David McElroy

My friend Josh surprised me tonight.

“If it hadn’t been for marrying Michelle, I would’ve been just like my brother,” he said.

Josh isn’t a guy who’s prone to introspection or to pondering psychology, so his insight surprised me. I wondered why it had never occurred to me instead.

Josh has a brother who’s pretty strange. I’ve known Josh and his wife for more than 20 years, and I’ve seen him change and grow in ways that I don’t think he’s always aware of. He doesn’t seem to realize just how much he’s changed, but I see him as a radically different person.

His brother, Brian, has never married. He’s dated off and on — and he says he wishes he were married — but he’s never had a serious relationship. Today, Josh and Brian are radically different people. Josh is easy to get along with. Brian is prickly and difficult. Josh is great at compromise, but Brian has to have everything his way. Brian is very hard to like.

Until tonight, I hadn’t consciously realized that Josh marrying Michelle saved him from being the difficult man that his brother has become. And that’s left me thinking about how the partner we choose changes us in radical ways — for good or for bad.

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Yesterday when I was young
So many happy songs were waiting to be sung,
So many wild pleasures lay in store for me
And so much pain my dazzled eyes refused to see
— Charles Aznavour (English translation by Herbert Kretzmer), “Yesterday When I Was Young”

Few things in life are as useless as regret, but few things feel as meaningful as my regrets. That’s a contradiction which I don’t quite understand.

When I was a boy, people warned me that my years would start flying by before I realized it, but I never quite believed that. Maybe nobody ever believes it until it’s too late. I’m not sure.

Some people say they have no regrets, but I suspect they’re either fooling themselves or else they have very selective memories. I’m burdened with a vivid memory. My mind can’t help drawing connections between my decisions and the emotional pain which I later experience.

I have a lot of regrets, but they serve a purpose. If I look at them in the right ways, they’re warning signs that allow me to adjust my decisions — while I still can.

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I’ve always believed it was my job to fix the world. To make everything perfect.

I never actually said that. I didn’t even consciously think it. But I walked through the world feeling a sort of panic — a desperation to fix things — that most people never experience.

Looking back, it’s obvious now where that fear came from. As I was growing up, my narcissistic father held me responsible for being perfect. I was punished for any deviation from what he thought was right and good. And he constantly judged everybody and everything around me.

Behind their backs, he ridiculed people who did things incorrectly. If he saw a public mistake — a timing error on a live television show or a typo in a newspaper, for instance — he used to tell me that someone must have been fired for the mistake. And I believed him.

I’m still afraid of my own imperfection. I still feel panic when I see others’ mistakes. After all these years, there’s still a nagging feeling inside that I have to fix everything — or else I’ll be punished.

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