Frida, Menashe, Raya and Yitzhak Sterenberg

About fifteen years ago, I came across some very old photos belonging to my mother.  One of them was a photo of a man and women with what appeared to be their two young children.  I asked my mom who they were.

“That is your grandfather’s(Fred) sister, husband and children. They were murdered in the Holocaust”

What? I did not know my grandfather had a sister let alone they were murdered.  He had passed in 1983 and had been ravaged by a stroke years earlier.  He never told me about any of his family in the “old country”.  I knew we had some relatives in Israel on his side but I had only met one of them when I was very young.

My mom told me that Fred actually had two other brothers,  Yosef who immigrated to Palestine, which would of course, would later became Israel and Louis or “Levi” who had lived in NYC.   My grandfather rarely talked about it to my mom so she had very little to tell us. I  had to know.  Did I have an extended family that I had never met?  Where they all dead? Were more of my family murdered in the Holocaust?  Where the smiling couple and children in the photo even my family? Was that really my grandfather’s sister? My mom was unsure.

My grandfather Fred Feldman

Over the years I would make some efforts to start a family tree but without no real starting point of a living person who knew more than my mom, it was difficult.  My mother is an only child.  Her mother had extended family but they also had little info about Fred’s pedigree.  A dead end. I would never know who this mysterious couple was that may be family and among eleven million others who perished in the Holocaust, never got to fulfill  their futures. Never got to see their children grow up. Leaving me only to imagine how they must have died at the hands of the Nazis in a ghetto, concentration camp or maybe shot in the back of the head and dumped into a mass grave.

Fast forward to 2012.  While my efforts had hit a roadblock over the years, I had never forgotten that photo. I would often pull it out and stare, wondering what they must have been thinking in that happy time. Did they know they were doomed?   What were they thinking?  There was some writing in Yiddish on the back of the photo. I had it translated.”Murdered by the Nazis” not much more.  Nothing to tell me who they were. I asked my mom to send me the rest of her old photos. Another photo of the couple and children. Photos of family in Israel from my grandfather’s visit in 1966 when I was only five. There had to be living relatives. How do I contact them?  Some of them will still be alive because they are young in the photo.  Someone there could surely tell me about the photo. Why had we not stayed in touch?  I decided to simply start at the beginning. With a family tree started by my grandfather.  I would use Ancestry.com.

Re-creating my family history was like putting together the pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle but not knowing what the final picture is supposed to look like when done.  Early on it was very successful. I was able to get a great history on my grandfather and his brother, Louis because they emigrated to the United States. There was a bunch of records that had been digitized and available on the Ancestory site.  The third brother Josef was much more difficult because he left  the town they were all born in Noua Sulita, Romania,  and went to Palestine. There is really no centralized database of records relating to Israel.  I next utilized JewishGen.com.  I also sent the information to a good friend of mine at Yad Vashem. I found more on the three brothers but nothing on this alleged sister and family. Dead End.

Fast forward to 2013.  Through continuing detective work on Ancestry,  I was able to track down a relative  on the side of Fred’s brother Louis.  What do I do now? I was so nervous! I wrote out my script.

“Hi, I am Brian Cuban, My grandfather is Fred Feldman. His brother was Louis Feldman, your grandfather. We are related”

I called. As one might expect they were skeptical. Some guy calling out of the blue and claiming relation. I’d be skeptical as well.  The first call was uncomfortable and I thought I had hit another dead end.  I expressed my disappointment to my younger brother Jeff.  He pointed out that it was probably a big shock and they needed to digest it.  Relax and I would hear from them again.

Jeff was right.  Fast forward two weeks.  The phone rings.  It’s the granddaughter!   We have  connected!   We had a great conversation. We exchanged the photos we had.  Then the big Holocaust break comes.  She sends me among other photos, the exact same photo I have of the couple and their children that were supposedly murdered. There is writing on the back.  I sent it to a good friend of mine from the Dallas Intown Chabad  who had been helping me with the Yiddish Translation. I expected it to say the same as the other. “Murdered by the Nazis”. It didn’t.  It said, “Menashe, Frida and children.”  The same photo had been sent by Fred’s brother Yosef  in Israel, to both Fred and Louis as a remembrance of their sister.  I had done it. I had made the Holocaust connection. I had a great aunt. Her name was Frida Feldman-Sterenberg. Her husband was Dr. Menashe Sterenberg. Their children were Raya and Yitzhak.

