by Jeff Bell
With the fury of three decades worth of pent-up ire and resentment, I reach over and grip my hands to his shoulders.
“Don’t you GET it?!” I shout into his face. “Can’t you see what you’ve done to me?”
Dad is shaking now. There is fear in his eyes—fear and confusion—as I continue my tirade.
“YOU did this to me. Don’t you get that. For the love of God, why can’t you see it? Why can’t you . . .”
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZ … A foghorn on the Bay Bridge cuts short my barrage of acid-filled words.
But it’s not a foghorn. No. It’s a higher-pitched sound, a jarring, strangely familiar sound.
My alarm. It’s my alarm clock.
This is my bed. It’s morning, and I’m in my bed. I have been dreaming. Dreaming the Dream again. The one I’ve been fighting with at least once a week for a good many months. The one that always leaves my skin clammy and my gut tied up in knots. I hate this damn dream and all its twisted variations. There are so many. Sometimes Dad and I are sailing on The Boat as we were tonight. Sometimes we’re working on a project together, attempting to build or fix something or another. Sometimes we’re just out taking a walk. Always, though, the dream sequence ends the same way—with me letting loose on my old man for all that he’s done to screw me up royally.
Why do I keep doing this—blaming Dad in my dreams, night after night? I don’t really hold him responsible, do I? I’ve seen the research. Genetics, not upbringing, almost certainly gave me my curse. Yeah, my quick-tempered father was capable of being a first-class prick, but then so too am I with Nicole and Brianna. And they seem to be fine. At worst, Dad and his militant perfectionism made me a checker—as opposed to a repeater or a hoarder or some other flavor of freak. Is that really so bad?
Isn’t my bitter subconscious-self being a little tough on the poor guy?
Besides, I’m the one who carried the whole sick dependency thing right out of my youth and clear into adulthood. Me, not Dad. Is it really his fault that I’m still so hell-bent on checking with him on every major decision I make, so committed to securing his reassurance like a necessary stamp on an entrance visa, so determined to keep him from shaking his head in disappointment with me?
Compassion—Others side of my belief pyramid, Resolve level. I have got to find some compassion for my father, if only during my waking hours.
I get my opportunity on December 27, Project Day 68, as I note on my index cards. Our extended family is gathered at Mandi’s place to celebrate Hanukkah, and Dad and I are in the backyard, catching up on things since our last visit together. We talk current events, as we always do. We talk computers and Internet sites and high-tech gadgets and other marvels of modern technology. And finally, inevitably, we wind up talking about the catastrophic consequences of other people’s screw-ups. This is what my father does for a living these days—speaks as an expert witness in insurance cases about what some poor schmo has done wrong in some deal. Since the two of us have already covered the news of the day and my coverage of it, I suppose it’s only fair that I show at least some interest in Dad’s latest courtroom testimony. Unfortunately, though, his who’s-screwed-over-whom stories are always so OCD-charged for me. Always. The same old negligence triggers waiting for me again and again. I can’t help wondering if he has any idea how badly he always sets me off, talking about some negligent driver or unqualified contractor.
For God’s sake, doesn’t he get it?
This is not my dream, though. I am not tempted to grab my father’s shoulders and launch into my diatribe. I know, in reality, that Dad simply doesn’t get it. It’s not his fault. Normal people couldn’t possibly understand the nuances of my beast. I remind myself of this, and Compassion’s place on my believing pyramid, as I put my game face on and attempt to jump into my father’s one-sided conversation, even challenging myself to ask a few follow-up questions.
Mandi’s holler of “Lunch!” a few minutes later saves me from at least a half-dozen OCD traps Dad and Doubt are conspiring to set. I am safe at the table, a handful of kids sandwiched between my father and me. But Dad pulls me aside as Mandi and Sam are clearing the last of the dishes.
“Can we tuck away for a minute?” he whispers.
“Sure,” I say, trying but failing to read his face. I point toward the stairwell that leads up to Mandi’s second-story den. We climb the stairs together in silence.
“Listen,” Dad says when we get to the top, “I’ve been wanting to talk to you for a while about your OCD.”
“O-kaaaaaay,” I say, probably injecting far too much hesitation into that second syllable; I’m just not sure where he’s planning to take things. In the three-plus years since I first told my family about my OCD, the subject has come up maybe twice in conversations with my father, both times at my introduction. Mom likes to tell me—over and over, in fact—that Dad’s always asking her about how I’m doing, that he’s very concerned about me, but that he’s convinced I’ll broach the topic with him when, and only when, I have something I’d really like to share. So this is a first.
“I, uh, I’ve been thinking a lot lately…” he says, stopping as if to weigh his options for the rest of this sentence. “Thinking about the role I must have played in bringing about your OCD.”
My father’s words hang uncomfortably in the air between us. He has put them out here, it strikes me, more as a statement than an apology really. A pronouncement. A declaration. A simple matter of fact that I’m free to do with as I see fit. Still, I can’t help picking up on a certain sorrow in Dad’s eyes, a vulnerability that I’ve never before noticed in them.
