Life in Rewind

Ed had no specific time plan for his visit, but he quickly became known as ‘Rudy’s boy from back East’. With this acceptance by members of the football crew-which at Clemson really meant something-Ed could enjoy the vicarious thrill of watching his childhood friend practise each day from the sideline.

One afternoon, while casually tossing the ball back and forth with Rudy along the perimeter of the Clemson practice field after one of the team’s workouts, and as Ed imagined how proud his mother would have been to see him play football alongside Rudy, he was approached by head coach for the Tigers, Gary Wade, who seemed to have taken notice of some zip in those relaxed tosses, and asked where he’d played his high school football.

Ed was a scrawny guy in high school who had a lot of heart, but who never really spent much time on the radar of his coaches. Now, according to Rudy, a Clemson coach was taking notice of Ed.

Ed says he followed Coach Wade to the Jervey Athletic Center, and that on the way there they spoke about what it would take for him to be considered for the Tigers football squad. ‘I felt Coach Wade recognized in me something that he saw in the athletes who were full-scale recruits and Division One starters,’ says Ed. ‘He invested the time in me to make me feel positive, and made me feel that I had the ability to find greatness within myself.’

This escape from the confines of his father’s basement had suddenly turned into a new lease on life for Ed. The prospect of attending Clemson as a student athlete sounded like a long shot for a guy already one year out of high school who’d never even started in a high school game. But even though he was a lithe 10 stone, he knew his 6 foot 2 frame could handle the added bulk he’d need to put on in order to play. The biggest obstacle, as Ed saw it, was not so much the athletic component, but the additional requirements for Clemson’s stringent admission process.

Regardless, he placed his faith in his mother’s prescience, and his resolve was strong. With a copy of Coach Wade’s workout routine in hand, Ed returned home to Cape Cod, dream in tow, ready to fulfil the commitment he’d made to himself to one day play for the Clemson Tigers. But within days of coming home after that promising trip to South Carolina, and making that pronouncement to family and friends, his anxiety returned. It was the kind of anxiety he’d experienced when he was young-that nagging feeling that something bad would happen if he made the wrong choice of direction to go in while driving or walking.

Dual carriageways caused him overwhelming stress, and Ed would plan his daily travels to avoid them. He was panic-stricken by the thought of roundabouts, which are very common in his home state of Massachusetts. None of it made sense to him, and he didn’t understand why doing any of these things seemed so ominous, but they did.

Ed would soon take multi-mile detours to avoid round-abouts. But not only did these episodes inconvenience and frustrate him, they also, of course, proved trying to his passengers. Friends would often take the wheel and suggest that Ed, sitting in the front passenger seat, close his eyes while they executed turns. But it didn’t matter whether his eyes were open or closed, his body had its own sensors that would sound off in his brain, like a thousand sharp fingernails shrieking down a chalkboard. This was accompanied by the foreboding feeling that if he didn’t follow his mind’s directive, something terrible would happen: specifically, something bad might happen to someone he loved. It was the same foreboding feeling he’d first had when his older sister and aunts would try and push him and Deena to go out to do ‘fun stuff as their mother lay dying at home. His mind tried to adjust to the intuitive notion that he had to correct the situation with an opposite reaction, and the fear created by these peculiar, intrusive thoughts was relieved only when he followed an action that his body and mind ‘felt’ was correct.

The only way to placate his torturous anxiety was to insist on being let out before they reached the roundabout so he could walk, meeting the car on the other side. His friends thought he was acting crazy, and ridiculed his behaviour. Ed was confused and embarrassed by his illogical behaviour, which in turn compounded the anxiety and escalated his cycle of obsessive thinking and compulsive reaction. As is often the case with OCD, the disorder was actually feeding on itself to grow stronger.

While one might logically assume that the foothold that Obsessive Compulsive Disorder was slowly and steadily gaining in Ed’s mind was triggered by the stress of his new athletic and intellectual pursuits, he doesn’t remember feeling particularly nervous about making a bid for Clemson. What he felt was the uncontrollable worry of something happening to, say, his father if he walked the wrong way or touched something incorrectly-if for example he touched his index finger to his middle finger, and then failed to retouch it the same way an even number of times. It was the guilt that he felt…the pressure of ‘what if’. What if something happened to his father in a rare moment when he was carefree, and not constantly worrying? If he wasn’t maintaining the rituals within rituals of touching and going the right way, he would be responsible for whatever unfortunate event might take place.

