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The Power of Nothing

I haven’t written anything new since Friday and don’t plan to today (well, except for this). Last time I took a break I got a bunch of e-mails from people asking if I was OK.

I appreciate that, but no need to worry.

Mood music:

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

The last two days I re-posted a bunch of older entries. That was for newer readers who asked me to flag older posts that were important to the larger story.

Not everyone liked that and two people un-friended me on Facebook. So be it. As Elwood Blues used to tell people, it’s a “Mission from God.”

The other thing is that I’m forcing myself NOT to write once in awhile. It’s part of learning how to take breaks, something I’ve never been good at.

I’m practicing the power of nothing. It’s hard, but my wife and kids will surely keep me busy in the meantime.

While I do that, have a great day. I’ll be back tomorrow.

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Spitting in the Eye of Hurricane Earl

I used to be terrified of hurricanes. The fear and anxiety in me would latch onto these storms like Crazy Glue. Yet with Hurricane Earl approaching New England, I’m feeling strangely apathetic.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGfKi6kpdTQ&fs=1&hl=en_US]

Maybe it’s because I don’t live on the coast anymore. In Haverhill, we’re not expecting much from Earl. Some of it is definitely because a lot of the storm-driven fear left me when I brought the OCD under control.

Let’s do a flashback so you can get a better perspective:

I grew up on Revere Beach and I think the Blizzard of 1978 traumatized me for a long, long time. Every summer, when a hurricane would head toward us, I’d start having Blizzard of 78 flashbacks of the ocean surging down the Lynnway, right in front of my house, and the waves leaping over the sea wall with chunks of ice that hit the closest homes like missiles.

The tops were torn off some of the pavilions along the beach.

They stayed that way until a beach restoration project in the early 1990s. In the 1980s the exposed frames served as a reminder of what these ocean storms could do. For a long time, every nor’easter riding up the coast filled me with anxiety.

The TV news doesn’t help. Impending storms are more often than not pitched as the coming apocalypse.

From the late 1970s straight through the 1990s, I’d shake from weather reports mentioning the Blizzard of 1978 with each new storm. As a young adult, I developed a pattern of throwing a blanket over my head and going to sleep.

That’s exactly what I did in 1985 when Hurricane Gloria grazed us and, at age 21 in August 1991, when New England took a direct blow from Hurricane Bob.

My step-sister still likes to bring up how, on the morning Hurricane Bob was coming, I came into her room and yelled at her to wake up, telling her, “This aint no (expletive) Gloria.” That was me in OCD mode. I’m a little embarrassed every time I think about it, but that’s OK. Nobody got hurt.

That rough weather scared the heck out of me as a kid, I think, was perfectly normal. Carrying that same fear and anxiety well into adulthood? Probably not so normal.

In more recent years, I’ve overcome that fear, and I actually like a good storm now and again. I love to drive through the snow. And when Washington D.C. got smacked with 30-plus inches of heavy snow in a blizzard during one of my visits there last February, I gleefully walked the streets as the storm continued to rage.

This morning, I find myself wanting to grab my camera and drive to Cape Cod, which never would have occurred to me a few years ago.

Instead of fearing the danger, I want a piece of it.

I’m not going, though. Erin and the kids would not approve, nor would my friend Bob Connors, an emergency preparedness professional who has been warning his Facebook friends all week not to do stupid things like that. Since he sometimes supplies me with high-end cigars, I really don’t want to make him mad.

To my friends on the South Shore, I hope everything goes OK and that the damage is minimal.

I still respect these storms, and when we’re under the gun I know we have to be prepared.

I’m just not letting the fear suck the life out of me anymore.

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The Clarence Syndrome

Sometimes God puts certain people in your life to show you how you’re screwing up and how to fix it. Sometimes, these guardian angels are disguised as people who need YOUR help. This post is about one such man.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyb7dt9nz_g&fs=1&hl=en_US]

In 12-Step programs anonymity is a big deal, especially in OA, because there’s an extra level of awkwardness that comes with being a binge-eating addict. So I’m changing this friend’s name to Dan.

I first talked to Dan on the phone a few months ago. He got my number from someone else in program and called me out of the blue. I picked up the phone and heard the following:

“Hiya Bill. My name’s Dan and I’m a compulsive overeater!”

