The OCD Diaries

April 20, 2016

I Haven’t Begun to Grieve

In recent months, I’ve had a sour attitude. My eating has been erratic, I’ve barely exercised or picked up the guitar, and I have far less patience for people than usual. I’ve come to realize the reason.

I haven’t really been dealing with the emotional scar of losing my father last year.

Mood music:

https://youtu.be/Dd4Uto-0XZg?list=RDDd4Uto-0XZg

I thought I was. I dove headfirst into the task of untangling his unfinished business interests, specifically managing the building that housed the family business for more than 40 years. It fell to me to manage the trusts associated with it, and there’s been a costly chemical spill cleanup to pay for and oversee.

After several failed attempts to sell the building, I decided to lease it out until the clean-up is done, fix the place up and then sell it in a few years. I brought someone in to manage the building for me, and we’re finally making some much-needed repairs.

Thankfully, I’ve been able to keep putting 100% into my real job, earning a “consistently exceeds expectations” on my last performance review. During the review period, I threw myself into a new role in the company while keeping vigil in my father’s hospice room, dealing with two other family deaths within the same three-week period and, as mentioned, taking the reigns of the Brenner business.

But some things have suffered. In addition to the lack of guitar playing, I haven’t been writing in this blog nearly as much as I should. I’ve been too busy and tired. And I’ve been neglecting other people. I’ve been carrying around a “fuck you” attitude that rivals that of my teens and early 20s, which is saying something.

For a long time, I thought all these things were the result of grieving for my father. But as I’ve heard other family members talk about their own grieving processes, I realize I simply threw myself into all that work, too overwhelmed with the responsibilities to have the luxury to grieve.

Funny that, given everything I’ve written about managing grief.

I’ve had far less empathy and patience for other family members. I think some of that is because I’m jealous of their ability to grieve. I haven’t been able to do any personal travels to contemplate the last year. I haven’t been able to drop a single tear.

Some of it is because I can’t put him on a pedestal the way they can. I’ve spent a lot of time being angry and resentful of the old man for dumping this mess on my shoulders.

To keep doing my real job with all the time and energy it deserves while keeping a closer eye on the building, I moved into my father’s office. His fishing pictures, hanging stuffed sailfish and scattered piles of paperwork have been replaced with my own family portraits and some guitar- and movie-oriented wall hangings. The filing cabinets have an increasing array of stickers about hacking, a nod to my work in infosec.

Sometimes I sit there and remember hanging out in this office as he worked, and it makes me a little sad. It definitely makes me think of the strange turn my life has taken this past year. Never in a trillion years did I ever expect to be occupying that office for my own work.

The logical question is what I’m going to do to start grieving properly. Honestly, I’m not sure.

I know I have to start taking better care of myself. I have to start using my mental coping tools to their full power again. I know I need to start being more patient with people.

I’m still feeling things out in this journey. Maybe acknowledging the problem is the first step toward a solution.

July 20, 2015

The Feel-Good Complex: A Chronicle of Bad Choices

With all the death and drama in my life recently, I tell people that I regret quitting drinking a few years ago. Few things appeal to me more right now than the sweet buzz a bottle of wine would give me.

I have no intention of falling off the wagon. I know where it would take me. But the fact is that I’m desperate to feel good lately. For now, I cling tightly to my vapor pipe. It won’t give me a buzz, but it’s a safer crutch than the other things I crave but can’t have.

Mood music:

https://youtu.be/zAK_Qttgp2U

The memories are strong lately — specifically, memories of trying to feel good.

Age 18: I discover an after-dinner drink — Haffenreffer Lager Beer. There are little puzzles under the bottle caps, and your ability to solve them steadily declines with each bottle. I suck down three in quick succession so I can immediately enjoy feeling like I just absorbed half a keg of light beer. I feel good for about an hour. Then I throw up, nap on the cool, bathroom floor and watch any number of tripped-out movies with whoever was still around. I switch to vodka, because it’ll keep me buzzed with less intensity than the so-called Headwreckers.