But Ed dug deep within himself and pressed on to reach the goal of that great thing he was meant to do with his life. If he could just join his friend Rudy at Clemson, he knew everything would be OK…

The guys at Ed’s gym comprised a group of mostly blue-collar workers, living in the rough-and-tumble world of construction. When Ed showed up at the gym immediately following his trip to South Carolina, telling everybody that he wholly aspired to play for Clemson-at quarterback, no less-the guys rolled their eyes, thinking him crazy for reasons completely unrelated to the OCD-which, at that point in time, hadn’t yet manifested itself during his workouts. The consensus among them was that Ed’s pursuit was a pipedream. They started to call Ed ‘Martin Luther King, the man with the dream’. But Phil Miller, owner of a construction company, a Georgetown graduate and former athlete, had compassion for the starry-eyed kid:

Back then, Eddie wasn’t a standout athlete, but he was a standout person. While all the guys teased him, Ed stayed focused, relentless in his workout. Everyone watched as he loaded up ridiculous amounts of weights on the machine, doing endless repetitions, and doing so many squats every night that his muscles started splitting his trousers wide open. He would be the last one working out in the gym every night, telling everyone else, ‘Just one more set.’ He was determined to prove everybody wrong.

Ed put himself in the zone. Drinking weight-gain shakes, taking supplements, religiously eating a pound of pasta every night and strictly following Coach Wade’s workout regimen: chest and legs on Mondays and Thursdays, shoulders, back and arms on Tuesdays and Fridays. He developed his own system of sprints, which he ran in the evenings at a secluded spot on the heights overlooking the water. He would throw a football roughly 20 metres out in front of him, sprint to it, pick it up, and throw it 20 more. He’d repeat this routine over and over for hours on end. Always in solitude.

One day his gym buddy Phil volunteered to practise out in the car park of the gym after they’d finished their workouts. It was meant as a friendly gesture, but he was genuinely impressed by Ed’s arm. ‘He starts zinging the ball across the car park,’ recalls Phil, ‘and I was like, “Wow, this kid has some real talent. Especially for somebody who wasn’t a starter in high school.”’ Phil couldn’t really say whether his young friend would be successful in getting past the Clemson admissions process, let alone play for the Tigers, but given Ed’s enthusiasm he wouldn’t count him out.

Within five months all of Ed’s training and discipline paid off as he packed on 45 pounds of sheer muscle, bringing his weight to a viable 13 stone 3 pounds. But rather than invoking the admiration of the doubters at the gym, the snide comments manifested themselves as earnest scrutiny. Ed became understandably defensive, and even expressed his willingness to submit himself to blood and urine tests to prove his progress was legitimate.

Drug-related it wasn’t, but there are many who now believe that it may have been Ed’s underlying OCD and the nature of his relentless obsessions that helped to drive his progress.

Regardless of the role Ed’s then-undiagnosed condition might have played in his seemingly ‘instant’ success, his drive to do the extraordinary took on an added dimension. Honouring his mother was of course a primary motivator, but being surrounded by sceptics placed a new value on the unconditional faith he believed Coach Wade had placed in him, and he resolved to do him proud.

In January 1991, while still ineligible academically, Ed was ready to head back to Clemson. He needed to be in a positive atmosphere, where Rudy and all the guys could take in his progress. He wanted his adopted mentor, Coach Wade, to see for himself what Ed was capable of accomplishing. ‘Coach Wade had a way of making you believe in something great,’ remembers Ed, ‘and that you can conquer the world. He is all about mind, spirit and soul, and what defines you as a human being. He said he was preparing me for the biggest game: life.’

Ed was now ready to take the next step towards his goal of becoming part of the Clemson family. Before he could head back there, though, he had to meet the academic requirements. He immediately enrolled in classes at the local community college.

It was such a lofty goal that many friends and family members stood back and watched sceptically. There were a few, like Phil and like Ed’s sister Tami, who hoped that this was the beginning of something big for Ed. But the guys at the gym were still pretty relentless in their caustic remarks. Intellectually, Ed understood it was an implausible dream that was hard for people to understand, and turned the negativity into motivation to keep pushing himself harder.

The truth is that Ed had never really wanted to play football. Art was his true passion, but his dad didn’t see this as a career choice-and whenever he brought it up he would remind Ed of the stigma of ‘the starving artist’. Added to this, Ed had to admit that he couldn’t ignore the feeling of importance and respect he gained simply by working out alongside the team when he was at Clemson. ‘I was still trying to find that great thing,’ remembers Ed. ‘I was doing the mental Google search for my future career and thought maybe this was it.’ But beneath the surface lay that chronic anxiety that felt like an annoying undercurrent of electricity in his brain, humming day and night. He couldn’t turn it off; it was like a severe case of tinnitus. More and more, he would find himself hesitating before he could move forward, needing to retrace his steps or read words forwards and backwards to try and correct the feeling of discomfort. The mental and physical ‘hiccups’, the hesitation that kept him from moving steadily forward, was something he could not shut down.