The exclamation mark is appropriate, because that’s how he said it.

He proceeded to tell me that he needed a sponsor and I was it.

“Uh, ok,” I said. I had just started sponsoring and this guy was asking for help, so in I went.

The first time I met him in person, I was picking him up for a Saturday-morning OA meeting. He’s so obese that he needed help getting the seatbelt on. His legs were purple from diabetes.

“This guy is going to be a lot of work,” I thought.

Then, at the meeting, I start to realize that he knows a lot of people there. He was greeting and hugging people like it was old home week. It turned out that he had been in OA before.

What’s more: He was a 20-year veteran of AA. He had done it all. He was once a drunk and a drug addict. He shot heroin. He had lost just about everything. After kicking booze and drugs, he turned to the food. He needs a truck scale to weigh himself and last time he did, he was an even 400 pounds.

But it didn’t matter. He was and still is one of the more cheerful people I’ve ever met.

And since then, of all my sponsees, nobody works the program as hard as he is. We talk every morning. Sometimes we talk several times a day. He’ll bend your ear for hours if you let him. Sometimes, it can get exasperating.

Here’s the problem: I can be a selfish, egotistical bastard. It’s not hard for me to think I’m better than other people, especially a 400-pound 50-something who lives in a room the size of my walk-in closet. And my ego is probably too big to weigh on a truck scale.

I’m pretty sure that’s why God put Dan in my life. That’s what He does, you know: puts people in your life who will help you, but he sneaks them in as people who need YOUR help.

Ever see “It’s a Wonderful Life?” It’s like the angel Clarence. He dives in the water and acts like he’s drowning so George Bailey, who is standing on the bridge contemplating suicide, will jump in and save him.

I guess you could call what I’m experiencing the Clarence Syndrome.

Dan, you see, is teaching me a lot more than I’m teaching him. I may be his OA sponsor, but he’s my own Clarence.

As a 20-year veteran of 12-Step programs, he knows every current and former junkie on the streets of Haverhill. We’ll drive up Winter Street or down River Street and he’ll point out every person walking the streets as we pass. He’s seen them all in AA meetings. He’ll tell you their full history and how they’re doing today.

He’s also taught me that people in AA are NOT the same as people in OA.

We have the big things in common. We developed addictions that made our lives unmanageable. Having found recovery, we latch onto each other pretty tight.

But something’s different.

In OA, there’s a tight fellowship in meetings and on the telephone. But the AA crowd really sticks together. It’s more like a gang. Recovering addicts often live together, several in a house. Not a halfway house. They just live together, watching out for each other.

It’s cool to see. But I’ve also found that there are some real animosities among the AA crowd. Another of my sponsees, an OA drop-out for now, spent a lot of time telling me about how I shouldn’t trust this person or that person because one likes to tell lies and the other likes to steal money. The lying part didn’t shock me. All addicts lie.

Come to think of it, Dan warned me that this other person does the same things and shouldn’t be trusted. Ah, the webs we weave.

Dan gives people nicknames. There’s Happy Harold, New York Mikey (called that because he has a pimped-out car with New York plates) and Georgie-B.

He’s always bringing new people into AA. He calls them prospects.

That was one of my first lessons: He’s not just a poor obese boy living in a box. He gives freely, helping others every day. He doesn’t have a job, but he fills his time in meaningful ways.

I’m better than him? Hell, no. He’s taking ME to school. He’s so busy looking for my guidance in OA that he doesn’t seem to realize it.

Don’t tell me God doesn’t have a sense of humor.

It’s been a powerful, humbling lesson for me about not judging a book by its cover or thinking of yourself as above others.

We’re all in the same struggle for redemption. And God keeps giving us a shot at it by sending along guardian angels disguised as people “worse off” than we think WE are.

The trouble is, we’re often too blind and/or stupid to see it.

I know I was.

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Discriminating Against Head Cases

I’ve seen plenty of examples of failed justice in my day: A judge letting an abusive dirt-bag dad get unsupervised weekend visits just because he reappeared after a few years. A thrice convicted pedophile being let back out on the streets. I never expected to hear about the court discriminating against someone for having OCD.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI3RneGO_ks&fs=1&hl=en_US]

I usually try not to write posts in response to comments that flow into this blog. I like to let readers’ statements stand on their own. But when someone flags something particularly insidious, I have to share.