Once I had the names, the dominoes fell.  I immediately accessed the Yad Vashem Holocaust Testimony database.  There were numerous Holocaust testimonies for Frida and family  submitted by relatives of mine from Israel  giving some of the details of their lives and ultimate death at the hands of the Romanian army who had allied with Nazi Germany and implemented their own version of the Final Solution known as pogroms.  Here is what I have learned so far about their short lives.

Noua Sulita was captured by Romanian forces on July 2, 1941. On the same day, 800 Jews were murdered  probably including Frida’s husband Menashe and daughter Raya.  They were found shot with Menashe still holding her.  The surviving Jews including my great aunt Frida and her son Yitzhak, , were rounded up and put into a  factory.  On July 20, 1941  all the surviving Jews from the town were deported to Transiteria.  En route they were exposed to constant brutality, and the old and weak among them were put to death. This included my great aunt Frida who was shot when she fell behind on the march.   Yitzhak died later from illness and starvation at a Transnitria concentration camp.

One year before they were murdered. Jews were often conscripted to sere in the Romanian army

The soldiers who slaughtered my family and murdered the majority of Jews in Noua Sulita, may have died later in the war. They may have moved to new locations under new names. They may have gone on to live the full lives they denied my family. They may have been prosecuted as war criminals. I will never know.  They will probably always been nameless, faceless, murderes relegated to the images I give them and I sometimes relive the the pain and desperation Frida and family must have felt having their futures taken from them. As long as I live however, they will always live.  As long as the entire Feldman family goes on in the form of children, grandhildren, great grandchildren, they will always live. Family, including my long lost relatives in Israel who I have now reconnected with and will soon meet for the first time.

I will never forget my great aunt Frida Feldman-Sterenberg, Menahse Sterenberg, Yitzhak Sterenberg and Raya Sterenberg who were among the eleven million murdered in the Holocaust. .I hope you won’t either.

This is an excerpt of my book  “Shattered Image”.  Shattered Image is the story of my struggle with, and recovery from, a compulsive behavior clinically known as Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD). That struggle has included recovery from bulimia, anorexia, alcoholism, and addiction to cocaine and steroids. I also suffer from clinical depression. For decades, I engaged in self-destructive behavior with the single goal of correcting a terribly distorted sense of self-image, a self-image rooted in early life experiences.  Release date is August 8th 2013  See what people are saying about Shattered Image!

July 22, 2005. A dark room. Table, desk, chairs. With me is a staff psychiatrist of the Green Oaks Psychiatric Facility. I have heard of Green Oaks—it isn’t far from my home in Dallas. Now, in the room with the psychiatrist, scenes of Jack Nicolson and One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest go through my muddled mind. I am in the middle of a crisis and I’m thinking about movies. Nearby are my brothers. As I sit and listen to the doctor’s questions, I have a vague recollection of my younger brother rousing me from my bed, an angry confrontation, my .45 automatic lying on my nightstand. Then shock and confusion on the drive to the treatment center.

The residuals of cocaine, Xanax, and Jack Daniels are still coursing through my veins, but the fog is lifting slightly. Raging anger is settling in its place. Battle lines are being drawn in my mind. They want to take me prisoner. It’s war. I’ll lead the inmate rebellion.

Questions from the shrink pierce my anger like tracer rounds. What drugs have you taken? How are you feeling? Are you nuts! I’m angry! Do I want to hurt myself? Yes! Maybe! Not sure. Not sure of anything. The anger is too powerful. I believe if I died it would teach everyone a lesson. My family. The kids who ripped my pants off. My mother. Myself, for being unable to fix the distorted reflection I see in the mirror each day. I can’t tell him that! What answer will get me out of here? In the back of my mind, what’s left of the lawyer takes over. I know that my family can’t commit me, but he can. Proceed with caution. “If I wanted to hurt myself there would have been bullets in the gun.” I don’t mention the fact that the person I had asked for bullets had ratted me out to my brothers. And I don’t mention that I had been “practicing” sticking the barrel of the gun in my mouth and dry-firing the gun. I drift away, thinking about that night with the gun, the barrel in my mouth, my confused beagle watching from the doorway.

