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Halloween Ho-Hum

Some of my friends go bonkers for Halloween. They run an endless torrent of zombie apocalypse memes on Facebook. They revere the holiday above Christmas and Easter. Good for them. It’s more of a ho-hum holiday for me.

Mood music:

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It would be easy to tell you I’m down on Halloween this year because so many people are suffering this day from the damage Hurricane Sandy left them with. But the truth is that this has never been one of my favorites. For a compulsive binge eater, this holiday and the days that follow tend to be a real nightmare.

I stopped eating Halloween candy four years and one month ago, but when the kids come home with trick-or-treat bags bulging, the temptation remains powerful. If you were a cocaine addict and your kitchen was surrounded by massive mounts of blow, you might feel the way I’m feeling about now.

I do have much to be thankful for. I used to binge on my kids’ candy for days and weeks after Halloween. By the end of November I’d be a pile of waste, bloated and depressed. That hasn’t happened for the last few years, even though my program isn’t quite where it should be.

I guess past memories are hard to shake, though.

Oh, well.

I’m still happy to see my kids and friends taking joy in Halloween. More power to them.

As for me, I just might go back to bed.

Rotten Pumpkin

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Another ‘Crazy Mike’ Facebook Page? Jerks.

Last year, I found a disgusting Facebook page making fun of someone with a serious mental illness. The site was taken down, but now there’s a new page dedicated to the man locals call Crazy Mike.

I want the creator and those who like the page to know something. By embracing such a page, you are making a much broader statement: either that you don’t understand the suffering a person experiences from mental illness or that you do understand but think it’s perfectly fine to tear down a human being who is seemingly weaker than you are.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:55OkffR8hBBf3QnqJAU2gY]

A couple weeks ago, I got an email from someone calling me a scumbag for defending Mike. He scares women and children and should be off the street, the writer told me. What really disgusted him, though, was the idea that Mike is a Vietnam veteran who is sick because of what he experienced there.

More recently, I heard from someone claiming to me Mike’s brother. I have no reason to disbelieve him, but since I haven’t been able to verify it yet, I’ll keep him anonymous. He actually alerted me to the new Facebook page and verified that Mike is a vet.

“Mike is indeed a Vietnam War Vet, serving as a field medic during his tour,” the man wrote. “He was born in May 1950, putting him squarely in that unfortunate group that was drafted or enlisted during the height of the war.”

Now that I’ve captured two different sides, I’ll say this:

  • Whatever his past, the fact is that he’s a human being who suffers from severe mental illness. I tend to believe that he was in Vietnam based on information I’ve received over time from multiple sources. But the reason for his illness isn’t what matters to me. It’s that he is sick and suffering and that people find it OK to make fun of him. It’s not OK.
  • Many people have chimed in about their own run-ins with the man, and I have noticed that some folks feel genuine affection for him. As stupid and sad as it was for people to latch on to a page that simply made fun of Mike (some of the comments on the page are nasty and pathetic), I think most people are decent, have good hearts and mean no harm.
  • I’m no saint. I’ve made my share of fun of people like this, and in the rearview mirror, looking back at my own struggle with mental illness, it makes me feel ashamed. It makes me the last guy on Earth who would be fit to judge others for poking fun at someone less fortunate.

We can do better than this.

True, to those who don’t know him, it can be disconcerting to walk into a store with Mike hanging around outside the door yelling at people. Sometimes, fear is justified. Part of my motivation for this post is to make more of you aware that he’s harmless.

To those who want to haggle over whether Mike was in Vietnam, I’d suggest you stop getting sidetracked and remember that no matter what makes a person sick, they deserve compassion and help, not this bullshit.

The jackass who created the new Facebook page should shut it down. And the hundreds of people who liked it should feel some shame.

Crazy Mike

This post is an update of an early post, “A Final Word on Crazy Mike.”