Age 21: I’m pacing up and down the driveway of the old Revere house in a blue-green polka-dotted bathrobe. I’m freaking out because I’ve consumed two beers and an entire stick of marijuana by myself. I call my friend Dan and ask him to come over. He finds me in the driveway and takes me to Kelly’s Roast Beef for chicken fingers. I spend the rest of the night repeatedly blathering, “Heheh. Heheh. Haha. Haha…”

Age 31: I’m at my then-boss’s annual Christmas party. For the first hour I stand there like a stone, not knowing what to say to these people, many of whom I was butting heads with at the office. I’m offered a glass of wine. I suck it down and start to loosen up. I have another. And another. Conversation becomes easier, so I have another. I walk away realizing that enough alcohol will numb that itchy, edgy feeling I get around people. It becomes a habit.

Age 34: I leave that job and go to a company full of young, just-out-of college kids. The company likes to have long offsites where free booze flows like tap water. I make sure to get my fill, followed by my fill of food. There’s nothing quite like a food binge when you’re drunk. For someone like me, it’s heaven for the first hour, followed by shame and terror over my utter loss of control.

Age 39: I’m several months into my abstinence from binge eating. I’ve dropped 65 pounds on the spot and my head is clearer, but the defect in my head is still there, so I look for other things: wine — lots of it. It becomes a necessity every night with dinner.

By Christmas I realize wine is no longer compatible with a clean life — the kind I have to live, anyway. So I take my last sip on New Year’s Eve and put it down.

Age 45: Here I am, sober for the last 5 1/2 years. Life is tough and I miss my wine. So I clutch the vapor pipe as hard as I can, wondering what’s next.

pacman: y3t1 style by eddietheyeti-d6i1t1k — PacMan: y3t1 style, by EddieTheYeti

July 1, 2015

Thank You All

My family is overwhelmed and grateful for the massive outpouring of support and kind words in the wake of Dad’s death. I’ve heard from so many of you on my Facebook timeline, in private messages on Twitter and by phone.

Mood music:

I’ve written a lot about these final weeks with my father. I hope readers have taken it in the spirit I meant to get across — that while grief and loss is hard, there’s also a lot of beauty in the journey.

It’s been a hell of a week between Dad’s passing and that of my Aunt Marlene, but I’m overjoyed knowing that both are now free.

All the love and support comes on top of all the support I got last weekend when I did the Boston Walk All Night Against Suicide. Thanks to all your donations I raised $1,670 for suicide prevention programs. The walk lasted six hours and covered 17 miles in the driving rain. I met some great people along the way and we were cheered on all along the route by folks standing outside bars and hotels. My feet hurt at the end, but it didn’t last long.

Some of you continued donating to the cause while the walk was happening, which was awesome to see.

Now we’re preparing for Dad’s funeral. After that, we’ll take a few days to decompress. Then we go back to work.

I’ll be back to blogging soon. Meantime, I just wanted to say thanks.

June 29, 2015

Dad Was a Survivor

Note: This is not Dad’s official obituary — just my tribute to him.

Thursday we gathered by Dad’s bedside to say goodbye. He lived for three more days. That was Dad. He was a survivor, tougher than leather and stubborn to the last. Around 3 this afternoon, his journey finally ended.

Mood music:

https://youtu.be/bT7bbgsyzKc

The last two months with him were a gift. By the end, nothing was left unsaid. He knew how I felt about him and I knew how he felt about me. We got to spend a lot of time trading wits and laughing about all the trouble I got into as a kid. He seemed satisfied with how I turned out.

His mind was sharp to the end, rattling off how he wanted his various business interests wrapped up, how he wanted money invested, how he wanted me to do things that were cheaper than other things.

Dad never had it easy. He faced crushing difficulties. He ran the family business from the time he was a teenager, when his own father fell ill. After the business burned in the Great Chelsea Fire of 1973, he rebuilt in Saugus, Mass. He and my stepmom expanded the business into a global enterprise and thrived.

He endured a tough divorce, lost his oldest child to an asthma attack, and helped my sister through long periods of crippling depression.

He had a lot on his plate with me, for sure. I was sick and hospitalized a lot with Crohn’s Disease as a kid. I was an outcast who rebelled constantly. I saw his efforts to make me work and earn my money as tyranny and gave him a lot of grief. But as I grew older, my work ethic kicked in and I think he thought that his efforts with me had paid off.

