder, I looked at the word surrender with pure hatred. To surrender meant to do whatever my mother told me to do. Since her desire was for me to always play it safe and never take risks, it would have been the wrong thing to surrender to.
To surrender also meant to do what my father told me to do, which as a teenager simply didn’t fit into the joys of staying up all night getting high. He had a lot of good things to teach me, but no fucking way was I going to heed his advice. That would mean surrendering.
Surrendering to God seemed like the worst idea of all. That meant giving up my free will and following some unseen being over the cliff.
Motley Crue bassist and lyricist Nikki Sixx once described a similar reaction when he was asked to get on his knees and pray for help to break his heroin addiction. His reaction went something like this: “Fuck God!”
Let go and let God? Screw you.
As I got older and my addictive behavior was about to destroy all my hopes and dreams, I reached a point where I was willing to do anything to stop the pain.
Some would call that giving up, and I guess that’s what it was.
One time I was at a party listening to a group of moms talking about the pain of childbirth. Someone noted that in that moment of agony you lose all modesty. You just want that baby out of there. After a while, you stop caring if the doctor is male or female.
I wouldn’t know, but it is a pretty decent description of an addict who has maxed out their tolerance for pain.
Suddenly, the word surrender doesn’t sound so bad.
Professional life coach Rich Wyler nails it in his write up on the 12 Steps. He brilliantly boils it down to this:
–Effecting a spiritual awakening in which God does for us what we cannot do for ourselves, as we humbly submit our self-will and our heart to his will (Steps 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, and 11).
–Overcoming pride and resistance to change through rigorously honest self-examination (Steps 1, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 10)
–Making amends and repairing the harmful consequences of our self-destructive behaviors – especially the harm we’ve done to others (Steps 5, 8, 9, 10 and 12).

There it is, all laid bare. To surrender isn’t to give up and stop thinking for yourself. It’s exactly the opposite. It means doing a gut check, finally being honest and realizing you need help. When you surrender to God, you’re letting in the people who can help you.

It’s about honesty, trust and taking a leap of faith.

Here’s the truly whacked part: In doing so, I suddenly experienced more freedom than I ever had before.

I stopped being afraid to leave my room, getting on airplanes, taking on challenging work assignments that previously would have made me sick to my stomach, and I stopped being afraid to get up and talk in front of a room full of people. I also stopped being afraid to speak up when I disagreed about something, particularly in work.

In other words, I finally started becoming the man I wanted to be.

I still have a long, long way to go. But this beats the hell out of what life was like when I was clinging to that old, stupid will of mine.

Yeah, I surrendered. I gave up the idea that I could go it alone, without people who know better and without God.

Some might think that makes me weak.

I don’t care.

My Current State of Mind

Written around 9 p.m. Friday…

One of my OCD ticks is a constant need for mental inventory. I’ll think back through the entire day recounting everything I’ve done. I’ll repeat the process about six times.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3olG84TVtvA&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

I’ll review what I’ve eaten, how many articles or blog posts I’ve written, how many cups of coffee I’ve had, which house-hold chores I got done, etc. It’s a painful process that makes my head ache and leaves me exhausted. This is the thinking disease where the brain spins over the same song, the laser sticking in a scratch on the CD along the way.

That’s essentially what OCD is — worry out of control. It’s what makes me check my laptop bag three times before leaving the office or check the front door three times to make sure it’s locked.

I bring it up because I’ve noticed something lately: The tick is a lot less pronounced than it used to be.

I still review things over and over again, but there seems to be less pain attached. It’s a colder, more sober inventory.

The result of medication? Probably a little. Change of diet? I’m not sure. It’s been more than two years since I stopped binging and quit flour and sugar. It’s probably not that.

More confidence in myself? That may have a lot to do with it. I used to have no confidence in myself, and I think I endlessly reviewed things because of my insecurities.

Now I have plenty of confidence — maybe even too much.

Who knows?

All I know is that I’m sitting here in my living room, ready to pass out.

Not from a day spent worrying or a night spent rewinding. Not from an afternoon of binging and an evening of lying about it.