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I’m a Hot OCD Mess Today

I’m admittedly failing to control my worst OCD impulses this morning. I’m trying to assemble a slideshow for my work website and a vital application keeps crashing. It’s a busy day ahead, with blog posts to write and meetings to sit through, so this isn’t the best time for an app to fail me.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:7qSPdNGrKbaqLg6HqflCoZ]

I’ve heard it said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. So for a half hour, I kept trying to restart the work app, getting the same result each time. When I finally slammed the mouse down in anger, making the screen go black for a moment, I realized that I had let my demon get the better of me.

So instead of following my insane impulses, I’m writing this post.

I’d probably be doing better at this had I not started to lose my grip yesterday. The blinders fell over my eyes sometime during the drive home, and I spent the rest of the day operating out of sync from everything around me. I went to bed angry about it and woke up that way. It was a perfect setup for trouble.

I don’t see this as a reversal of all the progress I’ve made in managing my OCD. This morning’s scenario used happen multiple times a day. Now there are much longer spaces between the bad episodes.

But when I have a bad episode, I have to be real about it.

I’ve said it before: OCD is a two-faced bitch. Some days it gives me the boost I need to get a lot done. I came into the office this morning expecting that flavor of OCD to show up and power me through slideshow-, blogging- and newsletter-making before 10 am, when I have two meetings in a row. Instead, the wrong OCD showed up.

It happens. I’m moving on and will do the best I can with this day. Chances are that it’ll turn out to be a pretty good day.

Time to try making it happen.

Face in the Wall

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Happy Depression

I’ve been in a mental space lately that some would consider strange. I’m somewhat depressed but also fairly content and happy. To most people, feeling all those things at once doesn’t make sense. You’re either happy or depressed. But I’ve found that it’s more complicated than that.

Mood music:

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/33409634″ iframe=”true” /]

I used to spend my depressive episodes curled up in a ball, feeling sorry for myself. Depression was cause for making the world stop and accepting everyone’s sympathy. It was a time to let things slide at work and to binge on food, alcohol and worse.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to see my depressed episodes as a mild nuisance, like the common cold or a toothache. It sucks to have it, but life has to go on. I still have to work, get my kids from points A to B and be available when a friend or family member needs help. Curling up in a ball is no longer an option, though the occasional 20-minute nap is OK.

Medication has helped. So has therapy. My faith has made a massive difference, too. But I think the bigger game changer in how I view my depression came from the realization that I had unrealistic views on what it was to be happy.

We have an overdeveloped sense of what happiness is supposed to be. I call it the Happily Ever After Syndrome. We have this stupid idea that if we can just get the right job, find the right mate, accumulate the right amount of material things and have as little conflict with people as possible that we’re going to be on cloud nine for the rest of our lives.

Deep down we know that’s bullshit. But we reach for it anyway.

It’s a battle of false expectations. And when we can’t reach those expectations, it’s a huge let down. It creates a hole in our souls that we try to fill with more material things and addictions.

That stuff makes us feel better for a few minutes, but before long we feel worse than ever.

I think that hole is still in me. But through the grace of God it’s gotten a lot smaller.

I used to raise my fist and scream at God over how unfair life can be. I saw myself as a victim. Now I get it: We all have our ups and downs. We all have difficult problems to carry on our shoulders.

Happiness isn’t the absence of trouble. It’s not the worry-free, rainbow-infested existence I used to think it was.

In my case, happiness comes from getting a shot at doing things that matter to me. When I feel depressed, I can still keep going because of all the good stuff in my life: my wife and kids, a job I love, this blog, etc.

The depression wants me to forget all those things and give in to despair. And that’s what I used to do. But when I keep focusing on the important things in my life, I find that the depressed periods go away sooner than they used to.

So while I’m a little depressed this morning, I’m also full of gratitude. I have a great life, despite all my missteps along the way.