The two examples that follow came my way by way of a couple mental health forums on LinkedIn where I post blog entries.

I’ll keep their names to myself to protect privacy.

But to help you appreciate the first person’s perspective, I’ll tell you she’s a certified mediator who provides psychotherapy for adults, children, couples and families. She also does group sessions for anger management, domestic violence and parenting.

I have a special respect for someone in this line of work. As a kid suffering from a particularly vicious form of Crohn’s Disease and, by extension, behavioral issues, I firmly believe I was saved by the children’s therapist assigned to me. That same person kept me on the sane side of the line when my parents’ marriage dissolved in hatred, abuse and mistrust.

In adulthood, my recovery from OCD would be nowhere without the three therapists who have helped me in the last six years.

I’ve had a couple really bad therapists along the way, too, so I never take someone’s word as Gospel just because of what they do for a living. But the person who contacted me yesterday seems solid and worth listening to. Here’s what she wrote to me in response to Monday’s post, “More Bullshit About Mental Illness“:

My clients just lost their kids in family court because the mom had OCD. She “counts” and so this was considered “traumatizing to the two older kids.” They are in their teens, however; the bureau allowed them to keep their two younger children. The Child and Family Services organizations are off their rocker. I see kids returned to abusers and drug addicts, I don’t get it.

There are elements about this that I have questions about. For starters, why take the teenagers but let the younger kids stay? I suspect it’s because the teenagers are at an age where seemingly abnormal behavior is going to freak them out more. Teens are almost always confused. But the larger suggestion that someone got a raw deal in the courts because of her OCD quirks is totally believable to me.

I’ve seen more than one fellow OCD sufferer scorned in the workplace for being a little different. Not in my workplace, but in other companies.

True or not, I think that when someone has OCD, they always need to be prepared to defend themselves against someone else’s stupidity. Of course, it’s not enough to say someone discriminated against you for having a mental illness. You need to be able to prove it. That shouldn’t be hard for obsessive people who are known to be painfully diligent at documenting things.

Breaking a stigma is hard. There’s no play book. There’s always the danger of coming across as delusional or whiney. Come to think of it, some of us ARE delusional and whiney.

Despite all I say about breaking stigmas and fighting back, I have to be honest and say that I’ve never experienced the kinds of things people write to me about. I’m very lucky. I’ve gotten nothing but support from every office I’ve ever worked in. If I was going through depression and needed time off, I got it. When I decided to write this blog, the folks at work were very supportive.

You might say that for an OCD patient, I’ve led a charmed life.

I do know this, though: When you take a skeleton like mental illness out of the closet and toss it to the middle of the street for all to see, the control it has over you lessens and the bones of the disorder turn to ash.

I’ve lived it. I know it. I used to live in mortal terror of speaking up for myself. Once I got over that initial hump, there was no turning back.

Another reader recently wrote to me about the injustices she has suffered for having a mental illness:

I have two very bad instances of discrimination based on mental illness. I worked for medical doctors for ten years, had all outstanding performance reviews, and received bonuses periodically. I began to have trouble functioning because of undiagnosed and untreated bipolar disorder. I had doctors working with me who told me I needed a leave of absence to get medical care. I went to my boss, the executive director and an MD, and told him what my therapist and neurologist recommended. His words were “I’m a doctor, I can’t have someone with a mental illness in a position of authority in a company I run!” Second case, my supervisor docked my pay for going to the doctor even though I was exempt. Also, she told me that I had to have therapy sessions via phone or email because she couldn’t afford to let me leave the office. She also told others about my illness without my permission. It was at that point I decided I have to try and find a way to work for myself even if I had to leave in a homeless shelter.  I will never be treated that way again.

Me neither, my friend.

I can’t tell someone how to fight back when a judge or employer screws them over their illness.

I only know what I do: Minimize the impact of my OCD by exposing it for all to see through my writing.

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Dreading the Darkness

It’s 5:12 a.m. on Aug. 31, and it’s still dark outside. I already miss the 4:30 a.m. daylight of a couple months ago. Looks like my anti-depression experiment is underway.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PntIAwAe20M&fs=1&hl=en_US]

I’ve mentioned before that the fall and winter are usually periods of depression for me. There are two reasons. The first is that some ugly things have happened to me in previous winters.