Ripped back to reality. Voices in the room. The doctor is talking to me again. When was the last time I used cocaine? I am pretty sure it has been recently, since it was all over the room when my brother showed up. I had become the consummate liar in hiding the obvious cocaine habit from my family. It’s that damn persistent cold that used to appear mysteriously every weekend. Now it’s a daily occurrence. No one is buying it in this room.

Yelling. Accusations. All coming from me. I am angry at my brothers. I hate you! I want your attention! Now I have it! I am an eleven-year-old child, lashing out at my mother who is a thousand miles away. They have taken away my control. What control? I am out of control. Anyone in my line of sight is fair game. I’m blaming my brothers for everything that has gone wrong in my life. Why are they trying to hold me back? When I am on drugs, I am their equal. I can’t even look at them. If I would only look them in the eye, I would see nothing but love and concern. I look at the table. I look at my shoes. I find that fixed point on the floor that provides me comfort. I wish that shrink would stop asking me questions! The shrink is my enemy. My brothers, They have betrayed me. They are calm. Trying to make sure I am still above ground tomorrow.

I notice the room is not really dark. Sunlight pours through the windows, but I am in the darkest of places. I remember seeking a release of everything in me. Need those bullets! Too coked up and Xanaxed down to go out and buy some. Who do I know that can help?

More questions. Do I think I need help? Will I go to rehab? Sure, whatever will get me out of here. I lash out again. They have no right to do this. Blaming them for the darkness is so much easier than seeing the light. The doctor is asking calm focused questions, to ascertain whether I am a danger to myself. At times I am calm in my answers. At times I am crying, agitated at him, then my brothers. Quit asking the same questions! I know your game! Quit treating me like an idiot!

So alone. More and more I start to feel like the shy, introverted boy I once was. I’m no longer the sophisticated, in-shape, cover model I created in my imagination—the myth that drugs and alcohol and eating disorders and steroids and plastic surgery helped to make. The desperate delusions of a mind distorted.

Up until now, each day has been a battle to see someone different when I looked in the mirror. But in this room there is no reflection. I’m unshaven. Unkempt. I reek of booze and days of neglected hygiene. I’m as raw and vulnerable as I could possibly be. I’m exposed. And I can no longer escape the stark reality of how I was getting by day by day.

An hour has passed. The room is getting brighter. The love and calm of my brothers soothes me. Quiets me. Softens me. It’s always been there. I wasn’t there. I was thinking only of me. My next high. My next drink. Without the drugs, what am I going to see in the mirror each morning? My brothers calm me, and I begin to focus on my love for my family. Arms are around me. Holding me. I begin to feel the love through my shell. They are not the enemy. There is a pinhole of real light beginning to expand. Should I go to rehab? What about twelve-step? I’m still on the defensive, but I am now listening for a moment at least. Have to grab those moments. They don’t come often.

After the one-hour psych evaluation, I was taken home from Green Oaks, wondering how I had taken myself to the brink of eternity so quickly. In reality, it was not quick. It was a cumulative lifetime descent with just enough good moments to blind me to the reality of the slide. Even in addiction and body dysmorphia there were good moments in my life.

It was decided that a facility out of state and away from the mirrors, coke addicts, and obsolete environment of self-loathing I had created for myself would be the best course of action. But ultimately I would not go.

]]> http://www.briancuban.com/pills-booze-and-a-45-in-my-mouth/feed/ 0 http://www.briancuban.com/pills-booze-and-a-45-in-my-mouth/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BrianCubansBlog/~3/gnnajlKqshY/ http://www.briancuban.com/pantsed-a-shattered-image-excerpt/#comments Thu, 06 Jun 2013 01:40:43 +0000 Brian Cuban http://www.briancuban.com/?p=16204

This is an excerpt of my book  “Shattered Image”.  Shattered Image is the story of my struggle with, and recovery from, a compulsive behavior clinically known as Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD). That struggle has included recovery from bulimia, anorexia, alcoholism, and addiction to cocaine and steroids. I also suffer from clinical depression. For decades, I engaged in self-destructive behavior with the single goal of correcting a terribly distorted sense of self-image, a self-image rooted in early life experiences.  Release date is August 2013  See what people are saying about Shattered Image!   