He was a man without a filter. He’d tell people exactly what he thought. If he thought you were getting fat, he’d say so. If you came to our house to find him walking around in his underwear, he didn’t care. He was a human honey badger.

Under the tough exterior was a heart of gold. He took care of his family no matter what. He took care of his employees, too. One time, when an employee needed some extra financial assistance with a newborn baby, Dad quipped, “I’m paying for this kid and I didn’t even get to have any fun.”

He loved the little kids. He loved to push their buttons and be a tease. He lived life on his terms right to the end. It was a sight to behold.

I inherited the habit of loving and teasing the kids. I’d like to think I inherited his toughness, too, but I’ll let others be the judge.

Thanks, Dad.

Brenner Paper Co. after the 1973 Chelsea Fire
Dad and an employee stand over the rubble of Brenner Paper Company after the 1973 Chelsea fire. Within a year, he had the business back up and running from a new building in Saugus.

June 23, 2015June 23, 2015

Thanks for Everything, Aunt Marlene

Marlene Brenner died yesterday at the age of 68. She was my aunt — my father’s younger sister — and I owe her a lot.

Mood music:

Aunt Marlene was a constant presence in my childhood. With my siblings and grandmother, we’d go on trips to the White Mountains and lakes of New Hampshire. Many a family meal was had at her house in the Point of Pines, Revere, which was a quick walk from my father’s house at the southern part of the neighborhood and my mother’s house from the northern section.

My parents divorced when I was 10 and I often hung out in that house to escape the difficulties. I loved that house. More often than not, it was a place for holiday celebrations.

At the family business in Saugus, my aunt had a needlepoint shop in the building for a time in the 1970s. I used to hide in her back room watching Saturday-morning cartoons on the little TV she kept in there. In later years my father put a shoe store in that space and my aunt managed it for many years.

I remember her checking the ingredients of every food package before letting me have it because I was often sick from Crohn’s Disease and wasn’t supposed to have milk.

Her family always came first. She focused on the family business at the expense of a social life.

She didn’t have it easy. She would often isolate herself from the rest of the world and skip family gatherings later in life. As a kid I didn’t quite understand that, but as an adult it was clear that like me and other family members, she suffered from depression.

She suffered a stroke in mid-March and never really recovered from it. Her decline coincided with that of my father, who is still hanging on in hospice as I write this.

It’s been a sad time for the family. But I’ve spent a lot of that time looking through old photo albums my aunt and grandmother kept, learning more about a rich family history I couldn’t grasp as a kid. That’s been a huge gift.

Mostly, my memories are full of family doing the best they could under often difficult circumstances. That includes memories are of my aunt taking me to the mountains and lakes, giving me crucial breaks from my own personal demons.

I’ll never forget that, and I’m forever grateful.

Rest in peace, Aunt Marlene.

April 28, 2015April 27, 2015

My Introduction to Hospice Care

I’ve heard much about the blessings of hospice care, but I hadn’t seen it firsthand until now. After four years of illness, my father has decided he’s fought long enough and has chosen hospice care for the endgame.

Mood music:

https://youtu.be/DfStujGaf0E

We visited him Saturday, and he looked and sounded better than he has in a long, long time. He was alert, his talking was clear, and he was smiling the whole time. He’s made his decision and is at peace.

Now we wait for nature to take its course. It could be weeks or months.

I’ve decided to spend a couple days a week working from his bedside. I see no reason to put my work aside, and he would frown upon it. Since I spent much of my childhood hanging around him as he worked, the turnabout seems appropriate.

And while I’m there, I’m going to ask him for stories about the past. I was there for 45 years of it, but I want his unfiltered perspective. I also think he’ll enjoy it.

This is going to be an interesting adventure.

url

November 22, 2014

Lessons Lou Reed Taught Me About Life and Death

Life’s like Sanskrit read to a pony
I see you in my mind’s eye strangling on your tongue
What good is knowing such devotion
I’ve been around, I know what makes things run

What’s good? Life’s good
But not fair at all

–Lou Reed

When my addictive impulses were at their worst and I felt like I’d never regain control, I found comfort in an unlikely album: The Velvet Underground & Nico. Songs like “Heroin” and “The Black Angel’s Death Song” touched the core of my soul, where, it turned out, I had a big, gaping hole.