It’s just the kind of tired that comes from living a full day.

It’s strange.  But good.

A Family Both Sick AND Inspiring

A friend from work was telling me the other day about one of his relatives, who is always ready to tell him about all her daily medical problems. I was ready to laugh. Then I realized I used to do the same thing.

This post is about me and family members who always had trouble keeping our illnesses to ourselves.

It’s also a post about my cousin Melanie, who has every reason to do the same but holds her head high instead, inspiring the hell out of her cousin.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:39kHMfF3dBMZMbOtoit1XF]

I’ve had plenty of reasons over the years to complain: Crohn’s Disease flare-ups, a shattered back, migraines and all kinds of aches and pains caused by the extra weight out-of-control binge eating left me with. There was also a lot of physical pain caused by deep episodes of depression.

I used to complain about these things all the time, especially around family.

Part of me thought that was simply what you did around family. I remember Nana and Papa, my maternal grandparents, and my great-grandmother, Granny, always complaining about how sick they were. I didn’t mind quite as much, because they more than made up for it by making me laugh. Granny especially had a sharp tongue.

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.

Granny eventually moved to an elderly apartment building at the other end of Revere Beach.

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. Yes, she told me, the mobsters did do a lot of nodding. Speaking of “Johnny Dangerously,” Granny always reminded me of Ma Kelly.

Papa had a pretty sharp wit as well. That and the fact that he was a WWII hero made me feel that he was entitled to bitch about his ailments. I had less patience with Nana over such things, but I should have been more patient. I owed her that much. But I was in a brutally selfish state of mind in her final years. I regret it.

Both would probably not be happy with me today, given my lack of communication with Ma. But that’s life. And we are starting to talk again.

All of which brings me to my cousin Melanie.

We’ve always enjoyed poking fun at her because she likes to play the airhead. Or at least she used to. But I think that all along she’s been smarter than most of us. She’s always been the ray of sunshine in the family, always positive, always smiling.

She’ll tell me I’m wrong, but that’s always how I’ve ALWAYS seen her. All the way back to when she was a toddler.

Now she’s suffering from diseased kidneys and other maladies, and I’m told she’s eventually going to need a kidney transplant. She recently started dialysis treatments.

NOT ONCE have I heard her complain, nor have I seen her complain about it on Facebook, where plenty of people like to whine over far less serious things.

People have written well wishes on her Facebook wall and she says thanks to people individually.

You want to see courage?

She’s it.

Her mom — my aunt — suffered in similar fashion several years back but God decided her work on Earth was far from finished. She’s still around, taking care of my uncle and being the beacon of light she’s always been — a trait she passed on to her daughter.

I love you, too, Aunt Laura.

All you folks out there who are uptight because life isn’t going your way: You have my sympathy, and I hope things turn out OK.

But take comfort in the fact that others have it worse than you and they still project a happy attitude — whether they really feel the happiness inside or not. That takes a strength many of us don’t possess. But we can always find some of that strength for ourselves. We’re all works in progress, after all.

Take a good look at them.

Then follow the advice of a friend from the security industry who once gave the following advice to some storm-weary travelers on Twitter:

Take the balls out of your purse and ride.

Facebook Follow Friday: Dec. 17

Welcome to the latest edition of Facebook Follow Friday. Each Friday there’s a tradition on Twitter called Follow Friday, and I decided to do a Facebook version here. What’s it have to do with OCD and addiction, you ask?

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv9-zSWMGP0&fs=1&hl=en_US]

Simple: A person in recovery needs the people around him/her to stay sober and abstinent. Most important are your family and closest friends. But the friends on Facebook can be helpful too, especially those who brighten up the wall with positive, witty, thoughtful posts. That stuff rubs off on the reader, and if that reader has fought depression, addiction, anxiety and all those other things, the mood gets a needed lift.