All stress in Ed’s life, even that caused by something as ordinary as his friends leaving for university or his indecision about his future, led him straight into the painful memory of his mother’s death. Ed’s emotional foundation was broken. He’d never reconciled his mother’s death in any way, and without that closure the added demands like having to prove himself academically before he could even consider applying to Clemson were creating further instability. It wasn’t just the work itself; even just getting to class became an enormous challenge. He found himself avoiding certain routes, making detours to retrace the journey back and forth dozens of times until he felt comfortable enough to continue.

When he finally got to class, his preoccupations began to affect his ability to absorb information, and even his literacy. He found himself stuck on pages, reading the same sentences over and over again, trying to process information. It could take him several hours to complete an assignment of just a few pages. He began to feel the need to read every sentence backwards and forwards, repeatedly, until his mind was fully satisfied.

It was the same for road signs when he travelled to class. He had to read them forwards and backwards, or he didn’t feel comfortable enough to keep driving. The college was fewer than 20 miles away, and yet the journey could take him several hours. He would become physically exhausted and ill just thinking about the journey and, as a result, he often wouldn’t go. And all the while Ed had no idea what was happening to him.

Not surprisingly, his growing obsessions were becoming more and more difficult to conceal. If he happened to ride to the local fast food place, and his friends were driving, he would ask to be let out of the car before they went through the drivethrough, and he would walk ahead and wait for them to circle around with the car to go back out the exit. He would explain to his friends that he just wanted to ‘take a walk’, but when this started happening on a regular basis the guys started teasing him about his quirky behaviour.

As his compulsions grew, in order to address the demands of what he would later find out was OCD, Ed began offering to drive whenever he went out with friends. He could no longer simply take a left turn into the car park of a local restaurant; he would have to drive all the way around the block and come in from the other side so he could take a right turn. Left turns were considered ‘odd’ and right was considered ‘even’. His mind rejected anything odd, and if he took a left turn it didn’t feel right. ‘It would drive us nuts!’ remembers high school buddy, Kevin Frye. ‘We’d go, “What in the hell are you doing, Eddie?” but he would either ignore us, or say, “I just want to go this way, that’s all.”’

On any given day, Ed would obsessively tiptoe across tile floors, manoeuvring his size-12 feet into the centre of each square, trying to avoid the cracks of grout between each one. This child’s game was, for Ed, a deadly serious endeavour to avoid touching the lines for fear that something truly catastrophic would happen to someone he loved.

In 1991, Ed had no idea he had OCD, but he knew there was something different about the way he thought and his need to do things a certain way. But seeking medical help wasn’t even a consideration, because thinking differently, to Ed, didn’t constitute an illness. He was putting himself under a lot of pressure to try and make a bid for Clemson, and didn’t have many cheerleaders to support him, so he decided to get away-head back to South Carolina where everything seemed brighter and he, ostensibly, had a plan. On his own, he decided he would take the classes he needed to fulfil Clemson’s academic requirements for admission locally, then enrol as a full-time Clemson student, make the team, and play the following year.

To start, Ed figured if he showed up at the athletic centre every day with his buddies to attend team workouts he would continue to be noticed and evaluated in a positive light, and that he would prove his value as a potential member of the team.

He certainly wasn’t disappointed on his arrival. Rudy, Coach Wade and the guys on the team seemed happy to see him, and acknowledged his dramatic physical change. His plan was to stay in halls with his buddy while he tried to get classes worked out at the local community college, and hang out with the team as much as possible. And since his buddy Rudy carried a lot of weight as one of the Tigers’ star players, Ed was given more latitude to hang out on the sidelines during practice, and occasionally throw the ball around with the other players.

‘Not everybody liked him being on the field,’ says Rudy, who would later go on to play in the NFL for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Washington Redskins. ‘But we’d put on our pads and he would be out there throwing the ball with us. He had a great arm, and the coaches were watching him.’

Rudy knew Ed was still struggling emotionally with the loss of his mother, and because the two were ‘like brothers’ as children growing up in Stoughton, and he regretted the fact that he hadn’t been around to help Ed through it, Rudy was determined to use the small amount of influence he held within the Clemson football programme to help Ed get a shot as a walk-on the following year. ‘I was trying my best to help Ed, but it’s really hard to play as part of the team if you’re not there on scholarship.’ Rudy knew it was a long shot.

If nothing else, Ed is persistent-so, regardless of his unofficial student status, Ed was practising with the team and hanging out with the players after practice was over, and he would use every opportunity he could to spend time talking to Coach Wade. But no matter how much access he was granted, or how many heartwarming conversations he had with Wade, there would be no happy ending to this part of Ed’s story-not at Clemson, at least. As the OCD quickly metastasized, unbeknownst to Ed, he found himself unable to attend the local community college where he was trying to earn the grades that Clemson would find acceptable.

