March 21, 2006. It’s a Tuesday morning and I am headed out the door of our new home in the North Bay hills, overlooking the outer reaches of the San Francisco Bay. The skies are overcast and about to open up, so I decide it’s best not to drop the top of my Mazda Miata. No problem, though; I no longer need to.
Buying a used pint-sized convertible had been part of my strategy to get myself back behind the wheel of a car on a regular basis. Without a roof over my head, I’d reasoned, I could see and hear everything around me that much better. I was right, and for well over a year, in all weather conditions, I drove almost everywhere with the top down, eliciting some rather interesting looks and comments along the way.
“Dude, you must be freezing your ass off,” shouted the guy in the big 4-by-4 next to me at a red light one frosty winter morning.
“No, really, it’s not that-t-t-t bad,” I yelled back through chattering teeth.
I can’t help smiling as I think about all this now, driving—top and windows up—to the nearby ferry terminal, where I’ll catch my boat to San Francisco.
I pull into the ferry parking lot with a mere five minutes to spare. I grab my backpack and allow myself one quick inventory. Parking brake. Locks. Lights. Windows. One, two, three, four/I can leave I know the score. I walk away without a single glance back.
Fifty minutes, a cup of coffee, and a San Francisco Chronicle later, I arrive in the City and walk to a nearby Peet’s for another cup of coffee. I hand the barista a five, realizing I never did wash my hands after that sneeze (into my sleeve) on the ferry ride over. I’m okay.
Crossing the busy Embarcadero next, I join the pack of office workers and tourists who step off the curb before the walking light officially turns green. I have broken the rules. And I’m okay.
Now I’m feeling cocky, so I make a point of stepping on every manhole cover and sewer grating I pass along the ten blocks to work, even pausing to say hello to a friend under the scaffolding just outside our building. My pulse is rising quickly at this point, but I’m okay.
Finally, I arrive at 865 Battery Street. San Francisco headquarters for the CBS Radio and Television Network. I take the elevator to the third-floor newsroom, where soon the easy part of my day will begin, as I join my partner in Studio A and spend five hours co-anchoring afternoon drive, as I’ve been doing every weekday now for a year and half.
Like most days, I’m tempted to pinch myself, or at least to take a minute to remember just how blessed I am: To be back at KCBS. To be back in cars. To be back inside crowded places. To be back at Christmas tree farms and around children again. To be back as a husband and father.
To be back.
March 21 is a good day. Not all my days are so chock full of OCD successes. Truth is, my battles with Doubt are never-ending. More often than not I am strong enough to defend myself. But not always. There are still those moments of weakness when I get stuck at a sink, or loop my car in a circle, or check and re-check a door or a parking brake, or play back a portion of the airchecks I have yet to stop myself from recording.
The difference now is that I know my way out of Doubt’s grip. I know how to believe beyond the flawed processing of my own physical senses. And I also know how to accept the many gifts of support available to me. I have learned to put stubborn pride aside and ask for help, from Jackie and others, when I need it. And, as I’ve attempted to explain, I have made peace with medication, coming to understand how it helps me function, and thereby helps me serve my greater good.
I am awed by, and forever grateful for, the way in which my project has influenced not only me, but also so many others in my life. Nicole and Brianna, now fifteen and twelve, have grown up with their own handmade belief models on their nightstands, and for years Samantha and I have used the twelve “pyramid words” to give our family a common vocabulary for talking about the power of believing—in ourselves, in others, and in life. The dozen words also adorn a bathroom mirror at my sister’s home, and her daughters too have grown up talking about such principles as Passion and Integrity and Faith and Release.
For nine years now, Carole Johnson and I have met often for coffee, to share our OCD triumphs and challenge one another to take that next step. For Carole, it’s been travel, which she’d given up at the demand of her own Doubt monster. And for me, it’s been finding the courage to move this book forward. Today, Carole is taking cruises, and I am gearing up for book tours ahead. We both tend to shake our heads in disbelief that much more with every get-together, one of the most recent of which included a quick ride in the Miata. “You drove me, Jeff!” Carole marveled as we pulled back into my driveway—just before she got out of the car and closed the door very deliberately, with a huge smile on her face. It took me a minute to figure out what she’d just done: shut the door not three times, but only once!
And then there’s the magic of what this book project has done to bring the family I grew up with together again. For the first time ever, we’re talking about the elephant in the room, the scarring perfectionism that so often drove us apart. We are all committed, as parents and grandparents, to seeing that none of our next generation ever feels pressured to do anything “just right.” The brutal honesty of all this is uncomfortable at times, but no one has encouraged me more than my father to tell my story just as I remember it: to hold nothing back that might be helpful to others. That, and our renewed friendship, are two of the greatest gifts I could ask for.
We in the news business sometimes opt to “sit on” a story, which is to say we occasionally choose not to report on something if there’s a compelling reason to keep it under wraps.
As my voice of doubt points out to me daily, there are at least a thousand reasons—all of them compelling—why I should sit on my story.
But I can’t. I owe far too much to far too many.
My OCD story is hardly a typical one, if there is such a thing. I have battled a more severe form of doubt than most obsessive-compulsives I’ve read about. And I have taken an especially circuitous path to recovery, drawing on resources both inside and outside the traditional mental health field. What worked for me might very well prove entirely ineffective for another OC. Still, I know firsthand the power of shared stories, and I wonder to this day where I’d be if not for the personal accounts I read in The Boy Who Couldn’t Stop Washing, and the tales I heard from a handful of recovering drunks and addicts determined to make something of their lost years. It’s in this spirit that I am committed to sharing my own story, hoping it might, in whatever small way, help not only other OCs, but anyone who’s ever struggled with doubt.
And besides, a bargain’s a bargain.