October Sun

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Led Zeppelin Gets Me Through the Rain

A while back I wrote about how Van Halen’s music helps me through  the winter blues. Too much rain can depress me, too, and for that I’m finding a remedy in Led Zeppelin.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/S4v-_p5dU34

Like most teenage rock fans, I listened to Led Zeppelin nonstop, studied every lyric and guitar solo and read any book in which they were at least mentioned. I remember reading Hammer of the Gods when I was 15, and though I know the band members never liked that book, I absorbed it obsessively. There were always rumors that the band was cursed for making a deal with the devil. I never believed that. They had their lows like any band, including the deatha of Robert Plant’s son and drummer John Bonham. But for me, the music is all that ever mattered. And this music didn’t come from Hell. No fucking way.

These guys channeled something that came straight from Heaven. They rocked hard, but some of my favorite songs were done acoustically. Zeppelin drew from every culture and used every obscure instrument known to man to get their sound. Folk is as integral to their sound as heavy metal. The song I used for today’s Mood Music is one of my favorites and cuts to the heart of the matter on rainy days like this, when I’ve given to blue moods:

These are the seasons of emotion and like the winds they rise and fall

This is the wonder of devotion — I see the torch we all must hold.

This is the mystery of the quotient — Upon us all a little rain must fall.

Which brings me to another point: Robert Plant has always gotten his due respect for vocal prowess, but he is also one of the most underrated lyricists who has ever lived. Those lyrics in particular speak to me on a day like this, when I’m given to cursing the sky for handing me more gray instead of the sunlight I crave.

I’d even go as far as to say that a song like this makes me appreciate the rain.

I stopped listening to Led Zeppelin for a long time, not because they fell out of favor with me, but because I was simply exploring other bands and genres. My interest was rekindled by the film It Might Get Loud, in which Jimmy Page, U2’s The Edge and Jack White get together to share the stories and techniques behind their best-known songs.

Here’s a preview:

Also rekindling my interest is the new concert film Celebration Day, in which the surviving members of Zeppelin and John Bonham’s son, Jason, do a reunion performance in 2007. Here’s a preview:

This stuff permeates my soul and helps me see the joy in life, even on my most depressed, pissed-off days. Thanks, gents.

Led Zeppelin Flower

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The Winter Bill Blues

This is a typically a shitty time of year for me, when I come off the high of summer and crash hard onto the cold pavement. When the days grow shorter and the air colder, I become easy prey for seasonal depression.

And when that state of mind sets in, I usually do something very stupid.

Winter 2011: By February, I was forgetting things all the time, including Valentine’s Day. I was traveling on this day of romantic feelings, and I forgot to sign my wife’s card and leave it where she could find it. I left it in my storage drawer in the garage, but I got embarrassed and lied to her, saying I got to San Francisco to find her card still in my laptop bag. At some point during my time away, she went to put a stray pair of gloves in my drawer and found the card.

Winter 2012: It was nearly a year to the day since that last big fuck up, and I was sitting at the airport waiting for another flight to California. Erin called and asked me if I told Duncan he could stop taking medicine we were trying out for his ADHD. The day before he had been freaking out about the potential side effects he heard the doctor mention, and in a moment of weakness I caved. I promptly forgot, and now, while I was at the airport, Erin was dealing with Duncan and what I did the day before. The worst part wasn’t that she had to deal with a difficult child. It was that in a moment of not thinking things through, I arbitrarily made a decision Erin and I should have made together.

A very stupid chap, that Winter Bill is. A hurtful, stupid chap.

The real kick in the ass is that I do deal with winter better than I used to. The last couple winters, the depression came and went. In previous winters, the depression was constant.

And so the challenge is to get through an entire winter both less depressed and more mindful, which will prevent me from doing the really dumb things.

In recent days, signs of the Winter Bill have emerged. I forgot to deposit a check that needed to get into the savings account. I had an episode of crankiness yesterday that came out of nowhere. And yet I’m not dreading the coming winter and shorter days as I have in the past. There are a few reasons for this.

One is that I’m taking a mindfullness course that should give me new skills for getting out of my self-absorbed head.

Another is that I have picked the guitar back up and am looking forward to the joy it’s going to bring me as my skills grow. Nothing gets you out of your head like making music.

In past winters the feeling was all dread. I was annoyed that I’d have to deal with these feelings, that I couldn’t hang on to the good feelings I got from the endless summer sun.