The folks I want to acknowledge this week are mostly from the security world. In knowing them through my day job, they have also become friends:

Jeri Ellsworth: She’s actually one of my new connections, a self-taught computer chip designer best known for, in 2004, creating a Commodore 64 emulator within a joystick, called Commodore 30-in-1 Direct to TV. The “computer in a joystick” could run 30 video games from the early 1980s, and was very popular during the 2004 Christmas season, at peak selling over 70,000 units in a single day via the QVC shopping channel. Check out her work and you’ll forget about your troubles for a bit.

Erin Jacobs: Known in the twitterverse as SecBarbie, Erin is a security professional who has done much to advance the cause. She writes a blog that makes security accessible to everyone,  and can always be seen at the big security conferences. I’ve learned a lot from her.

Jack Daniel: Another of my security friends, a fellow member of the NAISG board of directors, the man with the 31-year-old beard, driver of the Shmoobus. Jack’s more than a man and more than a security pro. He’s an experience. 

Brad and Davida Dinerman: I’ve known this husband-wife force of nature for a long, long time. Brad is the engine behind NAISG (the National Information Security Group) and Davida is a longtime PR pro who has helped me out with many an article over the years. I’ve learned a lot from them, too.

Andy Ellis: He’s CSO of Akamai Technologies and is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. I’m not sure I would have pulled off my series on distributed denial-of-service attacks this year without his input.

Bob McMillan: Bob is one of my colleagues at IDG. He writes for the news service and is one of the most prolific security journalists I’ve ever met. I’ve been grateful as hell for his articles this year.

More next week…

 

Just Drug It Away

Just saw a snippet of research suggesting a surge in the number of people taking pills for depression but a decline in the number of those seeking therapy.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CUb4TuxN0w&fs=1&hl=en_US]

Here it is, from the Health, Medical and Science feed I subscribe to:

More depression, less psychotherapy, more drugs: Archives of General Psychiatry

More patients were being treated for depression in 2007 than a decade earlier, but fewer were receiving psychotherapy, researchers said.

Comparing 1998 with 2007, the percentage of those receiving psychotherapy fell from 53.6% to 43.1%, a downward trend that continued from the decade prior, Mark Olfson, MD, MPH, of Columbia University, and colleagues reported in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

For some patients, “depression care may be becoming more narrowly focused on pharmacotherapy,” they wrote.

This is something I see all the time. People get depressed and go looking for a quick way out of it. The quick way out is a pill.

To hell with the therapists, right? They’re just quacks. The doctors who subscribe antidepressants? They’re quacks too, but fuck it. They got a quick fix.

That’s the prevailing thought, but I’ve been down this road. If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that pills will never, ever kill your pain at the source. It’ll make you feel better for a bit, but it will never last.

I take Prozac and it works well. But it’s not perfect, nor do I expect it to be. To truly deal with one’s depression, you have to get at that hole that’s in the center of your soul. That means years of intense therapy, learning how to develop coping tools and then looking at medication. 

That’s how I went about it, anyway. I readily admit no two people are alike when it comes to treatment.

But I have seen other people try the pills without the other things I’ve had to do. Their struggle remains painful.

Mine does, too. But the joy outweighs the pain these days.

Big Pharma helped. But only a little.

 

How I’ll Save My Sobriety and Abstinence

I mentioned a few posts ago that I’ve hit a wall in my recovery program. I shared about it at yesterday’s OA meeting, and as the day progressed, I realized what I need to do to stay sober and abstinent.

MOOD MUSIC: “GRACE” BY U2. CLICK HERE TO LET IT PLAY.

I should point out that I’m not depressed about having to make changes.

There’s no anxiety or fear driving this.

It’s just a calm, sober realization that every once in awhile you have to make changes. Some people go into crisis mode when it happens to them. I don’t see the point. If we just kept doing the same thing over and over again, what fun would that be?

Sure, change is hard. But it’s the ONLY way we move forward and become better people in the long run. Actually, I’m looking forward to putting all this in motion.

All that said, here’s my plan:

The Food Plan: I’m adjusting serving sizes slightly and working hard to put more variety into the mix. No flour, no sugar remains the rule, as does weighing out everything that goes on my plate. The problem I’ve gotten myself into is that, in the effort to avoid the binge eating that nearly destroyed me, I’ve come to rely on the same food, over and over again. Doing so makes sense to a certain extent, because routines are vital to an addict’s recovery. I’m bored as a result, and boredom is an addict’s biggest nightmare.

