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.

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.

April 15, 2013

Some People You Just Can’t Save

I just learned that a young man from my extended family was murdered recently. I only met him once, when he was a baby in the late 1980s, and I’m told he had a troubled adulthood that led him to seedy neighborhoods and bad crowds.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:3a1HY1vAKItKCK2I5cgavn]

When good kids fall in with the wrong crowds and go tragically astray, it’s hard on their family, especially those who offer help. That’s an obvious statement, but it’s easy to forget when you’re not at the center of the storm.

This post is for one particular family member.

I know that you tried hard to reach this kid but you still feel like you should have done a lot more. I went through that when my best friend spiraled into depression and eventually took his life. This wasn’t a case where I only saw him once in a while. I saw him all the time. We took walks on Revere Beach every Sunday. We spoke several times a week on the phone. We never lost touch.

Yet I was still oblivious to just how bad things were getting for him. I knew he was depressed. But it never occurred to me that he’d kill himself over it. In the years that followed, I continuously churned the events around in my head, looking for clues I should have seen and pondering my failure as a friend. Surely, I could have done a lot more to make him feel loved and see that his was a life worth living.

In hindsight, I think I did the best I could. I was there all the time, but a lot of the man’s pain was out of view from most of us. Not the general state of depression. He talked pretty openly about that. It’s the part of him that was secretly plotting his exit. None of us saw it coming, even though we think we should have.

I suspect it was the same for you. You saw the boy’s troubles and hoped you could talk him into a better life. But you couldn’t. It’s not your fault.

Sometimes, our best isn’t going to be good enough. Because the path someone takes isn’t up to us.

I doubt these words are going to help much, if at all. I just wanted you to know I’m thinking of you.

—Bill

June 7, 2012

Grief Management Put to Music

Weeks after a loved one dies and we’ve allowed ourselves to fall apart, we have to make a choice: Stay in a fetal position, hidden from the world, or stand up and move forward. This is a little tribute to someone who made the latter choice.

Mood music:

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/48842027″ iframe=”true” /]

I don’t know Ian Clark very well. We’re connected on Facebook, and I’m very fond of his mom’s band, The 360s (he plays drums in that band and is guitarist/vocalist in a band called Razors in the Night). But I sure as hell know what he’s going through.

A few weeks ago, he lost his best friend and cousin, James Morrill. I’ve watched his family grieve in their Facebook posts, and I can’t help but remember when my brother died unexpectedly in 1984 and my best friend followed suit nearly 13 years later. My friend’s death had a particularly damaging effect on me because that was a suicide. After he passed, I spent the next two years viciously binge-eating my way to 280 pounds of uselessness. Badly depressed, I hid from the world, staying indoors watching Star Trek reruns instead of staying connected with other friends.

You could say I chose to stay in the fetal position.

Since his moment of heartbreak, Ian has plowed ahead with his music and has honored his cousin by writing a song — the one featured as today’s mood music.

So far, I’d say he’s decided to move forward. It inspires me.

I hope he keeps doing what he’s doing — channeling his feelings into the music. Music is one of the best therapies in times of grief. And when you’re writing it, you have the chance to help others make it through their own trials.