An awkward silence fills the room like smoke.
I’m supposed to say something, I suppose. But I can’t. I’m speechless. I am still trying to make head or tail of what I’ve just heard. This is somehow another dream, albeit a daytime one with a much happier ending.
“I … I was pretty tough on you kids growing up,” Dad continues, the corners of his mouth now slightly turned down.
Another long pause.
I’ve really got to say something. Anything. So I offer up the first words I can string together in my open-jawed mouth. “Oh, I dunno. You always tried—”
“No, I was tough on you and your sister,” Dad interrupts. “And I’m still always trying to impose my own standards on the two of you. Take that new computer of yours.”
“The e-Machine?”
“Yeah.
“You were so excited when you called to tell me about it. And what did I do? Point out all the things that I thought were missing.”
“You’ve got high standards,” I say. “You’re a true perfectionist.”
“Well, that’s fine for my life, but I was so impatient with you and Mandi as kids, and now, with all that’s happened with you, I can’t help wondering—”
“You were impatient,” I concede, surprising myself with my controlled, emotion-free candor. This whole conversation is so different from the one I’ve played out countless times in my recurring dream. “Truth be told, you were a pretty lousy father at times. But you didn’t cause my OCD; some mutant gene in my body did. You’ve read enough of the research to know that, Dad.”
Dad shakes his head, starts to say something.
“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the fact that we’re just having this chat,” I interrupt. “I hope you know how much this means to me, being able to put this kind of stuff on the table.” My father and I have never talked openly about anything even remotely having to do with emotions. We have never said the words “I love you” to one another. And with a very few exceptions, we have never even shared a hug.
I decide to do something about the latter right now, and I put my arms around Dad. Our embrace has the awkwardness of two macho football players who, with great embarrassment, catch themselves getting carried away after a big play.
But it’s a start. And it feels damn good for the five or ten seconds it lasts. And although I can’t know it here, I will
never again—not even once—dream the Dream again.
Exactly two weeks later I am standing at the kitchen counter with a phone receiver in my shaking left hand. Pick up, Dad. Come on, damn it, pick up the friggin’ phone.
I have spent the past two hours filling and prepping our brand new hot tub, the one Samantha surprised me with for Christmas this year. It’s all but ready for my inaugural dip. But after having watched the electrician install the wiring this morning, I’ve managed to convince myself that we did the hot tub installation all wrong at the first house we owned. Doubt has come up with a half-dozen electrocution what-ifs for me to ponder forever.
I want to call the new owners of that house and warn them of their impending perils, tell them to stay away from the damn thing or they’ll surely die. But I know I can’t; Jackie’s all over me these days about disrupting other people’s lives with my compulsive confessions. And that’s why I’m calling Dad. He’d helped me with that whole decking project. He’ll have some thoughts. I know I’ll feel better if he’ll just pick up the phone, if I can just run through everything with him.
“Hello.” My father’s voice is at the other end of the line.
Damn him for being there when I can’t stop myself from checking with him. Damn him for picking up the phone—doesn’t he know it could be his pathetic son calling for another OCD fix?
Doesn’t he get it?!
twenty-four
I need to share with you a few thoughts about windsurfing, and the powerful lesson the sport has taught me about living life in general, and battling OCD in particular. It’s a lesson I learned, literally, back in the mid-1980s, when my every spare moment was spent on sailboarding adventures. I learned it metaphorically ten years later, when I found myself pining for the normalcy of those windsurfing years.
So simple, really: Sometimes, to move forward, you’ve got to fall back and trust.
I mean, there you are standing on your board on a windy day, lifting the mast-and-sail rig out of the water, and the only way to harness the wind is to lean back with the rig and all your weight—often until your head is just inches above the water—and wait that split second for a steady breeze to fill your sail and launch you ahead.
Such is a windsurfer’s leap of faith. And such, I came to learn in early 1998, is the requisite process for getting a handle on OCD.
I had spent much of January and February “leaning back” and throwing my full weight into maneuvers that demanded of me every ounce of my trust. First there was the annual Yosemite trip with our extended family, during which I forced myself to avoid asking Samantha a single OCD question for three interminable days, all the while fending off one of Doubt’s most vicious attacks in years. Then, a few days later, there was the half-hour KFBK tour I gave Nicole’s entire first-grade class, all of them banging into each other and our equipment at every step of the way. And then a couple weeks after that: the Comstock Club luncheon, where I broke my cardinal no-contact-while-eating rule when actor/director Rob Reiner handed me his wallet with pictures as we discussed our kids over lunch.
Lean back. Trust. Wait for the wind.
Splat!
And that’s the thing. Like the windsurfing novice who hasn’t yet mastered the falling-back technique, I kept coming up short, and very wet, again and again. Instead of launching myself forward, I wound up flat on my back. Instead of feeling empowered by my success in fighting off checking compulsions in Yosemite, I let Doubt play catch-up with me from the moment I got home, hounding poor Sam for days, worse than ever. Instead of riding the momentum of my station tour for the kids, I got myself so worked up toward the end that Nicole’s teacher later asked Sam if I was okay—He just seemed so nervous. And instead of relishing my luncheon chat with Rob Reiner, I let myself get caught in three OCD episodes before even leaving the parking lot afterward.