When I was thirteen years old, I was “pantsed” by kids I thought were my friends. Or should I say, I was pantsed by kids who I was pretending were my friends in a vain attempt to feel accepted. It was the most humiliating experience of my young life. In reality, it was a physical assault.

While I was walking home from junior high with these classmates, they started making fun of my shiny gold pants my brother Mark had given me, commenting on how tight they were on my fat body. They started pulling at them. One kid yanked them down over my underwear and tore them off me. The rest joined in ripping them into rags that they threw into the street. I was laughed at and taunted about having to walk the mile home on a busy street in my underwear. Many drivers passed and gawked but no one stopped. I gathered up the remaining shreds that were lying on the pavement and tried cover myself up for the walk home—a cross country trek of shame. The message from my “friends” was loud and clear. I was not one of them. The last thing I remember hearing as I stood there in my underwear letting them build some distance from me was, “Hey Cuban, when you get some new pants, get a bra while you’re at it.”

What happened that day was not posted onto YouTube. No Facebook page was created. No one tweeted about it. There was no Facebook. There was no Internet. There was no such thing as cyber-bullying in 1974. It never went beyond the group involved and whomever they told to boast of their deeds. If bullying went “viral” it spread through the lunchroom and classroom. After the incident, kids would come up to me in the lunch line and ask me how I liked walking home in my underwear. I could feel the derisive looks and smirks. How did I handle it? I did not fight back as I had done in summer camp. Instead, I used my tried and true technique of self-deprecating humor and self-degradation. A coping skill I would take with me into adulthood. Ha, they really got me good didn’t they . . . Instead of fighting back or getting angry, it seemed easier to make fun of myself and try to be everyone’s friend, even if they continued to bully me.

I never stood up for myself so nothing happened. I could have fought back. I could have gone to my parents. I could have gone to the school. I did none of those things. Thinking back, the reasons that resonate over forty years later is that I was ashamed. I was ashamed of my body. I agreed with the kids who were humiliating me. I felt I should be humiliated by my inability to control my body. To “fix it.” What I saw in the mirror was a mass of grotesque imperfection, and the bullies had done me the favor of confirming that my thoughts about myself were accurate.

For some kids, the Episode of the Gold Pants might seem like a typical rite of passage, an act of mortification that they might even laugh about as adults. But for me the walk of shame and the public gossip that followed it altered the way I thought about myself for many long years. How is that possible? Why did this one act of bullying have such an outsized impact on my psyche? Bullying is a hot topic in the media now, with new book releases every season about the deleterious effects of bullying culture in the country. We all read reports in the news about children pushed to acts of self-harm by elaborately orchestrated bullying campaigns. The subject has been covered so extensively lately, that there’s even a sort of backlash: a few writers point out that some of what we label “bullying” is an inevitable part of the fabric of childhood and that over-diagnosing the problem is counterproductive.

What some of these conversations miss, however, is that all bullies and their victims are individuals with rich and complex personalities, not just generic social actors. To every experience, we all bring unique innate tendencies along with a network of past experiences. In my case, I already had an innate tendency toward obsessive behavior and shyness, a growing sense of social isolation in a new school environment, and—perhaps as significant as anything—a home life increasingly characterized by discord and verbal abuse from my mom. At school, I badly wanted to fit in, and I lived in constant fear that I’d hear from my peers words that echoed those I’d hear from my mother at home: We don’t accept fat pigs and dumb bunnies into our group.

This is an excerpt of my book  “Shattered Image”.  Shattered Image is the story of my struggle with, and recovery from, a compulsive behavior clinically known as Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD). That struggle has included recovery from bulimia, anorexia, alcoholism, and addiction to cocaine and steroids. I also suffer from clinical depression. For decades, I engaged in self-destructive behavior with the single goal of correcting a terribly distorted sense of self-image, a self-image rooted in early life experiences.  Release date is August 2013  See what people are saying about Shattered Image!   

7:00 am. Rise and Shine! A Beautiful Day! What pants will I wear today? Which ones will make me feel less fat and ugly? Have not been working out as much as I should. I  think I can see the new fat accumulating on my sides and back. Will any of them fit? They fit yesterday but today is a new day. My tension level rises. No longer enjoying the sunny morning, the birds singing. Depression setting in.   Maybe I will wear a pair that has not been washed in a week. They are stretched out and will fit. I know it’s a lie but at least I wont start the day depressed. Maybe a shower “flattening” will work. Into the shower. Twist to the right, Twist to the left. I can see the extra fat! I knew it! Push down hard! Flatten it! Maybe it will not bounce back as much as the last one-thousand times I flattened it.