The music didn’t inspire me to stop my spiral into self-destruction, but it did inspire me to start exploring the roots of my unhappiness.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/ffr0opfm6I4

I first discovered that album when I was living in Lynnfield, Mass., and my old band, Skeptic Slang, had carved out rehearsal space in a room under the garage. On nights when we weren’t practicing, I’d sit in an easy chair I had in the room, with the lights off and candles lit, reading Between Thought and Expression: Selected Lyrics of Lou Reed. That same year, when Erin and I first started going out, she introduced me to Lou Reed’s Magic and Loss album, inspired by the illnesses and eventual deaths of two friends.

Here’s the title track from that album:

http://youtu.be/X0jHPRO98lM

To me, Magic and Loss was a lesson in identifying the beauty that accompanies the not-so-good things in life.

It had been years since I listened to his music. But amid his death last year, I found myself re-exploring it. In more recent weeks, I’ve found myself once again drawn to it, as I work my way through a period of depression and uncertainty.

Thanks for your music and wisdom, Lou.

I’ll end with some of the lyrics to the title track of “Magic and Loss,” which may well be the clearest perspective of life’s terrors and triumphs out there:

When you pass through the fire, you pass through humble
You pass through a maze of self-doubt
When you pass through humble, the lights can blind you
Some people never figure that out

You pass through arrogance, you pass through hurt
You pass through an ever-present past
And it’s best not to wait for luck to save you
Pass through the fire to the light

lou reed

November 20, 2014

5 Years Later: Magic and Loss

This week marks a sad anniversary: the tragic death of a beautiful young woman named Penney Richards. Penney was killed in a motorcycle accident on a sunny day in 2009.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/X0jHPRO98lM

To be honest, I didn’t really know her. But I had once worked with her mother, who has the same name but spells it Penny.

I usually slip into depression in November, but I sunk much deeper into it that year because I couldn’t stop thinking about a vibrant young life cut short and the parents left to find a way forward.

That was the obsessive side of my OCD at work — the part that couldn’t help but latch on to other people’s grief. I’m lucky because I don’t do that often, but I know people who do it all the time. I call them professional mourners and agents of doom, folks who only call you when there’s a terminal illness or death to report.

Though I don’t go there often, I sure as hell did that November. I felt terrible for Penney and her family. I also felt like an asshole for inserting myself into a situation where I didn’t have much business. I worked with Penny, but we weren’t close friends. I felt like a grief parasite.

Penny blogged about her terrible experience. Her ability to face the grief and share it with the world inspired me. And in my depressed state, I decided to try writing about my feelings.

And so, on Pearl Harbor Day, Dec. 7, 2009, The OCD Diaries was born.

Penny continues to write about her life experiences.

Though Penny and I weren’t exactly friends back then, we certainly are now. I’d like to think we appreciate each other for sharing the deep shit. For my part, I’ve been inspired by her along the way.

This is someone who beat breast cancer and, though a parent never truly recovers from their child’s death, she has found a way to keep living and has shared it with all of us.

She became a justice of the peace, and many of her posts on Facebook these days are about that.

Hers is a journey of love, with all the grace, beauty, joy and sadness that goes with it.

My thoughts and prayers are with her on the fifth anniversary of her daughter’s death.

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Penny’s daughter, Penney Richards.

November 17, 2014March 18, 2015

18 Years After the Suicide

I’m doing the “Walk All Night Against Suicide Walk” in June to raise funds for suicide prevention programs. If you wish to donate, go here.

Eighteen years ago my best friend killed himself.

I knew he was badly depressed. I even had a feeling he harbored suicidal thoughts. I just never thought he’d do it.

I was wrapped up in my own world as he deteriorated. I was binge eating and working 80 hours a week, too worried about my career to see much else around me. Had I not been, I might have been able to make a difference. That’s what I believed for years after, at least.

Mood music:

On November 15, 1996, Sean Marley decided he’d had enough.

It was a sparkling, autumn Friday and I was having a great morning at work. But early that afternoon, I got a call at work from my mother. She had driven by Sean’s house and saw police cars and ambulances and all kinds of commotion on the front lawn. I called his sister and she put his wife on the phone. She told me he was dead.