This time, I think I’m eager for the challenge. I want to learn to enjoy life despite the darkness. Oh, I won’t go through it with zero depression. That’s just not realistic. But I think that maybe I can do this without the big annual stumble. I’m ready to try.

I have my eye on you, Winter Bill. You don’t scare me.

 

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Out of My Head

Like anyone with a mental disorder like OCD, I spend a lot of time locked in my head. My thoughts will be on what I’m doing the next day or a year out. Or they’re in the past, replaying scenes from long ago. Last night I began the mission to get out of there.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:7yqO8vYeyf8ahnLj9vOZ4G]

It was the first night of my Stress Reduction and Mindfulness class. The instructor is my therapist, though the other students don’t know that. He tells me this is the first class to include one of his patients. I entered a room full of yoga mats, cushions and funny little benches that look like the kneelers they put in front of the coffin at wakes.

“Fuck,” I thought to myself. “Right out of the gate we’re doing yoga.” I’ve resisted doing yoga forever. I don’t have a good reason for that. I guess I think it will just bore me.

In the end, we used the mats for a lie-down exercise designed to make us aware of our bodies and what they’re doing and feeling. A couple people fell asleep.

We practiced eating mindfully, taking a single raisin and staring at it, rolling it in out hands and keeping it in our mouths for a while before swallowing.

We left with homework. Among other things, I have to eat an entire meal mindfully instead of scarfing it down per usual. I also have to take an activity I do almost daily and do it mindfully, taking note of every aspect of the activity as I proceed. For fun, I think I’ll try this while shaving my head.

I can stare at the razor and look at its detail, stop every time I cut myself and study the pattern of the blood dripping from my scalp before washing it off. I’ll take note of how the water feels when rinsing off the cut. I can note the difference between the feel of a clean razor and one that’s getting clogged with my stubble.

I could also practice my guitar mindfully, noting the feel of the strings and the sounds I get as I randomly launch chords from up and down the neck. I’ve already discovered that you can’t really play the guitar without being mindful of every step. I can’t, anyway.

The ultimate goal is to be able to pay attention to every detail when I’m talking to someone or doing any number of other daily tasks where my mind tends to drift.

This should be interesting.

Mindfulness

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Which Is Worse? You Decide.

I woke up pissed at the world yesterday. Part of it is that people in my life are acting like idiots, and part of it is my realization that thinking this way makes me a Grade-A hypocrite.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:1GnCH2KszUkpUjXuDP2G3N]

I’m sick of all the ass-hat political posts friends and relatives are putting on Facebook lately. Rather than sticking with issues like our economic well-being and the best way to achieve national security, people are content to post a bunch of memes littered with half truths and outright lies. Democrats and Republicans are equally guilty.

But then I’ve been blogging a lot about how futile these elections have become and how the outcome will have absolutely zero impact on the things that really matter in our lives.

Which is worse? You decide.

I’m sick of people who go on Facebook and complain about everything. They hate their job. They hate their significant others or the lack thereof. They make cryptic statements so someone out there will bite, asking what’s wrong or telling you how fucking special you are.

But then I do something similar in this blog. I never complain about my job or make cryptic statements, but I sure do complain a lot. I’m doing it right now.

Which is worse? You decide.

I’m sick of people who tell you how you should behave, how often you should call your parents and how self-absorbed you are when they can’t get their own shit together.

But then I turn around and do the same things. And I just blog about it afterwards.

Which is worse? You decide.

When I lose patience with people, I can get pretty self-righteous. I take someone down a few pegs, even though I’d make the same stupid decisions and say the same stupid things.

I’ll admit it sometimes, and then go do the same stupid things all over again.

Which is worse? You decide.

Before long I’ll return to my sunnier disposition. But I wanted to take this moment of moodiness and use it as an opportunity to keep it real.