Out of the shower to the bathroom mirror. Stare. Stare.  Stare at my stomach. Is it bigger?  Thirty minutes have now passed staring at my stomach. Press down again on the love handles. Maybe that will create some room in the jeans. Deep breathe. First pair goes on. SHIT! There is less room! I can feel it. I can’t leave the house now! Try on the next pair! Dammit! Same feeling. It’s confirmed. My stomach has grown. On to the next pair. Pull them. Stretch them. I can’t leave the house until I get that comfort feeling of a pair of pants that create a cushion between my growing stomach and my brain.

There is my dry cleaned pair of dress pants. Those fit a little better. Thank god! What about that next pair. Have to make sure. Have to go downstairs and have my coffee while I think about it and de-stress. Back upstairs. I can’t deal with it today. Going with the smelly stretched out week old jeans. Put them out. I can feel that looseness. Maybe my stomach is ok. Relief washes over me. I can leave the house.

It was therefore both exciting and refreshing to see actor Ashley Hamilton come forward with his bulimia and anorexia struggles. The more men that come forward the more eating disorders will be seen as problem that transcends gender.  The more it will become accepted to seek treatment. The more it will be covered by health insurance. We need more brave men like Ashley Hamilton.  It’s just one guy but each one that comes forward is one more voice to the masses. I am Brian Cuban.  I am an eating disorder survivor.  Let’s spread the word for everyone who suffers in silence, men and women!  Let’s give them hope!

This is an excerpt of my book  “Shattered Image”.  Shattered Image is the story of my struggle with, and recovery from, a compulsive behavior clinically known as Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD). That struggle has included recovery from bulimia, anorexia, alcoholism, and addiction to cocaine and steroids. I also suffer from clinical depression. For decades, I engaged in self-destructive behavior with the single goal of correcting a terribly distorted sense of self-image, a self-image rooted in early life experiences.  Release date is August 2013  See what people are saying about Shattered Image!   

Summer 1971. I’m at Emma Kaufman Camp near Morgantown, West Virginia. Emma Kaufman is a summer tradition for countless Jewish children from Pittsburgh, and it was a tradition in our family. My brothers went. I went. But that summer of ’71 stands out in my mind, marking some of the earliest memories I have of feelings I’d later associate with embarrassment and shame about how I appeared to others.

It is the night of the Emma Kaufman Camp annual talent show. I walk up to the front of the wooden stage. I sweat a little more with each creaking old wooden board echoing throughout the structure. I am suddenly facing 100 ten and eleven year olds. They are laughing and joking with each other. In my mind, they are laughing and making fun of me. I am terrified. I am nervous and nauseous. Teeth and braces grinding enamel. The musty smell of the wood building and the damp rain falling on the leaves outside intensify the feeling.

The Beatles hit, “Let It Be” is the song. There is no microphone. There is no music. I am standing naked and exposed in front of a hundred other kids. I remind myself that this was my choice. I chose to sing this song, nobody was making me, and I chose to sing because I wanted to take control of my fear. To cast aside uncertainty. To become popular. To be noticed. If I could sing “Let It Be,” my weight would not matter. My shyness would not matter. I hoped this would be no different from the piano recital. I handled those. I could handle this. Take a deep breath. Count to ten. Focus on a fixed point. In recitals it was the piano keys. I focused on the wooden floor in front of me. I was too terrified to look at the kids staring me down, talking and laughing. I opened my mouth.

The only sound that emerged was a guttural groan, such as a wounded animal might make.I started to sweat. Kids were laughing. Now I was sure they were laughing at me. I was humiliated—not much different than the humiliation of shyness and the shame of body that constantly gripped me, but this time the feeling was focused like a magnifying glass in the sunlight bearing down on a blade of grass.

