OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER (OCD) DESTROYED MY BRAIN

                                       OCD HAS BLOWN UP MY BRAIN

I am just another guy sitting in my kitchen chair trying to figure out how to become a successful author. I just read David Baldacci's autobiography on this best selling all time successful author and he made writing seem so easy. He made it sound like good writing was just like telling an interesting story to a friend.

I am a 74 year old guy who is retired and disinterested in almost everything I have been doing besides talking to my family of a bunch of kids and grandkids my dog and girlfriend. Writing seems like the one way I can justify an admittedly indulged existence because of the good fortune of a well endowed family and some business success. Otherwise, I feel very empty sitting out here in Florida far away from my roots in Chicago.

I never saw the point in going to school so I ended up graduating last in my class in both grade school and high school and then got kicked out of 3 colleges and inducted into the army at the height of the Vietnam war. Being scared to death of actually being sent to fight I fooled the shrink at the induction center with an academy award performance of a neurotic, disturbed, terrified, bullied kid who said he could not urinate with other people around. 

 I did the whole interview never looking up at the army psychiatrist always whispering. He bought my crazy act even though he still had me come back three months later. I came back and did the same act of being a potential total liability for the army. I was permanently rejected.

I headed straight to the local pool room where my friends were waiting for my results. I took them all out to dinner and we all got drunk to celebrate my failure to be drafted. They were mostly nice boys who got deferments because they were in college to be Dr.s or lawyers. 

That was back in 1969. In the ensuing time I have been the same lucky dope that I always was from grade school on.

I gambled, smoked dope, did a lot of coke and chased women all the time. I did get married to a wonderful woman and that union lasted from 1975 to 1989 although we were pretty done after 1982.

I just had a reunion with some guys I have been friends with for 69 years who are all friends from the old neighborhood who started school with me in 1953. It was great. They know me.

We all sat around and lamented our lives.

Someone told me that I have spent my whole life fucking around and that I should not change. He said I should spend the rest of my life fucking around. 

But, oh for the demons of OCD OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER that has tortured me for over sixty years. The inside of my head surely looks like the rubble of blown up buildings in a war. It certainly feels that way. Just sayin.