But the bigger reason is that the hours of daylight get progressively shorter, which always screws with my brain chemistry.

And so, on Aug. 1, my doctor and I started an experiment: Up the Prozac dosage early and get ahead of the winter, thus cutting the annual depression off at the knees.

There’s still been enough daylight to keep me from thinking about it too much. But now that September is upon us, I’m starting to feel a slight sense of dread.

What if this experiment down’t work?

What if it does and something bad happens because, well, bad things have happened in winter before? That’s the fear of loss thing I experience.

Having OCD means I can spin these concerns in my brain for hours. But while all these things go through my mind, I’m still feeling a sense of peace. I have a feeling things are going to turn out fine this time.

That’s not to say I won’t experience depression. But I at least have the happy feeling that I’m doing something about it instead of sitting on my ass feeling sorry for myself.

That’s the key difference between now and the past. I’ve learned to take action. When you’re on the move, it’s a little harder for the bad stuff to catch you.

I’m on team for a Men’s Cursillo weekend in October, so I’ll be giving God a lot of my time this fall. Since prayer always heals me, this will certainly help.

I’ll continue to sponsor people in Overeater’s Anonymous, which is good because when you’re trying to help others help themselves, there’s not nearly as much time to sit around and spin the what-ifs in your mind.

My children will be in school, which means there will be a lot of school activities to keep the mind busy. There will be field trips to chaperone, homework assignments to help with and lunches to make.

There will be plenty going on with work to keep me busy, including trips to New York and Toronto.

And there will be plenty of good books to read and music to hear.

Life can be a lot of work. But it doesn’t suck.

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In God’s Hands: My Search for Redemption

Some people don’t like to discuss religion. I can’t avoid it. It’s central to my recovery from OCD and addiction. These posts are about my struggle to find a moral compass and learn to “let go and let God.”

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFjz6O7ewwg&fs=1&hl=en_US]

The Better Angels of My Nature

How a Jew became a Catholic, and what it has to do with overcoming mental illness and addiction.

http://www.theocddiaries.com/2009/12/18/ocd-diaries-12-18-the-better-angels-of-my-nature/

Forgiveness is a Bitch

Seeking and giving forgiveness is essential for someone in recovery. But it’s often seen as a green light for more abuse.

http://www.theocddiaries.com/2010/03/19/forgiveness-is-a-bitch/

Running from Sin, Running with Scissors

The author writes an open letter to the RCIA Class of 2010 about Faith as a journey, not a destination. He warns that addiction, rage and other bad behavior won’t disappear the second water is dropped over their heads.

http://www.theocddiaries.com/2010/02/24/running-from-sin-running-with-scissors/

The Priest Who Came Clean

The author on a priest who had the courage to open up about his sins.

http://www.theocddiaries.com/2010/04/11/the-priest-who-came-clean/

The 12-Step Survival Guide of Life

For those who need a 12-Step Program, here are a few lessons from the author’s personal experiences.

http://www.theocddiaries.com/2010/06/01/the-12-step-survival-guide-of-life/

Pissing on God

The author gets a description of sin he’ll never forget.

http://www.theocddiaries.com/2010/03/27/pissing-on-god/

God and Metal

Those who read this blog know two things by now: I’m a devout Catholic, and I have apassion for Metal music. Both have played a central role in my recovery from OCD and addiction. But the spiritual part has been getting the shaft lately.

http://www.theocddiaries.com/2010/08/07/god-and-metal/

The Trouble With Wanting It All

Ever since I got over my fear and anxiety I’ve had a bottomless appetite to do it all. I want to travel everywhere. I want to see everything. And I want to participate in as many events as possible. Sometimes that gets me in trouble. Here’s an example.

http://www.theocddiaries.com/2010/08/15/the-trouble-with-wanting-it-all/

Selfish Bastard

The author has found that service is an excellent tool for OCD management. Simply put, it forces him to stop being a selfish bastard.

http://www.theocddiaries.com/2010/01/30/ocd-diaries-selfish-bastard/

The Rat in the Church Pew

The author has written much about his Faith as a key to overcoming mental illness. But as this post illustrates, he still has a long way to go in his spiritual development.