Continuing to focus on the wooden floor, I walked off the stage and moved quickly through the door. I broke into a run back to my cabin. I cried. I knew that the worst was yet to come. My cabin mates would be back soon. Some were just waiting for the next excuse to ridicule me as if they were bored with calling me fat. Our cabin counselor would intervene and tell them to leave me alone, as he had done before. I wanted to go home. I couldn’t

My fellow campers filtered back into the cabin. One made his way straight for me as I lay on my bunk. “Not only are you fat but you sing like shit.” Still crying I jumped up and attacked him. I ran at him as hard as I could and used all of my 200 pounds to knock him back onto the bunk bed. I had stood up for myself. It felt good. He never bothered me again, but I was banned from the Camper vs. Counselor softball game, the one event where I felt I’d be comfortable around my peers.

The talent show was just the beginning of my embarrassments. At Emma Kaufman, I had a camp crush. I remember her smile, dark skin and long, dark flowing  black hair, almost Greek features,  as she stood on the porch of her camp cabin. I remember making any excuse I could to get within feet of her in various camp activities. I tried to befriend others who were her friends to be close to her. No matter how close I got, I was unable to say anything other than mumbling, barely audible  hellos as I looked at the ground. She sometimes smiled and hello back, but that was as far as we’d get. I finally remember her laughing derisively to the unwanted and embarrassing shout from my friend that I had a crush on her.

Man, I hated camp.

This is an excerpt of my book  “Shattered Image”.  Shattered Image is the story of my struggle with, and recovery from, a compulsive behavior clinically known as Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD). That struggle has included recovery from bulimia, anorexia, alcoholism, and addiction to cocaine and steroids. I also suffer from clinical depression. For decades, I engaged in self-destructive behavior with the single goal of correcting a terribly distorted sense of self-image, a self-image rooted in early life experiences.  Release date is August 2013  See what people are saying about Shattered Image!

I have recurring dreams. Scenes from law school, struggles with addiction, and failed relationships are in constant re-run.  They are vivid and colorful. Like full length movies played out in my subconscious . They say this is common with recovering addicts. That’s what they say.

This particular dream begins as I arrive at a party. I’m by myself as I walk into a dark, empty room. I am embarrassed and alone. I don’t want to be alone. Even in my dream,I can feel the emptiness in my stomach. The ache of loneliness and isolation. I want to be accepted and popular. I know high school classmates will be showing up, and I want to be included in their fun. I order a diet coke. The bartender tells me they do not serve it. He offers me a Jack Daniels and Diet-Coke, my drink of choice pre-sobriety. I take the drink from him but I can’t raise the glass to my mouth. My arm won’t move.. I go to the bathroom to do a line of coke. I’m can’t snort it. The cocaine is just out of reach of the straw. The white powder vaporizing into the ether of the dream. There is always a barrier keeping me from drawing anything into my blood that will transform me into the Brian I want to see in the mirror every morning. Attractive, slim and confident. The Brian I never see. Sometimes I wake up with the familiar, peculiar smell of cocaine in my nose, the smell of ether and baby laxative. They say that is a sign of recovery. So they say.

I am walking through the room. I see a high school classmate. He said he was my friend. Before he and others assaulted me and tore my pants off.  Exposing my fat, ugly body to the world.  He is sixteen, I am fifty-one. He wants nothing to do with me. He makes fun of my weight. I run to to the bathroom and  look in the mirror.  I am no longer a heavy teenager. I am a grown, mature adult. Why is he making fun of my weight? Doesn’t he see me? The room is filling up. More high school classmates. More bullies of my childhood. They are all teens. How did I get so old? I ask “Can I join your group?” They all laugh and otherwise ignore me. I am right here! You know me! The room gets darker.  I can no longer see them. The familiar feeling, the familiar ache. The loneliness. An empty, gut-wrenching void. Wanting to scream in my dream with only a guttural groan emanating from my sleeping mouth.  Dream shifts. I am standing up against the gym wall at the high school dance, wishing someone would talk to me. They are back. My childhood bullies appear again. . They start pulling at and tearing my clothes, exposing me. I am crying. I am screaming. Why Don’t You Like Me!  They laugh in response. I am awake. The ache is still with me. The nighttime remnants of a once shattered image. It will fade. Hopefully a different re-run tomorrow night.

Dreams fade to morning, and morning brings with it decisions that will have consequences for both the mind and body. The choices I make through the day can leave me feeling calm and happy by sundown, or feeling like I’m still stuck in a nightmare. But this feeling is not a dream. It is the reality of Body Dysmorphic Disorder.