With increasing frequency, Ed would see flashes of himself as a young boy, standing in the hallway, watching his mother pass, and be so consumed that he found it hard to concentrate. And these visions led to his incrementally intensifying obsession with protecting his father, who was healthy and happy living back in Cape Cod.

The turning-point came one day as he walked across campus from halls to the athletic field. He came to a fork in the path and was suddenly gripped by an overwhelming fear when he looked to the left-and saw the image of a skull and crossbones. He panicked and froze, shook his head, and looked to the right. Now he saw images of his father getting killed in a terrible car accident. Back and forth, he looked at the two spots. Left: skull and crossbones, right: fatal accident. Ed couldn’t move, stricken with terror that if he stepped forward, even an inch, someone would die.

These vague, unsettling feelings, and the harrowing moments when nothing ‘feels right’, are elements of OCD that defy logical explanation. They come in varying degrees to victims of the disorder, and in Ed’s case were extraordinary and severe. But the torment in not knowing why the thoughts are occurring, and the fact that there is nothing tangible on which to hang them, is sheer anguish for sufferers.

For more than two hours, Ed stood helplessly frozen in place in the path of a rush of students, forced to detour round him as they headed to class. The embarrassment of not being able to move was dwarfed by the terror that any move he made had the potential to affect the life of his father.

‘OCD is like having your head in a vice…it keeps cranking and turning, getting tighter and tighter, and the only way to relieve it is to do its bidding,’ says Ed. ‘At the same time, you’re rejecting the thought process because you want to function properly.’

Closing his eyes and rocking back and forth, trying to soothe the wild beasts in his mind, Ed began trying to think of happier moments to distract him from the painful vision that consumed him, and the humiliation of standing statuelike in the middle of campus. He finally became ‘unlocked’, he says, by thinking of Star Wars and recalling the first time he saw The Empire Strikes Back. Ed seized that fleeting moment, turned around and ran back the way he came to find a pay phone and ring his father to confirm that he’d made the right decision.

Bob knew Ed’s concern over his health and well-being through the years was extraordinary, but he remained sympathetic because he knew it stemmed from the loss of his mother. Still, this call was a signal to him that things were not going as smoothly as he’d hoped they would for Ed at Clemson, and he worried about what Ed’s next step would be if Clemson didn’t work out.

Of course Ed found his father was alive and well, so he returned to the hall of residence where he was staying with friends, and collapsed on his bed. The strain of feeling he’d been carrying his father’s welfare on his shoulders for those two hours left Ed in such physical and emotional distress that he spent the next three days in bed with a migraine headache.

‘Logically I knew that the odds of anything bad happening to my father were slim,’ says Ed with regard to his OCD conviction. ‘But if I walked to the left, instead of walking to the right, and something did happen to my father, I would be responsible for his death. I would, in essence, have killed him.’

When Ed complied with OCD’s demand to move right, left or not at all, he was momentarily relieved from the anxiety caused by his obsession with his father’s safety, or whoever else was on his mind-his siblings, aunts, uncles, friends. Ed equates the adrenaline rush of relief to that of the hero in a movie who has just saved someone from impending death. In reality it is an action that, by the pure nature of OCD, meant Ed was reinforcing the cycle. The more he indulged these sorts of compulsions, to get relief from the obsessions of OCD, the greater the intensity of OCD’s demands.

Chapter 3 Time to Go Home (#ulink_9c43a2c4-b69c-5e23-9e40-48bca71aabb7)

Ed knew it was time to go home. He could no longer handle the stress of getting everything together academically to make the bid for Clemson, and he was consumed with worry that something bad would happen to his father if he stayed there any longer.

When Ed returned home to Cape Cod, though, his father was angry that he had not been successful. It was devastating for Ed to have to admit to his dad, a man who’d spent time as a Marine during wartime, that he didn’t understand what was happening to him that made it impossible to continue.

Bob doesn’t recall himself expressing or even feeling any such anger, however. In fact, he suggests that Ed was just on overdrive, setting himself up for disappointment by expecting too much. ‘I think he just overburdened himself by trying to do too much,’ remembers Bob. ‘Eddie went off the deep end.’

Bob tried putting his son to work in the plumbing business with him, but the two fought vociferously during their drive to work together. ‘I would drive and when we’d get to the roundabouts, Eddie would say, “Dad, let me out here.”’ When Bob refused, Ed would start yelling, ‘Let me out. Let me out!’ Recalling that frustrating time, Bob says, ‘I wondered what the hell was wrong with him.’ Over time, as Ed’s condition got progressively worse, Bob says, ‘A short drive anywhere with Eddie could turn into a sixhour trip.’

It’s not that Ed’s ‘quirks’ hadn’t been noticed on occasion by the rest of the family, but due to lack of understanding they’d been dismissed. By 1991, however, his symptoms, although still lacking an official diagnosis of OCD, were hard to ignore.