Cinderblock Balloon

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Putting a Face on Suicide

There’s a page on Facebook everyone should check out called Putting a Face on Suicide. It’s powerful stuff.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:14YR9VCoseu7zq2dx9Qr6w]

Having lost a close friend to suicide, this page hits me where I live. We hear about suicide statistics all the time. We know of the famous suicides, like Ernest Hemingway and Kurt Cobain. But regular people die by their own hand every day, and their faces are easily forgotten. That’s what makes this Facebook page so important.

Putting a Face on Suicide is the personal project of Mike Purcell. His son, 21-year-old Christopher Lee Purcell, died by suicide in 2008 while serving in the U.S. Navy. Since then, the father has relentlessly worked to break down the bullshit notions about suicide — that those who take their own lives were simply weak, scared, quitters and the like.

Here’s part of Purcell’s mission statement for the project:

Every 40 seconds somewhere around the world someone dies by suicide, that’s 99 people every 66 minutes. Every day, that’s almost 100 people in the United States alone, and over 2160 worldwide. Putting a Face on Suicide (PAFOS) is a suicide awareness project that creates posters and videos to pay tribute to those we have lost to suicide with dignity and respect. PAFOS humanizes the daunting statistics; lovingly replacing numbers with faces.

PAFOS is an ongoing project soliciting pictures of your loved ones who died by suicide. Its objective is to collect 99 photos of people who have died by suicide for each day of the year; i.e., 36135 faces will represent 365 days of loss by suicide in the United States. PAFOS uses each photo in a poster and a video, posts it on the PAFOS Facebook page, and creates a personal tribute page featuring your loved one.

When you visit the page, the first thing that will strike you is how happy many of these victims looked when the pictures were taken. There are smiling teenagers who had promising futures. There are older people who look content to spend their senior years doting on grandchildren. There are veterans of our most recent wars, looking proud, sober and ready for whatever life throws at them.

Whenever someone dies by their own hand, you hear the inevitable comments that start with but:

“But she had everything going for her.”

“But he was always smiling.”

“But he had a beautiful wife and children, a gorgeous house and a high-paying job. How could he do this?”

Those are natural questions to ask when you first hear the news of a suicide. It’s part of the shock and disbelief we feel.

Yet the questions also show how little we understand the insidious nature of depression. Much of the stigma comes from that religious belief that death by suicide is a trip straight to Hell. It’s not necessarily true, and a friend of mine found this bit of clarity in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

2282 Grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide.

2283 We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives.

Instead of worrying about where in the afterlife our lost friends and family are, we should do what is in our control: remembering the best these souls gave in life and honoring their memories. The Facebook page does that and more.

PAFOS: Peter

PAFOS: Thomas Edward Albright

PAFOS: Paige Rose

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Nine Things to Consider When Life Starts to Suck

On my worst days, when depression takes over and common sense goes out the window, I try to remember the following to put my life back into perspective.

  • I’ve had my share of bad health, but family and friends have always helped me through. Some friends and family dealing with cancer right now know what I’m talking about.
  • I hate the snow, cold and darkness of winter. But winter always gives way to spring and summer.
  • I may not like the excessive heat and humidity we’ve had around here lately, but the weather will turn colder soon enough. Since I hate cold weather, that thought makes me appreciate the dog days of summer.
  • I have an addictive personality, but today’s slip-ups are nothing compared to when I was spending $40 a day on binge eating, passing out on the couch from the pain meds I was taking for a bad back and getting buzzed to keep from eating.
  • I may get frustrated with work issues sometimes, but a bad day in my current job is still much better than the better days I had in past jobs. It also beats being jobless and homeless.
  • I hate getting stuck in traffic, but being stuck in it sure beats being the driver who caused it with an accident.
  • It’s hard to put up with the annoying behavior of others. Then I remember that people put up with my annoying behavior all the time, and I suddenly feel a lot more patient.
  • My children tire me out and give me little time to hear myself think on a daily basis. But the richness and joy they add to my life far outweighs the irritating things they do sometimes. And the irritating stuff sometimes translates into comedy gold.
  • I may screw up every day, but no matter how bad I am, God never gives up on me.

Chicken Miserable