This is the fourteenth excerpt of my book  “Shattered Image”.  Shattered Image is the story of my struggle with, and recovery from, a compulsive behavior clinically known as Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD). That struggle has included recovery from bulimia, anorexia, alcoholism, and addiction to cocaine and steroids. I also suffer from clinical depression. For decades, I engaged in self-destructive behavior with the single goal of correcting a terribly distorted sense of self-image, a self-image rooted in early life experiences.  Release date is July -August 2013  See what people are saying about Shattered Image!

Summer, 1984.  Five in the morning.  Standing at attention. The early morning, thick Virginia humidity giving me the shower I had not had yet. Sweating my ass off.  Grimy, sweaty clothes I had worn for two days.  The fear and uncertainty of what I had gotten myself into manifesting itself in a paralyzing fear gazing out into nothing.

“GET YOUR HANDS OUT OF YOUR FUCKING POCKET CANDIDATE CUBAN! YOU ARE AN IDIOT PIECE OF SHIT CANDIDATE CUBAN! YOU SPEAK TO ME IN THE SECOND PERSON! YOU ADDRESS ME AS SERGEANT INSTRUCTOR!  ARE YOU EYEBALLING ME? “YOU WILL NEVER MAKE IT HERE. YOU ARE A D.O.R! (Discharge On Request), punctuating each letter like daggers directly into my gut.

My second day  at Officer Candidate School, Quantico, Virginia.  My radical attempt at self-help.  I did not enlist in the US Marine Corps because I was patriotic or some other noble cause. I did not want to be one of the “few good men”.  I wanted to be able to look at myself in the mirror and see a man.  I wanted to become the man that girls would look at and see past the ugliness I saw in the mirror.  The Marines could make that reflection right. The fat Brian.  The burgeoning alcoholic Brian.  The shy Brian. They would all be gone.  I wanted to see a Brian that I could love, and that others would love as well.  The Marines could make me into that one good man. I would get in great physical shape and gain self-confidence in who I was. The million shattered pieces of the mirror would be miraculously put back together in ten weeks over the summer. Humpty-Dumpty never fared so well.

In reality, what I was doing was at its core no different than the binging and purging, anorexia, or the binge drinking I had engaged in since college. I was looking for someone or something else to change me. Basic training, of course, isn’t a therapists office. The goal of basic training is not to make young men feel good about themselves. It’s about breaking down the ego of the individual and replacing it with the ego of the group, so that everyone can depend on each other in hostile situations. The Marines have produced tens of thousands of soldiers. It’s not their job to produce psychologically healthy adults. I simply had the wrong mindset. As with self-help, basic training is no solution for those with real psychological problems.

By my second day at Quantico, I was completely overwhelmed. I went from being a loner and doing as I pleased to fuel my unhealthy obsessions to having to conform within a platoon of candidates I did not know and a platoon sergeant and sergeant instructor whose job it was to degrade me.  Break me down and then build me up.  I was already broken.  Soon I was confused and terrified that I had made a huge mistake. On our second day, we all had to go in front of the Platoon Captain for a brief interview that all officer candidates went through.

Son, what were your scores on the PT test?” “This officer candidate thought he did pretty well.” “Son let me tell you something. You’re pretty arrogant. You did not do well at all. You are not in very good shape. If you don’t get those scores up you won’ make it here.”

The captain went on about my arrogance and unworthiness to be a US Marine. In doing his job, he had trashed the one remaining pillar of my self-confidence—my physical fitness. He was a grown man telling me I’d never become a grown man myself. I heard the voice of my mom calling me a fat pig and a dumb bunny.  I heard the voices of everyone who had ever picked on me or made fun of my weight. It was too much. I was terrified and lost. The final nail in my marine career coffin was the realization that they were going to shave my head. For someone with Body Dysmorphic Disorder,  that thought was terrifying to the point of severe depression. I had never thought about it before I joined. It seems trivial but for someone who already saw himself as a deformed it’s terrifying.  I knew right then I was not staying in the Marines.

As it so happened,  I had been having some knee pain as was normal for me as someone who was running over 80 miles a week at that time.  They sent me to Fort Belvoir Virginia to be examined. I  knew nothing was really wrong and knew that they would probably just tell me I had “runners knee” if anything at all. It was something I had lived with and could have lived with in OCS.  It however, would give me some time to think.  After some conversation, the Navy Corpsman who examined me knew what the deal was. He had seen it before.  He asked me a simple question. “Do you want to go home”? I gave him a simple answer. “Yes.”