Splat. Splat. Splat.
Fortunately, as any sailboarder can attest to, at some point along the learning curve, you do begin getting the knack of harnessing the wind. You learn to control your faith-based fallback, to let this powerful unseen force scoop you up from the brink of impact and rocket you ahead at breakneck speed. You succeed at this sporadically at first, still spending a great deal of time in and just beneath the water. But then the whole process becomes second nature. Before you know it, you find yourself so caught up in the ride that you almost forget what it took to get you going on it.
That, I suppose, is where I was with things in mid-February, 100-plus days into my project. Sailing along and not even noticing. And perhaps that’s why I was so flabbergasted one night when I sat down to complete my “episodes card” for the day and came to appreciate the significance of what I’d just put down onto paper:
No OCD episodes the entire day. Nada. Zippo. Not a single one. This was a first for me, and it floored me to think that I never even realized it until that very moment.
I did have an episode to log the following night—in fact, three of them. And in the days after that, there were at least a half dozen I needed to record on my cards. A full week passed quickly, though, and at the end of it, I couldn’t help noting not one, but two, major milestones:
February 21. Today I am four months into
my project. One third of the way there. And
at long last, I can honestly say that I am
making progress, even if it’s so much less
than I would like it to be. Today also marks
another first: one week of sustained prog-
ress. For seven days now, I have topped
these cards on a positive note. I have been
disciplining myself like never before and
the payoff is clear. This whole believing
model works, if only I will let it.
Seven days of triumphs. Seven days of genuine sustained progress. Seven days of feeling strong. Unbelievable. I’d had “good days” here and there over the past many years, but never in my recent memory had I managed to string together a full week of them. This was really something. At long last, my project was really sailing along.
And therein lay my greatest fear, one that again had me thinking back on all my windsurfing years. I just couldn’t help remembering what would always happen when I’d get “in the groove” (as we’d say in those days), planing along at breakneck speed. I’d find myself getting scared every time. You’re riding above your skill level now; you know you can’t sustain this, some early ancestor of Doubt would always whisper. Any minute now, you’re going to crash and burn.
And inevitably I would.
Here in late February, I was on an entirely different kind of thrill ride. But the growing insecurity and fear were eerily reminiscent of my windsurfing days. The fall was about to come. I knew this in my bones, and the marrow never lies.
The fall did come, all right. And right on cue.
It came when I was soaring along. When I was at the peak of my game, feeling the exhilaration of having finally harnessed the forces of nature—all the powers of a friendly universe, right there for the asking but available only to the true believers of this world who, against all odds, have learned how to tap it.
It came on a Thursday morning in early March.
I am soaking in our backyard hot tub, basking in the spring sunshine and in the glory of all my recent success. I am feeling downright cocky for the first time in years, mulling over the last month or so in my head, taking inventory of how far I’ve come and how much I’ve managed to accomplish. What a ride, I can’t help thinking.
Psssst. Ever sort out that whole conversation you had with Dad a while back about firewalls?
Doubt is whispering to me. It loves the Dad topic, knows it’s always so charged with anxiety and fear.
Warning lights and sirens go off in my head. I close my eyes and try to ignore Doubt, try to think instead about anything and everything else. But it’s Dad’s face I see. Dad’s voice I hear. Before I can stop myself, I cue up a tape of that last conversation with hi
m. We are talking about phone lines. I am asking Dad what he thinks would be involved in running an extra line to my den. I can hear him telling me that, well, that could be tough, since it might require we find a way to get around a firewall.
I pause the tape.
Have I ever negligently drilled through any firewalls in the past?
Frantically I begin reviewing every hole I have ever bored in every wall of every house I have ever owned or rented. I come up empty. Nothing. Not a single trouble scenario recorded on any of my tapes.
The TV cable line in San Bruno. Have a look at that one, Doubt suggests.
The TV cable line in San Bruno. Yeah, I remember that cable. I ran it between the basement and the living room of the house we were renting. There were no firewalls involved. I’m certain of that. Still, I dig out my tape of the installation just to be sure. The image is predictably fuzzy, but I can see myself drilling through something. It’s not a firewall, but it is something wooden. A heating duct. That’s what it is. An old-fashioned heating duct made out of plywood.
Shit!
But wait a minute. Didn’t I seal up that hole? With a special gasket and caulking, in fact? I’m certain that I did. I try to fast-forward to that part of my installation memory. I can’t find it, though; the tape is blurry. I reassure myself next that I’d gotten permission from the landlord beforehand, and had actually shown him after the fact how the line was run. Unfortunately, both of those scenes, too, are all but static on my virtual tapes.
Refocus, Jeff, I tell myself. Think about the believing pyramid. Think about Release. Self side, Surrender level. Release this whole thing. Do it now.
