David McElroy

Missing someone always seems worst in the wee hours of the morning. Maybe it’s because our days are filled with things that distract us with tasks to accomplish and then we find ourselves alone at night with our thoughts and feelings. I’ve been having trouble sleeping for many months, but I rarely try to explain why, even though I know very clearly. As an evening drags on and it becomes more silent, I seem to be left with the best and the worst of my hopes and fears. And that makes it hard to turn my brain off and go to sleep. In one of her private letters, writer Edna St. Vincent Millay voiced what I feel: “Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.” But would you erase love for someone from your mind to be rid of that torture? In the movie, “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” that’s the central premise, although it takes a long time to understand what’s going on. Two people start out wanting to forget one another, but it turns out that forgetting is even more painful. There’s nothing better than experiencing real love. Living with lost love is terribly painful, but not as painful as losing the part of yourself that still knows how to love unconditionally.