My time in the Marines was over.  I was once again a bullied child running for cover.  I have often regretted sticking it out in the years since and wondered what my life would be life if I had. I also know that at that time, it was not something I could have gone through. Body dysmorphia did not fit with the Marine lifestyle. It wasn’t just the calculated abuse.  In the end I was simply looking for someone to fix me. Not even the Marines can do that. Only I could do that. Unfortunately, I was decades from figuring that out.

 I wrote this about 2 1/2 years ago for a book I was working on.  It seems appropriate to post now in lieu of the tragic  events in Boston.

Al-Qaeda carries off a new series of attacks in New York City. First there is the bombing of a NYC MTA Transit Bus killing all hostages and a terrorist. The FBI determines that there is a cell of 5 involved. Next is a subway bombing. The 3rd is a Broadway bombing killing everyone in the packed theater.

Intelligence develops that it is a cell out of Yemen. The FBI is unable to locate it and seems powerless to stop the next attack.

The last explosion is the FBI building itself killing hundreds. Panic grips the nation. Pursuant to the War Powers Resolution, and executive authority to use military domestically in emergency situations, President Obama acts. He declares a state of national emergency. The National Guard and regular military are called in. The next morning, tanks are rolling down Broadway and across the Brooklyn Bridge. In response to outcry from the ACLU and human rights groups, President Obama releases the following statement:

“We are in a time of national emergency. Extraordinary measures are needed to ensure the security of our nation and prevent further loss of life. Furthermore,domestic use of the military against Al-Qaeda is legal because it serves a national security, rather than a law enforcement, purpose. I have constitutional and statutory authority to deploy the military against international or foreign terrorists operating within the United States”

Military intelligence further determines that they are looking for 4 Muslim males between 18-30 living somewhere in Brooklyn. Nothing more is known.

The military begins house to house rounding up all Muslims fitting that profile and putting them in the new Yankee Stadium for interrogation. The U.S. borders are closed to anyone flying in from selected “Muslim Countries”.

In “ripple in the water panic reaction” localities such as Deaborn Michigan with large Muslim populations begin rounding up all Muslims and placing them in their own detention facilities for interrogation and questioning.

Constitutional? Outrageous? Reasonable given the fact scenario?

When we are afraid it becomes all so disturbingly easy for us to dismiss out of hand the blood, sweat and tears that were put into the Constitutional rights we have today . Our rights when we are at peace and feel safe. Our rights when we are at war and/or a large portion of us are living in fear. Should it make a difference? It certainly has made a difference in our past. Who can forget The Sedition Acts of 1798 and 1918, The McCarthy Hearings or Korematsu v. United States where Justice Black writing for the majority stated that:

“Korematsu was not excluded from the Military Area because of hostility to him or his race. He was excluded because we are at war with the Japanese Empire”

While it has been frowned on publicly in every sense, it should be noted that Korematsu has never been overruled. Are we at war now? Certainly not in the traditional Congressional declared sense. If we are, how easy would it be to substitute names and nationality in Justice Black’s statement. There is no doubt that we have trended towards more power to the executive during times of “war” and national emergency.

No one wants to live in fear. That is what terrorists want but on a much broader scale than you and I. They want chaos at airports. They want us to engage in pure racial and ethnic profiling. They want us to round people up and put them in stadiums. They want our Constitution to change for the worse so that we feel less afraid, lulled by into a false state of calm by our new “Fear Based Constitution” They know that it’s always easier to justify a Fear Based Constitution when we are on the outside of the barbed wire looking in.

THAT is the fear they shoot for when bringing down planes. That is how they win. By bringing about fundamental changes to our way of life. What is a more fundamental than a change in our Constitutional Rights solely out of fear.

As we stand united this moment , Is our “Cup Of  Constitutional Rights” half-full or half-empty? One thing is certain. Whether the “water-level” rises or falls in the near future will be impacted by whether voices of calm and reason or voices of knee-jerk fear are doing the pouring.

Our Constitution has been around for well over 200 years and while getting its edges torn now and then has always managed to withstand moments in history of and moments of great fear. I hope it will escape this fearful moment in-tact.