The sponsor thing: I love my OA sponsor. She’s been tremendously helpful and I’m blessed to have her as a friend. But I feel like I need to change sponsors just to force me into a state of change. I especially feel like I need a male sponsor. I’m learning that there are in fact differences in the male-female perspective when it comes to this program. I also feel like I need to dial back on sponsoring others for now. I have to shore up my own recovery before I can tell others how to do it. So I’m going to help my sponsees find new sponsors, and I’m breaking loose Jan. 1. The trick will be in getting them to understand this isn’t about them, it’s about me. 

Meetings: I’ve been going to the same couple of meetings for two years now. Time to shake it up a little. I’m going to start going to the men’s Chelsea meeting more often and I’m going to start checking out a Sunday evening meeting in Andover, which brings me to the final piece:

12 Steps done right: My interest in that Sunday meeting is that it’s a big-book step study format and not the speaker-discussion format I’ve grown too comfortable with. I live by the 12 Steps of Recovery every day, but I haven’t really scoured and studied each one yet. It’s time I started doing that.

With God’s Grace, into the waves of change I go.

The Snow-White Mind That Drifted

I’m like a proud papa every time I read the “Crazy Love” blog from former Eagle-Tribune colleague Grace Rubenstein. She focuses on a topic near and dear to me, and despite the torment she surely suffered when I was her night editor, she honored me early on by asking for my feedback. Her latest post is particularly good, and I have thoughts about it.

Mood music: “Driftaway” by Motley Crue…

She writes about how a drifting mind can be an unhappy one:

I can over-think, over-analyze and worry with the best of ‘em. My mind is constantly moving. Yet in the past few years as I’ve learned the practices of meditation and yoga, I’ve found what peace can come with quieting what yogis call “the monkey mind.” Of course, my mind is still scratching fleas, swinging from branches and throwing bananas most of the time. I have a long way to go. But the more I practice, the more often I can catch the monkey in the act and calm him down.

A mind adrift is one of the most debilitating parts of OCD. Everyone suffers from a limited attention span from time to time. It’s part of what makes us human.

But when you’re a clinical OCD case, that mental drift doesn’t go away after you’re done with whatever boring activity caused it in the first place. It grows as the day progresses, like a tidal surge that leaps over a sea wall and floods out the road so traffic can’t get through. That’s how it happens in the brain.

The obsessive thought floods that critical part of the mind a lot of other mental traffic needs to pass through. From there it’s nothing but disaster.

Grace is lucky to have found meditation and yoga. The truth is I’ve never had any interest in either of those things. My therapist, who specializes in stress reduction exercises, is always pushing yoga on me. Between sips of the coffee he tells me to stop drinking, I tell him there’s no way in hell I’m going to do yoga. 

Am I being an ass about it? I’m sure I am. But that’s where my head is at for now.

I’ve also been lucky enough to find other tools to keep the drifting down to a minimum. There’s the medication. There’s the years of extensive therapy and a change of diet. There’s my 12-Step program. And there’s prayer, which I guess is to me what meditation is to Grace. Without my spiritual development, I’d be nowhere today.

My mind still drifts, especially during a long conversation with just about anyone. It’s much better, but it’s still there. And when it is, I find it almost impossible to stop.

So if my eyes glaze over as we’re talking, try not to take it personally.

And please accept my apology in advance.