http://www.theocddiaries.com/2010/01/24/ocd-diaries-the-rat-in-the-church-pew/

The Rewards and Risk of Service: A Cautionary Tale

Service is a major tool of recovery. But it can also be dangerous.

http://www.theocddiaries.com/2010/04/29/the-rewards-and-risk-of-service-a-cautionary-tale/

We’re All Broken

The author finds that sometimes his church family is too judgmental.

http://www.theocddiaries.com/2010/04/19/were-all-broken/

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More Bullshit About Mental Illness

Every once in awhile I read something on mental illness that sends my blood boiling. Please indulge me while I rant about one such item.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPfkK7bcyfE&fs=1&hl=en_US]

I recently tripped across a website called HeretoHelp, a project of the BC Partners for Mental Health and Addictions Information. It’s a great resource for people like me who are recovering from mental illness and addictive behavior. It’s chock full of articles from medical professionals and people who suffer with various mental disorders. There’s also a news feed that includes upcoming events like mental illness screenings. I like the no-bullshit approach to the writing and layout.

The item that set me off was a fact sheet on discrimination and stigmas around mental illness. Specifically, it documented instances where employers view mental illness as a weakness; a reason not to hire someone. I’m not suggesting this form of prejudice is limited to something like depression. How many job candidates admit freely to having a heart problem or cancer? Employers discriminate against that, too, especially when they worry about health care costs and potential disability leave. I’m not even going to suggest that those are evil concerns.

But there’s something that strikes me as more insidious about the perception society has of people with mental illness. If you’re depressed, that somehow makes you a weakling who can’t cope with the normal challenges we’re all supposed to know how to deal with.

It’s true that someone in the grip of depression can’t cope with those challenges. I’ve greeted many “normal” situations like a crisis that threatened to bring everything crashing down. When I worked at The Eagle-Tribune, I was so paralyzed with depression and worry that I missed a lot of work. I also spent many a shift so mentally weak that I could barely edit properly. By the end of my time there, I was as close to a nervous breakdown as I’d ever come. I’d come much closer in the two years after I left that job, but I was in a pretty low place.

I still feel badly about leaving half-baked edits for the morning editors.

But here’s where I was lucky: Though I might have been looked at as weak by some of my colleagues, I wasn’t tossed out on my ass. I worried that I would be, but I had a lot of support from bosses like Gretchen Putnam, who I consider a dear friend today. At SearchSecurity.com, I had another nurturing boss in Anne Saita. I was in her employ when the mental illness, depression and addiction really started coming to a head. By some freak of nature, I was able to do some quality work for her during that time, but trust me on this: Had she not been the type of person I could open up to about what I was working through, I almost certainly would have failed at that job. I was that close to the edge.

In my current job, I’ve been Blessed enough to work around open-minded people that I was able to start up this blog without fear of getting blackballed.

So yes, I’ve been lucky. Others have not been as fortunate, however, and their livelihoods have suffered.

The article makes the following point: “Even clinical depression, which has arguably received the most media attention this past decade, is still stigmatized. A 2005 Australian study noted that around one quarter of people felt depression was a sign of personal weakness and would not employ someone with depression. Nearly one third felt depressed people “could snap out of it,” and 42 percent said they would not vote for a politician with depression.”

Considering that one of our greatest presidents suffered from crushing depression, that last sentence is particularly unfortunate.

The article also noted how addiction is also viewed as a weakness of character, something that a “strong” person could stop simply because it’s wrong.

“Addiction, which is a chronic and disabling disorder, is also often thought of as a moral deficiency or lack of willpower, and there is the attitude that people can just decide to stop drinking or using drugs if they want to. The study of the effects of stigma on substance use disorders is still a fairly undeveloped area, but research is revealing that social stigma and attitudes towards addiction are preventing people from seeking help.”

I love the description of addiction being a lack of willpower, because in the bigger picture a lack of willpower never held a person back in society. It suggests that someone who can’t help but eat junk food all day is somehow better than someone who can’t stop shooting heroin or drinking. Hell, smoking cigarettes with a few beers or a few glasses of wine is more accepted than the illegal addictions.

