David McElroy

I’m not a misanthrope, but I can come across as one sometimes. It’s one of the downsides of feeling like an alien among human beings.

I need people, but I need “my kind of people.” Most of the time, I don’t feel as though I’m around anybody like me. That doesn’t mean I hate the people around me, but it does make me feel like an alien on the wrong planet — someone who’s longing for home. For wherever his people are.

One of the enduring assumptions of the modern liberal age is that we’re all basically alike and that everyone in the world will eventually get along together in perfect harmony. This is a very flawed belief. Although humans share a lot of biological similarities, the differences caused by personality, culture, religion and ideology are far deeper. This is why we can’t stand each other.

I’ve come to understand that very few people are like me — and very few people want what I want in life. This means the best we can do is learn to leave each other alone to live in peace.

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“So who’s gonna watch you die?”

Fifteen years after I first heard that line in the chorus of a Death Cab for Cutie song, it remains one of the most devastating questions I’ve heard. It was a gut punch to me because I didn’t know the answer for myself — and I still don’t.

In the song, “What Sarah Said,” the singer recalls being in a hospital watching and waiting as a loved one dies. (You can listen to the song below.) He recounts all the sights and sounds and smells of the intensive care unit. Then he says what’s really on his mind:

But I’m thinking of what Sarah said:
“Love is watching someone die…”

I’ve been thinking about life and death even more than usual lately. I keep thinking that the real answer to the question — of who’s going to be there — is about mutual trust. So who do you trust — who also wants to trust you?

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I vividly remember the facts of that day — in sharp, clear detail — but I don’t remember feeling anything. My lack of any emotion might be the most noteworthy thing about the day my mother tried to kill my father.

The day was just like any other Sunday afternoon for my family. We had gone to church and had dinner at home in our dining room. We lived on Holly Hill Drive in Atlanta. I was 5. My sisters were 3 and 1.

Sunday dinner was finished. My father went to lie down on the living room couch to read the Sunday paper. Mother was in the kitchen cleaning up the dishes. I was standing in the open entryway at the edge of the living room, just at the place where the room met the hall. The dining room was between the kitchen and the living room. The hall next to which I was standing was another way to the kitchen.

Without warning, my mother came running through the dining room from the kitchen. She had a knife raised in her hand as she ran. I cried out and my father looked up in time to reach out and grab her arm as she tried to stab him.

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