Songs to Help You Pick Up the Pieces

This week’s soundtrack is about rising from the ashes of adversity. I’ve had more than my share of tough times, and these songs always gave me the extra shot of strength I needed to move forward…

I’m a huge fan of NIN and Henry Rollins, and someone out there was brilliant enough to fuse both into this:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CPIT4nsT24&fs=1&hl=en_US]

This song was perfect for the “fuck you” attitude I had in the early 1990s, when I was having one of my estrangements with my mother and my sister was on a suicide watch:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KkEHm8aKcM&fs=1&hl=en_US]

When I went through a serious bout of my own depression in the summer of 1990, my spirits were lifted by a film called “Pump Up The Volume.” This song jolted me out of the darkness, and in the many waves of depression I’ve experienced in the 20 years since then, I’ve always returned to this song:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtnSrmNGWJ0&fs=1&hl=en_US]

During some of my most vicious fights against my addictions, music has given me something to relate to, and one of the best examples is the Sixx A.M. Heroin Diaries soundtrack. In fact, there was a time where it was the ONLY album I listened to. This song really resonated because it was the best perspective ever presented on the pain of relapse:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nan4Kdtz-9w&fs=1&hl=en_US]

Whenever I’ve come out of a depression or a period of binging, this song has always reminded me that I have to get over what has happened and move forward:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsDpwb3ILxM&fs=1&hl=en_US]

I end this installment with another Sixx A.M. song that pretty much describes what life is all about, whether you’re going through pain or the highest of highs:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ICav7ieJwQ&fs=1&hl=en_US]

Music will always get me through my struggles. It always has.

May it do the same for you.

 

 

 

 

Tragedy Follows Service

Perhaps because it’s a day to honor veterans, I find myself thinking back to an encounter I had on a street in Brooklyn a couple months ago. The guy had a hole in his head where his left eye used to be and he had burn scars up and down one arm.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zld2cSIVUO4&fs=1&hl=en_US]

I was puffing on a cigar, so he approached me for a light. Then he told me he had been maimed in Afghanistan during military service. He asked for some change so he could get a train to somewhere; can’t remember where. He told me he was in New York looking for work and was stranded without money.

I gave him the change I had in my pocket and he was gone.

Was he telling the truth? I have no idea, and I don’t really care. He just looked like a guy in pain who needed a few quarters to survive the next few hours, and that’s all that mattered at the time.

It also reminded me of all the homeless veterans I’ve seen in my hometown of Haverhill over the years. There’s always evidence that the guy on the street is a veteran. There are the service tattoos and the jacket patches. Many of them saw things that were hard to live with, and they were rendered mentally ill. Instead of getting help, they wound up on the street because they couldn’t hold a job or stay off drugs and booze.

It would be high-minded of me to say we need to do better for our veterans. But it’s been said so often it’s pretty much lost it’s meaning. We like to praise our veterans on Veterans Day or July 4. But once the holiday is past, we go back to treating them like shit. Because they’re homeless and, as a result, they’re dirty, scary and unpleasant to those who have lived far more comfortable lives. And, don’t you know, we LOVE to judge people even though we know nothing about them.

I single myself out for ridicule, because back when fear, anxiety and addiction had me by the balls, I used to walk or drive the other way when these guys approached.

I’ve had my struggles. We all have. But I have no idea what it’s like to be on a battlefield.

I do know that a lot of people — good people who have sacrificed for God, country and family — have taken tragic turns in the line of duty. It’ll always be this way because life’s unfair.

Do these guys deserve better from the rest of us? You bet your ass they do.

When someone is on the street and hungry, we like to say they did it to themselves. Or we say we gotta help them and then do nothing. I’ve done both.

They did drugs. They stole and lied to people.

But the fortunes of man are never, ever so simple.

There’s always something in the history of each of us that shapes the decisions we make and how we live otherwise. I’ve made many bad choices in my day. But God’s Grace has carried me through.

May the vets on the street find that same Grace.

Most of all today, I’m thinking of the guy I bunked with and was on team with for last month’s Cursillo retreat.

He’s a Vietnam vet who has been through the wringer over the years. He saw terrible things in Vietnam, and he came home to people who were spitting on soldiers instead of praising and thanking them. 

He has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and that has also cost him dearly. I thought it was appropriate that a guy with PTSD would be rooming with Mr. OCD. We had a lot of laughs over that.

But here’s the thing: This guy doesn’t bitch about his lot in life. He’s retired, but he spends his days helping fellow veterans.

And he’s active with the Cursillo movement.

The tragedy of service bent him in every direction. But it didn’t break him.

There’s hope for all of us.