True, something like heroin can take you to a place where you no longer function in society. But my addiction was binge eating. It was perfectly legal. But the state it brought me to was about as bad as a heroin addiction. When all you can do is lay on the couch and isolate yourself from the rest of the world, it doesn’t matter what you’re addicted to, does it? The result is the same.

Maybe expecting society to  stop thinking of the depressed and addicted as weak outcasts is asking too much. It probably is.

All I know is that nothing will change unless more people in recovery work to break the stigma. I know many drug counselors, therapists and 12-Steppers who are doing just that. But we clearly have a long, long way to go before an environment exists where most sufferers can get the help they need and return to the world as productive members of society.

I’ll do my part by continuing to write this blog and sponsoring others who want to turn their lives around.

That’s all I can do, I suppose.

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Wasted Worry

I’ve spent many years worrying — assuming, really — that various people hated me for some of the things I’ve done. This year, I’ve been realizing what a waste of worry it’s been.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FPBi9N9hNc&fs=1&hl=en_US]

By definition — my definition, anyway — OCD is worry out of control. You worry about all kinds of things beyond your control while failing to do something about the few things that you can control. Along the way, if you’re like me, you seek comfort from those concerns in whatever substances you happen to be addicted to.

I was reminded of all this during yesterday morning’s OA meeting. During the part where everyone can get up and share, me and two others focused on this peculiarity of our condition.

One woman shared about how she thought her brother had been badly hurt all these years over an incident where she smeared blueberries across his face when they were kids. She’s worried about it all these years, and recently told him she was sorry. He chuckled and reminded her that he smeared something on her first. She didn’t remember that.

Another woman shared that on the night of her senior prom, she was so full of insecurity that she took off without even saying goodbye to her date. Surely, she thought all these years, the incident must have devastated the poor guy. She recently contacted him to apologize, and he didn’t remember being hurt. All he remembered was that the senior prom was one of the best nights of his life.

As addicts, we have a very exaggerated perception of how people look at us. But, as this woman noted, “We’re just another bozo on the bus.”

I spent many years assuming that Sean Marley‘s widow hated me over something I did right after his death. A couple months ago we reconnected on Facebook and I sent her a note about how sorry I was. She sent a note back. I won’t share the contents, but let’s just say she hasn’t hated me all these years.

Last week I remembered something shitty I did to a co-worker a decade ago, and I’ve wondered in the past week if she has hated me for it. She has every right to. I guess I won’t know until I contact her to make amends.

All this comes back to three of the 12 Steps of Recovery that remain 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 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.

It’s funny how we spend years thinking about people from the past and how we may have impacted their lives for good or ill.

Sometimes, it turns out we did hurt someone and need to make amends.

Other times, it turns out we just have an overdeveloped sense of our own importance.

I’m working hard to understand the difference.

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Summer of 1990

I’m not sure why, but I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the summer of 1990. That was a rough summer with a serious streak of depression. And yet thinking about it takes me to a happy place.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0z6ATxLk8Q&fs=1&hl=en_US]

I’ve had to do a lot of digging into my past as part of my therapy and recovery from OCD. Sometimes I see it as a waste of time, since you can’t change the past. But it is important to get closure on the things that haunt you so you can move on. I can’t explain why. I only know from experience that it’s true.

That said, let’s dive back to this summer 20 years ago.

I was getting ready for my second year at North Shore Community College. I was hell-bent on becoming a writer by this point, but it hadn’t yet taken the form of journalism. Instead, I wrote a lot of song lyrics and poems. If you saw them, you would laugh. My favorite was something I penned as my friend Aaron was throwing up all over my basement hideaway because I insisted he get drunk with me. We split a bottle of vodka and he had eaten McDonald’s beforehand. The puke looked like brown confetti.

I sat on the floor as he passed out on my bed, and I wrote about the fear that I had just killed my friend. Twenty years later, we’re both still alive and kicking.

Back then I was binge eating and drinking with plenty of pot mixed in. To control my weight in the face of such behavior, I would run circles in the living room of the basement apartment for one to two hours at a time.

I remember being pretty down on myself because I couldn’t find a girlfriend. For some stupid reason, I thought I needed one.

I spent that summer working in my father’s warehouse and hated every minute of it. I’d put the headphones on and listen to my metal to pass the time, and the summer became all about getting through the days until the college semester started back up.