I hated him for years after that, failing to comprehend why he would leave us that way, especially since he knew suicide meant a damned soul. That’s what we were taught. I thought he was a selfish fuck who took the easy way out.

I was especially angry because after my older brother died in 1984, Sean had become another older brother.

It took more than a decade before I was able to make peace with my friend and what he did.

I suffered through my own bouts of depression and started getting therapy. During therapy, I began to understand some important things about myself and about my friend.

Depression robbed me of the ability to see straight. Bad thoughts felt like reality, even though I knew better. Even now, 18 years later, that still happens. I’m going through a bout of depression right now, and I feel alone, unappreciated, and worthless. The reality is precisely the opposite. I have many blessings and a lot of people love me and need me around. And still, when the depression is at it’s worst, I feel like a zero.

That’s something people who don’t suffer from mental illness fail to understand. A cold blanket covers the mind and starts to suffocate it. In the process, you lose the ability to see the real around you and start to see the fake as truth.

That’s what my friend experienced. I get it now.

Why am I still here and he’s not?

Because he never got the chance to put depression into the right perspective and learn the tools to get beyond it. I did.

He also lived in a time when depression was stigmatized, misunderstood and not really talked about. Today, the fight is much more in the open.

I wish he could have lived to see that and benefit from it. But I’m mostly grateful that I’ve been able to benefit from it. I’ve learned a lot about depression and suicide, and I have the tools to get through it.

In a sick way, I think I was required to lose someone to suicide to help push me to where I am right now.

Halloween 1990: Sean Marley and Bill Brenner Sean Marley and me, Halloween 1990.

November 6, 2014March 29, 2020

5 Stages of Depression: Like Grief, Only Different

I first wrote this in 2014. Amid COVID-19, a lot of us are going to go through bouts of depression. Back then, I found it useful to use the five stages of grief as a reference point for what I was feeling. It helped me get to the other side. May it help you now. It won’t make the depression go away. But it might help you deal with it.

There are plenty of articles out there about the so-called five stages of grief. Based on my experiences in that department, I find the writings mostly accurate and valuable.

I’ve been thinking lately about how there are also stages of depression, not unlike those of grief. Identifying them can help you know where you are and what’s going on. Note: this is not a scientific effort. It is simply based on my own experiences.

Mood music:

Denial and isolation. Things start to go wrong, but you’re not immediately aware of them. Your short-term memory starts to slip, you become disorganized, and you protest when those who love and know you best suggest you may be heading for an episode. You respond by clamming up and ignoring friends when they ask you to have coffee. You spend a lot more time on the couch.
Anger. After one too many days in denial, you start to realize you’re again slipping into depression. This makes you angry, and you start taking it out on those around you. Your self-worth begins to sink, and you start to feel you can’t do anything right. This leads to more anger, self-loathing, and self-pity.
Bargaining. During grief, this is the stage where a person repeatedly goes over the what-ifs: what if the loved one had gotten medical attention sooner, what if you’d recognized the problem for what is was, etc. With depression, the bargaining works a bit differently. You plays the blame game with the world around you. You’re depressed because of work. You’re depressed because of a disagreeable family member. If the depression is really bad, you blame anyone and anything but the disease within your own brain.
Melancholy. With grief, the fourth stage is depression. Within the depression itself, the fourth stage is melancholy, at least in my experience. A deep sadness and hopelessness take hold in your gut after too many successive days of feeling like shit. It becomes hard to do most basic daily tasks.
Acceptance After a while, you realize you have a few choices. The most extreme choice is suicide. I’ve never seriously considered it, but I know people who have and, sadly, gone through with it. Another choice is to start doing things to emerge from the depression. For me, that involves talking to people and writing to get the feelings off my chest. The other step is to re-embrace coping tools. It’s not like flipping a switch, but more like rebooting a computer. It takes time to start using your coping tools effectively again and more time for them to make a difference. But acceptance is a start.

Acceptance is where I’m at now. I long ago accepted that frequent bouts of depression come with being me and that there are things I can do to keep it in check. It’s time to reboot the system.

“Melancholy” by BaxiaArt