I tried to escape in movies a lot. Aaron, his then-girlfriend Sharon (a good friend to this day) and I went to the Showcase Cinemas in Revere a lot. One Sunday, we saw a movie called “Flatliners,” about some medical students who engage in an experiment of near-death to get a peek at the afterlife (or something like that). It was a dark movie, and for whatever reason, it sent me into a deep, deep depression.

That same week, Iraq invaded Kuwait and my depression deepened. I had a real fear of current events back then, and everyone was talking about Saddam as the next Hitler and people were mentioning the WW III segment in the Nostradamus book of predictions. This was it, the start of World War III, I thought.

Ironically, it was Sean Marley — a friend who would take his own life six years later — who snapped me out of it. He was on a real anti-government kick by that point, and he convinced me — rightly or wrongly — that the way to cope was to rebel against everything the government stood for. So that’s what I did. One day, in Sean’s car, I torched a dollar bill with my cigarette lighter after someone mentioned it’s illegal to destroy money. I was a real rebel at that point, in my own stupid mind.

I began to read a lot about the 1960s counter-culture movement in the face of the Vietnam War and that gave me inspiration. I started listening to The Doors a lot.

One movie that made me feel better that summer was “Pump Up The Volume” with Christian Slater. To this day, I think that movie has one of the best soundtracks of all time. Hence my choice of today’s mood music. That Soundgarden song was part of the soundtrack. The movie added fuel to the rebellious fire I was stoking.

A lot of life has happened since that summer. Some of it has been good and some of it bad.

But that summer of my 20th birthday was a turning point for me. I can’t describe it perfectly, but that summer was the first time I really, truly started to examine who I was, what I believed and what I wanted to be. It took nearly another 20 years to figure it out, and I guess I’m still figuring it out.

But that uneven summer was a start.

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Another Unsettling Truth About Facebook

My friend Linda noted that I changed the settings on my Facebook page to allow wall comments. It amused her because it was my birthday. She knows me well. Truth is, I wanted to see the birthday messages. Here’s the uncomfortable thing that says about me…

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxeFCaEx3w0&fs=1&hl=en_US]

I suffer from an inflated ego. It’s a side-effect of where I’ve been. I have this odd fear of being forgotten. And I didn’t want to be forgotten on my birthday. It sounds ridiculous. But there it is.

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

With this blog, when I write something that really connects with people, the ego grows a few sizes larger.

I’m somewhat ashamed about this. But I also think it’s a common thing among us. When people say they want their birthday to pass quietly without hearing from people, I don’t buy it.

Everyone wants some attention. That is exactly why Facebook took off. People suddenly found they had a way to project themselves in ways never before possible. Wannabe writers suddenly got to become “published” writers because they had a platform to do it with. For the most part, this has been a good thing, because a lot of those writers are very good.

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about how I worry every time I discover I’ve been “unfriended” on Facebook. I get itchy thinking about why someone decided to drop me.

I think the reason is because at the height of my mental illness and addictions, I was alone. In my adult years, I isolated myself because it was too painful to show my bloated face to the world. When I snapped out of it, I became a lot more social.

Some of the ego comes from the addict in me. Addicts truly believe EVERYTHING is about them. You wouldn’t believe how people like us manage to find ourselves in every situation real or imagined. When you’re at a party for someone else, you think about how much attention you may or may not be getting. The best description of this came from Alice Roosevelt Longworth, eldest daughter of one of my heroes, Teddy Roosevelt.

Of here father’s ego, Alice said, “He wanted to be the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral.”

I shuddered the first time I saw that quote, because I identified with it. And it made me feel shame.

If Facebook had been around in Teddy Roosevelt’s day, he would have been absolutely insufferable with it. He might have found that it was a grander “bully pulpit” than the presidency.

Maybe he would have wasted all his time on Facebook instead of going on his African safaris or journeying down the infamous River of Doubt in South America.

Who knows?

All I know is that I do have a big ego.

I suppose the first step of finding more humility is admitting it.

All that said, I’m grateful as hell for all the people in my life. I felt truly blessed to have so many friends and family yesterday. It made for a wonderful birthday. I felt loved. And we all want to feel loved, don’t we?

That is something I’m NOT ashamed of.